Are you losing business because your Shopify store isn’t converting customers? Perhaps you know that your Shopify store isn’t performing up to par, but you don’t know how to fix it? Our Shopify Audit service is a great place to start, with our team of experts analyzing your site across four critical areas: Customer Behavior, Site Performance & Code Quality, SEO, and Accessibility.

Our Shopify Audit goes beyond a simple review. It's a thorough analysis of the issues that could be hurting or hindering your ecommerce success. By leveraging data, industry experience, and best practices, we meticulously examine your storefront to pinpoint areas for improvement and uncover issues affecting your Shopify store.

In this article, we will detail each feature of our Shopify Website Audit Service and how you can benefit from it. But first, here’s a little more about us.

H1 Is Your Trusted Shopify Development Agency

H1 Web Development is more than just a dev team. We are your reliable web partner that is bought into your success. We help you navigate complex development needs and implement an optimal website strategy for your business. Unlike generic templates that fall short in giving your business the distinctive edge it deserves online, we take pride in creating unique and customized Shopify websites tailored to businesses of all sizes across various industries.

As a full-service Shopify development agency, we have been building, managing, and optimizing Shopify stores for almost eight years. Our clients range from beauty products to food to clothing and more, so we have a wide-range of experience to draw upon for your business.

Our relationship may begin with a Shopify Audit, but we have the expertise to implement all of the solutions we recommend and elevate your web strategy. And we’ve honed our process to ensure that your journey to a better Shopify store is simple and seamless.

Now, back to the Shopify Audit.

Comprehensive Shopify Website Audit

There’s something seriously wrong with your Shopify website, but you don’t know where to start. It can be overwhelming to address everything that’s wrong all at once. Where are you losing customers? What do you prioritize? How do you implement better Shopify strategies?

These are questions you will no longer have to answer alone with our comprehensive Shopify Audit. We identify the problems and then outline them in a comprehensive audit report that arms you with the information you need to determine the best next steps forward for your store. If you need further assistance, we can explore a deeper development relationship from there.

Our Shopify Website Audit addresses four core areas of improvement for your Shopify store: Customer Behavior, Site Performance & Code Quality, SEO, and Accessibility.

Customer Behavior Audit

Understanding your customers' behavior is crucial for optimizing your Shopify store’s user experience, boosting conversion rates (CVR), and increasing average order value (AOV).

Our Customer Behavior Audit delves into three key areas of analysis: a Google Analytics Review, Heatmapping, and an H1 Strategic Audit. Here’s how we leverage these insights to enhance your site’s performance.

Google Analytics Review
Our audit begins with a thorough analysis of your Google Analytics data. We examine customer engagement metrics, including bounce rates, top pages visited, and audience sources. This data reveals how visitors interact with your Shopify store, highlighting which pages capture their interest and which ones might be causing them to leave.

By understanding these patterns, we can identify key areas that need improvement. For instance, high bounce rates on particular pages might indicate issues with content relevance or page load times. Armed with this information, you can develop strategies to optimize these aspects, ensuring a smooth and engaging user journey that encourages visitors to move through the buy flow more efficiently and complete a purchase quicker.

Heatmapping Report
Heatmapping takes our analysis a step further by visually tracking customer behavior on your site. This tool allows us to see where customers are clicking, scrolling, and pausing. Heatmaps can uncover critical insights, such as which elements are attracting the most attention and which parts of your site are being overlooked.

By pinpointing areas where customers are dropping off, we can identify obstacles in the conversion path. For example, if customers frequently abandon their carts after clicking on a specific button, we might recommend redesigning that element for better clarity and usability. This granular understanding of user behavior helps you tailor your site’s design to more effectively guide customers toward making a purchase.

H1 Strategic Audit
Drawing on years of experience working with Shopify sites, our H1 Strategic Audit combines data-driven insights with expert recommendations. We analyze your site’s structure, content, and navigation, offering strategic advice to enhance the overall user experience. Additionally, we provide tailored suggestions based on proven strategies that have worked for other clients, helping you implement changes that are likely to boost conversions and improve the user experience.

The Customer Behavior Audit equips you with a deep understanding of how UX design relates to your customers’ actions, ultimately with the goal of engineering higher conversion rates and increasing average order values.

