How to Perform a Conversion Audit
A practical 10-step checklist you can run against any website in about 30 minutes. Use it to find what's quietly costing you customers — then fix the highest-impact issues first.
What is a conversion audit?
A conversion audit is a structured review of your website against the criteria that drive visitor-to-customer behavior. It's not a design critique and it's not a brand exercise — it's a hunt for the specific friction points that prevent interested visitors from taking the next step. Done well, a single audit usually surfaces three to five fixes that move conversion by 10-30%.
Before you start
Open the site you're auditing in an incognito window on a phone and on a laptop. Have analytics (GA4, Plausible, PostHog) open in a second tab so you can validate hypotheses against real behavior. Time-box yourself to 30 minutes — the goal is a prioritized list, not a comprehensive report.
The 10-step checklist
1. Clear value proposition above the fold
Open your homepage on a fresh device. Within 5 seconds, can a stranger tell what you do, who it's for, and what to do next? If not, rewrite your hero headline to lead with the outcome, not the product name.
2. Single, obvious primary call to action
Count the buttons in your hero section. If there are more than one primary action competing for attention, demote the others to text links. Visitors should never have to decide between two equally weighted CTAs.
3. Social proof in the first viewport
Look for logos, testimonials, ratings, or usage numbers above the fold. If your hero section has zero credibility signals, add at least one — a customer logo strip, a star rating, or a short quote with a real name and photo.
4. Mobile-first layout
Audit your site on a 375px-wide viewport (iPhone SE). Are tap targets at least 44px tall? Does the primary CTA appear without scrolling? Is body text at least 16px? Mobile traffic now outweighs desktop on most B2C sites — design for it first.
5. Page speed under 2.5s LCP
Run PageSpeed Insights against your homepage. If Largest Contentful Paint exceeds 2.5s, compress and resize your hero image, preload it, add explicit width and height, and remove render-blocking scripts.
6. Trust signals near every CTA
Next to every signup or purchase button, is there a guarantee, security badge, refund policy, or testimonial? Friction at the moment of conversion costs more revenue than any other single factor.
7. Frictionless forms
Count the fields in your primary form. Every extra field cuts conversion by ~5%. Ask only what you need to deliver the next step. Use single-column layouts, inline validation, and avoid CAPTCHAs unless you're being attacked.
8. Scannable copy with benefit-led headlines
Skim your page. Do the H2s describe outcomes ("Cut audit time from 4 hours to 4 minutes") or features ("AI-powered analysis")? Outcome-led copy converts 2-3x better than feature-led copy.
9. Pricing transparency
Can a visitor find your price without filling out a form? Hidden pricing kills conversion for everyone except enterprise. If you have tiers, show them; if you don't, name a starting price.
10. Honest error and empty states
Trigger every failure mode: bad email, expired card, zero results. Are the messages helpful and recoverable? Most sites lose users to dead-end errors that don't tell them what to do next.
Want this audit run for you in 60 seconds?
BurnRate runs all 10 of the checks above automatically and returns a prioritized list of fixes — no spreadsheet required.
Run a free audit