What I Look At When I Audit a Shopify Store

Most store audits focus on conversion rate and bounce rate. Those matter, but they're lagging indicators. By the time they tell you something is wrong, it's already cost you. Here's what I actually look at when I'm assessing whether a Shopify store is working properly.

Navigation and information architecture

Can a new visitor figure out what you sell in under ten seconds? Not from the homepage banner — from the navigation structure. If your categories are unclear, your customer will leave before they've seen your best products.

I look at: top-level navigation, collection structure, search functionality, and whether the path from landing to purchase is obvious.

App stack

Most stores accumulate apps the way warehouses accumulate pallets. One at a time, justified individually, until one day you're paying for twelve apps and three of them do the same thing.

I look at what's installed, what's active, what's actually being used, and whether any of it conflicts. App bloat is one of the most common causes of slow stores and unexpected behaviour.

Theme code quality

Not every merchant needs a custom theme. But if you've had developers touch your theme, I want to know what they left behind. Orphaned code, hacked templates, and inline styles that override everything are common.

Checkout configuration

The checkout is where the money is. I check that it's properly configured — shipping rates accurate, payment methods sensible, discount logic working, and nothing that creates friction at the last step.

Backend operations

How are orders being managed? Is fulfilment manual or automated? Are staff doing things manually that should just happen? This is where I often find the biggest wins.

What I don't do

I don't produce a fifty-page report full of recommendations you'll never action. I identify what's actually causing problems, what the priority order is, and what it would take to fix it.

If you want someone to look at your store properly, get in touch.