Site Performance & Code Audit

A fast and efficient website is crucial for providing a seamless user experience, improving SEO rankings, and increasing conversion rates. Our Site Performance & Code Audit focuses on three key areas of analysis: Google Lighthouse Reporting, a Shopify App Audit, and an H1 Manual Code Audit.

Google Lighthouse Report‍
We begin with a thorough assessment using the Google Lighthouse tool, which provides an analysis of your site’s performance and load speeds. This report highlights any issues that may be affecting your site's speed and usability.

Because search engines favor fast and accessible websites, we use this tool to help us pinpoint the issues impacting your site’s SEO performance and domain ranking. For example, it identifies elements such as unoptimized images, render-blocking resources, and inefficient code that can slow down your site. By identifying and addressing these issues, you can significantly improve your site's load times, making it more responsive and user-friendly.

Shopify App Audit
Next, we conduct a detailed Shopify App Audit to evaluate all the apps currently installed on your store. While apps can add valuable functionality, they can also negatively impact your site’s performance if not properly managed.

We identify apps that are causing slow page load times or other performance issues and provide recommendations that can achieve the same functionality with less impact on performance. By optimizing your app usage, we help reduce unnecessary bloat, improve load speeds, and create a smoother shopping experience for your customers.

H1 Manual Code Audit
Our expert development team at H1 performs a manual code audit of your existing website to uncover any underlying issues in your site’s codebase. This includes identifying poorly coded sections, improper multimedia usage, and suboptimal back-end architecture. These elements can significantly impact your site’s speed and overall performance. 

By meticulously reviewing your code, we can help you understand if your website is built to industry standards. This not only enhances site speed but also improves stability, security, and maintainability. Better coding practices lead to a more efficient website, which in turn boosts SEO rankings and provides a better experience for your users.

Overall, the Site Performance & Code Audit helps you understand what needs to be fixed in order for your site to run smoothly, load quickly, and provide an exceptional user experience.

Shopify SEO Audit

Effective SEO is critical for ranking well in search engine results and driving organic traffic to your Shopify store. Our Shopify SEO Audit provides a detailed analysis of your site's SEO health through a Google Search Console Review and an SEO Analysis.

Google Search Console Review
We begin by delving into your Google Search Console data to gain a comprehensive understanding of how Google interacts with your site. This review includes identifying issues with your sitemap, page indexing, and URLs.

By examining these elements, we can find any obstacles preventing Google from properly indexing your pages. For instance, sitemap errors or issues with page indexing can significantly impact your site's visibility in search results. You can achieve higher search rankings by addressing these problems.

SEO Analysis
Using the SEMrush SEO Analyzer, we conduct a thorough examination of your site's current SEO status. This analysis covers all critical aspects of SEO, including meta tags, XML tags, image alt tags, and other key performance drivers.

For example, missing or poorly optimized meta tags can hinder your site's ability to both appear in and attract clicks from search results. Improperly configured XML tags or missing image alt tags can negatively impact your site's SEO performance.

Overall, the Shopify SEO Audit provides you with a list of ways to improve your site's search engine visibility and performance. With this information, you can make your site fully optimized for search engines, helping you attract more organic traffic, improve your search rankings, and ultimately drive higher conversions.

Accessibility Audit

Making your Shopify store accessible to all users is not only the right thing to do but is also a smart business move. It improves user experience, broadens your customer base, and helps avoid legal issues. 

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandates accessibility for all websites. Although the ADA itself does not explicitly outline specific technical standards for web accessibility, the DOJ recommends that businesses use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to assess the web accessibility of your site and digital content. Non-compliance with web accessibility standards is a violation of the ADA. (For more info on web accessibility, read Accessible By Design: Key Principles for Creating User-Friendly Websites.)

In short, if your site does not follow WCAG, then you’re at risk for violating the ADA and therefore vulnerable to potential lawsuits. Our Accessibility Audit helps to identify instances of WCAG non-compliance on your website through two processes: an Accessibility Scan and a Manual Accessibility Audit.

Accessibility Scans
We begin by running your website through several accessibility scanning tools, such as Google Lighthouse and WAVE. These tools identify potential accessibility issues that could hinder user experience for people with disabilities.

