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How To Conduct a Shopify Store Audit for Maximum Optimization
Updated:
12
minutes read
A well-optimized Shopify store is a rewarding result of a plethora of different measures taken to keep it in check. As eCommerce hustlers, the term ‘store audit’ is understandably no stranger to you, as it is an imperative step to obtain maximum optimization. Whether you manage multiple stores or dedicate to one only, store audits pose amazing benefits to the longevity of your business. In this blog post, we will walk you through a typical process of how a Shopify store audit is done, alongside useful tips to master this task.
What is a Store Audit?
In the eCommerce sector, a store audit is categorized as a comprehensive examination of an online store’s performance in order to conclude an assessment that benefits the store. Its process contains a thorough evaluation of one or more facets combined, be it page speed, SEO health, conversion rates, traffic, etc. By using precise methodologies, assistance tools can spot the persistent issues with one’s website, thus, enabling sellers to take cardinal actions to optimize their stores.
Depending on your goals, a store audit can take several forms. Knowing when and how to conduct a store audit should be one’s top priority on the path to reap the utmost prosperity during their entrepreneurial journey.
If you are a part of the Shopify ecosystem, you would want to keep that mouse scrolling, as the chapters below will cover the benefits of a store audit, audit types, the usual process of a store audit, as well as the key metrics to focus on.
Benefits of a Shopify Store Audit
Identify Website Issues
Pinpoint the exact issues your website is running into through the insights of store audits.
Maintaining an eCommerce store is an ongoing journey where problems can surface at any given time. As a business owner, one can’t always stay on top of finding a satisfactory solution for these problems. This is when a comprehensive store audit can help you pinpoint these drawbacks and produce an efficient plan to get them under control. With a store audit, you don’t need to become a Jack of all trades to get your store fixed and optimized.
Improve User Experience
When your store operates smoothly, the user experience will consequently improve. Components such as a user-friendly navigation system, mobile responsiveness, secure checkout process, intuitive breadcrumbs, etc. are among the best attainments a successful store audit can provide you to ensure a well-rounded user experience from start to finish.
Keep Up with Competitors
Outdo your competitors by conducting store audits and constantly reinventing your brand.
No matter how niche your field of choice is, you are bound to have competitors who are more than eager to outperform you. While each business owner has a unique trick up their sleeve when it comes to marketing tactics, a thorough store audit is a shared secret that almost all online merchants have capitalized on. It allows you to stay in the loop of how your store performs in comparison to other competitors so that suitable measures can be taken to remain competitive and attract more customers.
Achieve Consistent Branding
Proper store audits not only help you maintain a smoothly running website but also give leeway to achieve consistent branding as a whole.
The branding of your store comprises a distinct brand logo and name, visual elements, messages, color scheme, etc. To instill a lasting impression and trust in your customers, consistent branding is what you should go for. In this case, a store audit is able to make sure that an adequate amount of scrutiny is given to achieve efficient branding coherence.
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What are the Types of a Shopify Store Audit?
Store audit is an umbrella term for different types of audits that cater to one’s specific business goals. When an issue arises in a particular area of your business performance, opting for a store audit that prioritizes this problem is a solid practice to reach a satisfactory solution.
Let’s take a look at the most common types of a Shopify store audit below.
Performance Audit
Website performance encompasses different aspects that contribute to a frictionless shopping experience, so frequent audits of your store’s performance cannot be understated.
A performance audit covers the functionality of your website, including how fast it loads or how it pans out on mobile. Everything around technical efficiency will be assessed and optimized to ensure your website does not underperform, especially on mobile devices. Tools like Google Lighthouse or Shopify Analytics are the godsends in giving sellers an overall analysis with precise data. This type of store audit is advised to be used by merchants across all niches and at all stages in their journeys.
SEO Audit
SEO is an integral factor of an online business, thus, performing SEO audits often is the key to keeping your store running smoothly.
SEO is the ultimate measurement to showcase how a website performs for search engines. In this digital era, doing business online goes beyond just selling stuff, as your ranking on search result pages plays a vital role in the popularity of your brand. An SEO audit is naturally the best approach to help you ace this concept.
Some highlights of an SEO audit include on-page SEO (i.e. keywords in titles, headlines, and blog posts), image optimization, internal linking, URL, and more. A healthy SEO performance will drive up organic traffic, recruit new leads, and boost brand visibility. In this area, SEMrush and Ahrefs take the cake as the GOATs in SEO optimization for eCommerce businesses.
