According to studies, conversions can drop by 7% for every second that a page takes to load. Let’s address a few questions before you continue reading.
- Do your pages load effectively and quickly?
- Is it simple to use and navigate your store?
- Are enough of your visitors turning into paying customers?
- If not, thank you for taking the time and effort to locate this useful resource. Why am I referring to it as a useful resource?
Because…
Here, we’ll not only talk about the necessity of a Shopify store audit but also teach you:
- How to recognize problems with performance
- How the store performance audit is done
- How frequently should a store audit be done?
- What steps should be taken next?
Let’s discuss all in detail!
What is a Shopify Store Performance Audit?
A thorough assessment of the effectiveness and performance of your store is called a Shopify performance audit. Your Shopify store requires routine maintenance and performance optimization to ensure it operates efficiently and gives your customers the greatest experience possible, much like a well-maintained machine.
The Shopify store health audit is another name for it!
A detailed Shopify store audit assists in pinpointing your store’s strong points and potential areas for development. Even if your traffic and sales are consistent, a performance review can uncover untapped potential, encouraging further growth and maximizing your earnings.
Some red flags, such as a slow-loading website, an abrupt decline in sales, a high bounce rate, etc., can help you quickly identify performance problems in your Shopify store. These warning signs indicate the necessity of an audit of the Shopify website and quick improvements in performance.
More reasons will be covered in the following section. Let’s go!
Why Should You Go for a Shopify Performance Audit?
Website speed is not the only factor that affects performance. You will experience favorable outcomes from different perspectives if your Shopify website is properly optimized for overall performance.
Therefore, you should know why you need a website performance audit before spending money on one.
These are the top reasons to spend money on a Shopify store audit for optimal results.
Reason #1: Identifying and Fixing Performance Holdups
Isn’t the first reason pretty clear?
If the performance of your Shopify website is poor, you should concentrate on two things:
Which areas of the website are at fault and which are impacted by the poor performance?
A Shopify performance audit can reveal some of the most common obstacles to success, including:
- Slow loading pages
- Unoptimized imaged
- Excessive use of JavaScript
- Unnecessary plugins and applications
- Render-blocking resources, etc.
Therefore, the Shopify store audit is carried out to identify and promptly fix such errors. Thanks to this audit, you can ensure your Shopify store is operating at its best.
Reason #2: Improved User Experience
Have you ever considered how shoppers get lost and feel irritated if they are unable to locate what they are looking for?
It’s true! According to a recent study, 72% of consumers are less likely to stick with a brand when they have trouble finding what they’re looking for on a website. For this reason, e-commerce companies need to have a great user experience (UX).
A performance audit may uncover navigational problems such as complicated menus, disorganized layouts, or hidden categories. Assessing product pages and the checkout procedure can also identify areas that require improvement to create a more seamless and pleasant shopping experience.
Reason #3: Helps in Improving SEO and Organic Traffic
The majority of online customers use search engines like Google to find new brands and products. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) generates organic traffic that results in long-term business benefits, while paid advertisements provide instant results.
However, attaining high organic visibility requires an organized approach. Additionally, a Shopify performance audit can assist you in locating technical and on-page SEO problems that might be preventing your website from appearing in search results, such as
- Inaccurate directives or no robots.txt file
- Broken backlinks
- Sitemap problems
- Meta robots with the “noindex” label
- Missing meta tags (title, meta descriptions, etc.)
- Canonicalization problems
As a result, search engine crawlers may be unable to access and index your website pages. By identifying these problems, the performance review will enable you to address them and increase the effectiveness of your crawl efficiency. This results in better rankings and high organic traffic.
Reason #4: Better Conversion Rate Optimization
Converting visitors into paying customers is the ultimate goal of your marketing and store.
Do you believe that a store that isn’t doing well can increase sales? No, correct? To guarantee a higher conversion rate, frequent Shopify audits and quick performance optimization are necessary.
A detailed store performance audit can help identify technical difficulties, usability issues, and content gaps that hinder user experience and eventually result in abandoned carts and lost sales. By identifying these issues, you can prioritize changes that address particular user pain points and speed up the conversion process.
Reason #5: Better Customer Retention
A slow, clunky website, in our opinion, irritates customers, leads to a loss of customers, and gives a poor shopping experience.
Even though other factors affect customer retention, a positive user experience does have an impact. Additionally, you can only keep customers who have a positive experience with your Shopify store.
- how quickly you fulfill the customer’s order,
- how good your products are packaged
- how effective your retargeting campaigns are
If you want to provide a flawless shopping experience and increase customer loyalty, you must conduct Shopify performance audits.
What Does a Shopify Performance Audit Include?
Knowing that performance audits are done to identify the fundamental causes for your website’s poor performance, it’s time to learn which topics are addressed.
The main elements of the Shopify performance audit are:
- Website Performance: Includes mobile usability and page loading speed.
- Site Navigation: the clarity of product categories, internal links, and navigation menus
- Store Design: includes expert layout, site visual appeal, and visual structure.
- SEO: This includes visibility, keyword optimization, and content relevancy, which are all components of website SEO.
- Conversion Rate Optimization: Includes social proof, calls to action, and checkout process optimization, among other things.
Final Words
The size and complexity of your store will determine the precise definition and depth of your audit, but all audits offer insightful analysis and practical suggestions to boost the operation of your online store.
Even though every audit provides insightful information, not every partner has the knowledge and experience needed to turn those insights into actionable outcomes. You must, therefore, choose a Shopify audit expert who will not only identify the problems but also assist you in improving the functionality of your store.