Google Lighthouse provides a detailed report on your site's accessibility, highlighting any areas that need improvement. WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool) helps us identify and explain web content accessibility issues. If your site has five or more WAVE errors, it signals a higher risk for ADA non-compliance litigation.

Manual Accessibility Audit
Automated tools are essential, but they can’t catch everything. That’s why we also perform a thorough manual audit to check your site against WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) A and AA checkpoints. This audit includes:

• Media: We review images, videos, and other media for appropriate alt text and captions.
• Markups: We check the underlying HTML and CSS for proper structure and use of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles.
• Design: We examine the visual design to see where there’s insufficient color contrast and other interactive elements that aren’t easily distinguishable.
• Forms: We check all forms for accessibility, clear labels, and instructions.
• Navigation: We test the site’s navigation for intuitiveness and to see that it can be easily used with keyboard-only inputs.

Our Accessibility Audit provides clear advice on how to address and fix any accessibility issues. Failure to meet more than 10 A-level criteria items or more than 5 AA-level criteria items significantly increases your risk of ADA non-compliance litigation.

Contact us here to schedule your audit and take steps to make your Shopify store accessible to everyone.

Common Shopify Store Issues We Address

Over the years working on dozens of Shopify stores, we’ve come across a number of common problems with Shopify stores. That’s why we made our Shopify Website Audit service, to address foundational issues that affect many Shopify stores.

Below, you’ll find a laundry list of common Shopify issues that our Shopify Audit can help uncover. Ultimately, we hope you find solace in knowing you’re not alone and that our Shopify development agency is here to help you implement solutions to these issues.

• High Cart Abandonment Rates – Too many people are selecting your products but not buying.
• Complicated Checkout Process – If your checkout process is lengthy or complicated, customers may abandon their carts out of frustration.
• Low Customer Retention – You aren’t engaging customers to create repeat customers. 
• Outdated Design – Your site is difficult to navigate and not intuitive for purchasing.
• Slow Load Times – Your site takes forever to load, frustrating visitors and causing them to leave.
• No Organic Traffic – You aren’t getting free traffic to your site through SEO and keyword optimization.
• Lacking Technical SEO – Your site structure has no organization, and thus, Google cannot properly index and send traffic to your site.
• Broken Web Elements – Certain parts of your site often break or don’t load properly, but you don’t know how to fix them.
• Confused About Customer Usage – You don’t understand how your customers use your site, what they like and dislike, where they’re getting stuck or abandoning their cart, etc.
• Lacking Visitor Analytics – You have no clue what is working in terms of customer conversion and website traffic, making it difficult to optimize your strategy.

Get Your Shopify Audit Here

Our Shopify Audit will pinpoint what’s hurting your Shopify store. We will detail everything that is impeding customers and search engines from properly engaging with your website. In other words, we tell you exactly what to focus on and fix, so you can make the changes that will:

• Capture and convert website visitors with intuitive user experience
• Fix web performance errors that are hurting your searchability
• Implement an SEO strategy that will generate consistent traffic
• And ensure your site is accessible for all users.

After delivering the comprehensive audit report to you, we’ll schedule a call to review the audit results and discuss any specific, audit-related question you have.

As a Shopify development agency, we spend all day identifying and fixing the aforementioned problems for our clients and thinking about how to make their Shopify stores better. Whether it’s developing interactive stores, optimizing the checkout process, improving SEO, or enhancing a website’s performance speed, H1 has the team and expertise to completely refresh and revitalize your Shopify store. Our relationship doesn’t have to stop after the audit. (Any requested work based on the audit results to an existing site will be quoted separately.)

We don’t want you to be disappointed in your Shopify store anymore. By identifying the underlying issues with your Shopify site, we’ll empower you to fix what’s hurting your bottom-line so your Shopify will drive meaningful business.

If you own or operate a Shopify website and are interested in our comprehensive Shopify Audit, then reach out to us or click below to schedule a meeting that works best with your schedule. 

Schedule Your Shopify Website Audit Here

Disclaimer: H1 takes no responsibility for legal issues or action taken against a client for ADA non-compliance. All accessibility recommendations, advice or remediation work performed by H1 follows WCAG and industry-best practices, but is general in nature and not to be taken as professional legal advice.

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