Content Audit
A content audit refers to everything about the content on your site, namely product descriptions, blog posts, brand stories, marketing campaigns, and so on. By conducting a store audit that focuses on these elements, you are guaranteed a consistent system of relevant and comprehensive content catalogs that is in alignment with your brand’s ethos. Content marketing is known as a genuine strategy to promote your brand without spending the big bucks on paid ads and collaborations, hence the importance of carrying out regular content audits.
More from GemPages: The Best Content Marketing Ideas for B2B and Examples to Drive Success
Marketing Audit
Every online business has to market their brand one way or another, but oftentimes, they find the results do not match the marketing efforts. To know exactly where the issue lies, a marketing audit will be your best friend. By shifting the focus on metrics like email marketing, paid advertising, social media performance, and other methods of marketing one is familiar with, this type of store audit will point out the exact rights and wrongs in your campaigns. As a result, immediate actions can be taken just in time to eliminate financial losses, and risks, and prioritize effective measures for long-term success.
Competitor Analysis Audit
Stay ahead of the competition by conducting regular store audits to gain valuable insights and predictions.
Competitors are an imminent part of doing business, both offline and online. Whether you have been in the game for long or just started out as a rookie entrepreneur, a competitor analysis audit is never a shabby idea. It is a brilliant tool to help identify the efficiency of your product catalogs, pricings, marketing campaigns, website designs, as well as insights into the market trends and predictions. For this type of audit, a third-party app can be utilized, alongside manual reviewing for maximum competency.
User Experience Audit
The user experience (UX) audit is perhaps one of the most prominent types of audit one should take note of since customers are at the core of every business. This kind of store audit examines the functionality of your website and in turn, rates it on the scale of how intuitive and user-friendly it is for first-time and repeated visitors to navigate around. By putting themselves in the shoes of the customers, merchants ought to take notice of details such as navigation menu, site responsiveness, CTA placement, font size and color, checkout process, etc. Once all these elements are taken into account, you will be able to figure out how to optimize your store to grant customers an enjoyable user experience.
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Key Metrics to Focus on in a Store Audit
The metrics you choose to focus on in a store audit can vary, but there are certain pillars that make up this whole concept, such as the criteria listed below.
Knowing where to focus in a store audit will give you a foothold in solving your website issues efficiently.
- Conversion Rates: focus on the conversion rates on the product page, landing page, collection page, and the website as a whole.
- Customer Retention Rates: take notes of the repeat purchase rate, churn rate, and customer lifetime value.
- Site Speed: page load time, media load time, and site responsiveness are crucial factors in this criteria.
- Mobile Optimization: pay attention to mobile responsiveness and touch-friendly elements.
How to Conduct a Shopify Store Audit in 5 Steps
If you are still wondering how to audit your Shopify store, the guide below will have you covered. The actual plan should align with your specific business goals, so take this manual with a grain of salt. That said, it will still provide you with a clearer view of this concept in detail.
Step 1: Pinpoint Your Goals
Before proceeding, the very first step is to lock in your objectives. What do you expect to get out of this website audit? Which facets of your store do you think need improvement? How fast would you like to see results? The list goes on and on. By listing out a set of questions, you will be able to pinpoint your ultimate objectives. Thus, it will be tenfold easier to lay a solid foundation for the upcoming steps.
Below are some examples of goals a store owner might aim for:
- Increase conversion rates
- Garner more organic traffic
- Improve user shopping experience
Step 2: Check on Your Store Performance
SEMrush provides a thorough SEO audit to help you identify user experience (UX) problems.
Assessing your site performance is the next step in getting closer to an effective store audit. When it comes time to start the actual process, a wide array of tools are available for you to cherry-pick. For Shopify-powered brands, there is no shortage of handy tools that assist you in checking the most important metrics on your website. SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Google Analytics, Shopify Analytics, Google PageSpeed Insights, and Pingdom are some household names among proficient tools that can help you do just the thing.
Step 3: Assess Technical Errors
Technical errors refer to any issue that affects the functionality of your website. Alongside other performance-related metrics like user demographics or bounce rate, pay attention to other technical aspects like broken links, page load speed, SEO health, security, etc. This is a crucial step in any store audit for a comprehensive result.
