A Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) audit is an evaluation of your site carried out by an expert in improving site performance. Do you need one for your site? Unless you’re diving into your analytics, spotting the problem areas, and routinely fixing them… then yes, you probably do.
A conversion rate optimisation (CRO) audit is a deep dive into the user experience and conversion factors for your site
A CRO audit should be carried out by an expert in conversion rate optimisation. The key pages or groups of pages on your site should be evaluated. For example, if you have an e-commerce store, this will most likely include your homepage, PLPs (collection pages), PDPs (product pages), cart page and or cart pop out and checkout process.
These key pages should ideally be evaluated from both a quantitative analytics perspective and a heuristic perspective with a third element such as user behaviour tracking, eye tracking, or similar. By combining different ways of evaluating the pages, the most thorough appraisal can be carried out. Once the pages are evaluated, suggestions for testing should be provided.
Analytics analysis
When considering analytics, core things that may be looked at are the user’s path through the site (Path exploration), and landing page engagement statistics such as:
- Engagement rate (if users are sticking around).
- Average engagement time per session (the time users have your site in focus on their device when they land on a specific page).
- Views per session (the number of pages the user viewed in a session when they landed on a particular page).
Other metrics are important, but you will want to ensure that these are being reviewed by the CRO expert you hire.
Heuristic walkthrough
When thinking about the heuristic evaluation you will want whoever is evaluating your site to go beyond CRO best practices and dive deeper into the psyche of your users. This is where user psychology comes in handy. You need to make sure whoever is doing your CRO audit has a strong understanding of what users are likely to be thinking, feeling, and doing on your site.
If you want to learn more about user psychology, we have a whole mini-series of blog articles about them that you can find here:
User behaviour tracking
User behaviour tracking through Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, or another heatmapping tool is a great addition to a CRO audit. Scroll maps can help you determine:
- If users are seeing your most important CTAs and on page elements.
- If users are dropping off suddenly at a particular point in the page – can indicate a loss of
- If users are not scrolling below what they see when the page first loads.
Click maps can help you understand:
- If users are using the interactive elements you want them to, like filters on a PLP (collection page).
- If users expect a non-clickable element to be clickable.
Data from a click map and scroll map can be combined to see how scroll depth affects clicks. For example, you could find that a CTA three quarters of the way down your page is the second most clicked part of the page, but that only a small percentage of users are scrolling that far. This tells you how important that CTA is and that it could be more valuable if you moved up the page where more users can see it.
Do you need a conversion rate optimisation (CRO) audit?
You will most likely need a CRO audit if you have not had one recently or are not continually carrying out optimisation tests on your site. If you have had a CRO audit you were happy with within the past year, you are likely going to be OK. Similarly, if you are continually testing, then you have your eye on the ball and are probably leagues ahead of many of your competitors.
However, if you don’t fit into one of these two camps then the user experience on your site could be lagging behind those of your competitors, resulting in missed opportunities to get users to convert. A CRO audit is going to give you that outside perspective to help you see what your users are experiencing and equip you with the knowledge for how to improve your site’s performance.
When to have a conversion rate optimisation (CRO) audit
What is the perfect time to have a CRO audit I hear you ask. Ideally, you would have a CRO audit as part of a company wide shift towards a CRO mindset. It should be the start of something great for your company. The reality is that a lot of companies are not yet ready to make this shift and are exploring the idea of CRO more so than transforming their company orientation. With that in mind, here are 3 times when you might want to consider getting a CRO audit.
Conversion rate optimisation audit before a redesign
One of the most popular times to have a CRO audit is just before a whole site redesign. It could seem counter intuitive – after all, if you are scrapping everything and starting again, why bother? There is infinite value in knowing what is going wrong with your current site so that you can correct these mistakes in the redesign – rather than just repeat them.
Redesigning a whole site is an expensive business. Not only do you have to pay designers and developers, but you also have to pull people away from their normal tasks to make sure the project is meeting everyone’s requirements. This means they can’t be as productive in their own roles.
To go through all that and then still see poor user engagement and a low conversion rate is heartbreaking (and likely to result in finger pointing). You can significantly reduce the risk of a redesign though by having an expert identify the traps you may have otherwise found yourself falling back into.
Conversion rate optimisation audit following a redesign
OK, so what if you didn’t have your CRO audit before your redesign, is it now too late? Well, it isn’t the best timing, after all you did just sink a lot of money into your new site. But now is better than later. The faster you find the problems, the faster you can fix them. Plus, when you do, you will be fixing them on a site that you (hopefully) like the look and feel of more than you did your old site.
Companies will come to us after a site redesign asking for help because their new site isn’t performing as they were led to believe it would. If this is your situation, you are not alone. Don’t panic, a trained eye may be able to spot some quick fixes that will get your site performing better overnight.
Conversion rate optimisation audit - a year later
Time always goes faster than you think it does, and trends move faster still. Most of the recommendations in your CRO audit will remain impactful for a very long time. However, user expectations are changing at an ever increasing rate, meaning just sitting back and thinking you are ‘done’ with CRO after you’ve had a CRO audit is never a good idea.
If you are not constantly running tests after you have implemented the findings of your CRO audit then you are letting your site grow stagnant. In about a year’s time, it would be wise for you to have a new CRO audit done, to see what you can optimise now to keep up with user demands.
For example, go back even a year and user expectation for having AI and advanced personalisation available across the internet would have seemed outlandish. But we are seeing more and more demand for AI tools, not just ChatGPT, but also advanced in-site chat bots such as those offered by Leadoo.
To stay competitive, you need to accept and harness changes in technology and society. A fresh CRO audit can help you keep that competitive edge.
Where to get a conversion rate optimisation (CRO) audit from
If you’re wondering where you can get a CRO audit from I have good news. You’re already in the right place! We offer Full CRO Audits and CRO Mini-Audits. The Full CRO Audit uses the unique Credo integration framework of Google Analytics data, user behaviour data, and a heuristic walkthrough based on user psychology, experience of running user research, and best practice.
The CRO Mini-Audit focuses on the heuristic walkthrough, pulling on the same experience and knowledge as the Full CRO Audit. The big difference is there is no Google Analytics data to review in a Mini-Audit. Although GA may be used to determine the most popular pages on your site, the data within it isn’t described and interpreted as it is with a Full CRO Audit.
The Mini-Audit is great for companies that perhaps have low traffic volumes, are less interested in the quantitative analysis, or have a lower budget. You can learn more about our two kinds of audits below.
Summary
So there you have it, conversion rate optimisation (CRO) audits are a great way to see through your users eyes and discover where and how to improve your site’s performance. You should have a CRO audit if you are about to go through a redesign, have just had a redesign with no audit before hand, or its been a minuet since you last dipped your toe into the world of CRO.
With Credo, you can have a full CRO audit that dives deep into your analytics alongside a heuristic walkthrough, or a Mini-Audit that focuses on the hot topics you need to address. Get in touch to learn more.
Hi, I’m Charlotte. I love writing about user psychology and tips I’ve picked up from leading user research and CRO projects. Get in touch if you’d like to work with me to improve the user experience on your site or click here to learn more about your future CRO team.