Step 4: Optimize Necessary Areas
The data is now in your possession, make great use of it by starting to brainstorm ideas to optimize necessary areas where issues are the most evident. For example, if the tools spot a problem with the user's shopping journey, dive in head first and put a fix to it. Whether it is to improve the navigation system, tweak the CTA placements, or review mobile compatibility - these measures are especially useful in taking you a step closer to reaching the best state your website has ever been in.
Step 5: Track Progress and Conduct Follow-up Audits
After changes are implemented, it is time for you to track your progress and the impact it has on your website. By following the results closely, you will have a better idea of whether to conduct more audits in the near future.
Some actions one should take to keep an eye on the audit performance are:
- Track and review the metrics based on the initial goals
- Construct future measures as the progress advances over time
- Conduct follow-up audits if necessary to keep your business running smoothly
Shopify Store Audit Challenges and Solutions
While the premise of a Shopify store health audit seems clear-cut, it does come with unique challenges that require merchants’ attentiveness.
Mixed Results from Different Analytic Tools
Before jumping on the bandwagon, most business owners tend to craft a list of tools to utilize during the audit. While having a roster to pick from is ideal, it is vital to avoid a probable situation where there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Bear in mind that the more tools you use, the more insights there are to gather and analyze. Furthermore, mixed results are possible when each tool boasts a different metric.
Solution: The most sensible solution to this problem is to implement an orderly approach. Take our steps below for your consideration:
- Identify the Most Important Metrics: the more in-depth you go with your research, the more meticulous you can be with pinpointing the core metrics that dominantly contribute to your store’s success. This could be conversion rates, user experience, mobile optimization, page speed, and the like.
- Double Check Across Different Tools: while some tools are similar in character, the focuses are different. For instance, while Google Analytics and Shopify Analytics both offer insights into your store performance, each has exclusive focus points that might yield varied results.
- Get an Expert’s Professional Opinion: as a last resort, you might need to consult an expert or a specialized team of professionals who are well-versed in the industry. With a newfound perspective, interpreting mixed results can be more streamlined.
Difficulties in Implementing Changes
Once you have gotten insightful information from the much-needed store audits, the work has yet to be completed. Sometimes, implementing actual changes to your store takes up a lot of time and effort. This is an apparent difficulty that many sellers have to face.
Solution: Making use of external sources of assistance and conducting A/B testings are amazing practices to overcome these possible obstacles that come with a retail store audit. For Shopify-based stores, merchants are welcome to capitalize on a sleuth of Shopify native and third-party apps, as well as getting in touch with a Shopify expert to get the issues resolved in lightning speed. If you are standing at a crossroads, A/B testings are an ideal solution to determine which changes are the most suitable for your website. These tests also keep the risks of things going South to a minimum.
Final Words
Knowing when to conduct store audits is one thing, but learning how to embrace and apply the valuable insights these tests grant you is the secret ingredient to cooking up the best eCommerce website. That is why this guide from us aims to not only show you how a distinctive store audit procedure works but to help you get the most out of this brilliant approach as well. At the end of the day, taking preemptive measures is a good call to steer your business on the right path to success. Prove you are worth the salt by conducting a comprehensive today by following this very blog post.
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FAQ about Shopify Store Audit
What is a Shopify store audit?
A Shopify store audit is the process of evaluating one’s website’s performance. By taking aspects such as SEO, page speed, user experience, mobile optimization, etc. into account, merchants can gain valuable insights into their eCommerce store. Regular audits are especially helpful in keeping the conversion rates afloat and ensuring the longevity of a website in the Shopify community and the eCommerce scene as a whole.
Why do I need a Shopify store audit?
A Shopify store audit has been proven to be efficient for multiple reasons. Below are some of the benefits:Identify Website Issues Improve User Experience Keep Up with Competitors Achieve Consistent Branding
What are the tools to conduct a Shopify store audit?
Depending on your objective, a Shopify store audit might require one or several tools to yield worthwhile results. Here are some recommended tools to help you carry out a typical site audit:SEMrush or Screaming Frog: to examine SEO performance Google Analytics: to analyze site traffic and user behavior Google Search Console: to improve your website’s visibility on search results pages. Shopify Analytics: offers built-in features to keep track of your store’s performance
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