Ecommerce Website Audit

An ecommerce website audit that ends in a fix list.

We review your online store the way the engineers who would fix it would — speed, checkout, tracking, technical SEO, security, and the code and apps underneath — and hand you a prioritised list of what is costing you sales and what each fix will take. Shopify, WooCommerce, Medusa, or custom.

Why audit your store

Stores lose money quietly

Nothing breaks loudly on an ecommerce site. A theme update adds a second of load time, an app injects a script on every page, a tracking tag stops firing at checkout — and revenue drifts down without anyone being able to say why.

Speed is revenue

Slow product and category pages cost conversions and rankings at the same time. Core Web Vitals are measured on shoppers' phones, not on your office laptop.

Checkout leaks are invisible

A failing payment method, a surprise shipping cost, or a broken mobile field shows up as abandoned carts, not as an error anyone sees.

Apps and plugins pile up

Every app solved a problem once. Together they slow the store down, conflict with each other, and widen the security surface.

Wrong numbers, wrong decisions

If analytics double-counts orders or loses them at checkout, every marketing and merchandising decision downstream is made on bad data.

How we audit

An audit by engineers, not a tool export

We read the code, not just the page

Automated scanners report symptoms. We open the theme, the plugins, and the integrations to find the cause, because the cause decides what a fix costs.

Ranked by revenue impact

Every finding is ranked by how much it is likely to cost you and how much effort it takes to fix, so the first week of work goes where it matters.

Real shopper data first

We start from field data — Search Console, the Chrome UX Report, your analytics — before lab tests, so we fix what customers actually experience.

Platform-aware

A Shopify store, a WooCommerce site, and a headless Medusa build fail in different ways. We audit against what your platform can and cannot change.

Fixes, with estimates

Each issue comes with a recommended fix and a rough effort estimate — not a red cross and a link to someone else's documentation.

No obligation to hire us

The report is written so your own developers, or another agency, can act on it. If you want us to do the work, we quote it separately.

What we check

The ecommerce website audit checklist

Nine areas, each reviewed by hand. How deep we go in each depends on the store — a 40-product catalogue and a 40,000-SKU one need different attention — but none of them gets skipped.

01

Performance & Core Web Vitals

How fast the store feels to real shoppers on real phones, and what is slowing it down.

  • LCP, INP, and CLS from field data
  • Page weight on home, category, product, and cart
  • Image formats, sizing, and lazy loading
  • Third-party scripts and app bloat
  • Caching, CDN, and server response time
  • Render-blocking CSS, fonts, and JavaScript
02

Technical SEO & indexability

Whether search engines can crawl, understand, and index the pages you want to rank — and skip the ones you don't.

  • Crawl errors, broken links, and redirect chains
  • Faceted navigation and filter URL bloat
  • Canonicals and duplicate product content
  • XML sitemaps and robots.txt
  • Product, Offer, and Breadcrumb structured data
  • Search Console indexing and coverage issues
03

Product & category pages

The pages that do the selling, checked for what makes a shopper add to cart or leave.

  • Titles, descriptions, and unique product copy
  • Image quality, zoom, and alt text
  • Price, stock, and delivery information above the fold
  • Variant selection and out-of-stock handling
  • Reviews and trust signals
  • Links between related products and categories
04

Search, navigation & merchandising

How quickly a shopper who knows what they want can find it.

  • Menu structure and category depth
  • On-site search relevance and zero-result queries
  • Filters and sorting on mobile
  • Breadcrumbs
  • Collection and category merchandising
  • 404 and empty-state pages
05

Cart & checkout

The path from basket to payment, tested end to end with real orders on desktop and mobile.

  • Number of steps and required fields
  • Guest checkout and forced account creation
  • Shipping costs and delivery dates shown early
  • Payment methods, wallets, and failure handling
  • Discount codes and promotions
  • Form validation and mobile keyboards
06

Analytics & tracking

Whether the numbers you make decisions on are actually right.

  • GA4 ecommerce events from product view to purchase
  • Duplicate or missing purchase events
  • Ad platform pixels and conversion APIs
  • Consent mode and cookie banner behaviour
  • Attribution through payment and checkout domains
  • Funnel drop-off by step and device
07

Security & compliance

The basics that protect customer data and your ability to take payments.

  • SSL/TLS and HTTP security headers
  • Outdated core, themes, plugins, and dependencies
  • Admin accounts, roles, and two-factor authentication
  • Exposed endpoints, files, and debug output
  • PCI DSS scope of your payment setup
  • GDPR and CCPA consent and data handling
08

Accessibility

Whether people using keyboards, screen readers, or zoom can actually buy from you.

  • WCAG 2.2 AA contrast and text sizing
  • Keyboard access through menus, filters, and checkout
  • Screen reader labels on forms and buttons
  • Focus states and modal behaviour
  • Alt text and meaningful link text
  • European Accessibility Act exposure for EU sales
09

Platform, code & integrations

What the store is built on, and whether it will hold up through the next two years of growth.

  • Theme or storefront code quality
  • Installed apps and plugins: used, overlapping, abandoned
  • Platform version and upgrade path
  • ERP, inventory, shipping, and email integrations
  • Backups, staging, and deployment process
  • Hosting, uptime, and headroom for peak traffic

Honest fit

When an audit is worth paying for

An audit is a good use of money when something is wrong and nobody can say exactly what, or when a big decision is coming. It is a poor use of money when the problem is already obvious.

An audit makes sense when

  • Conversion rate or revenue has dropped and the cause is not obvious
  • The store has slowed down as apps, plugins, or features were added
  • Organic traffic fell after a redesign, migration, or theme change
  • You are planning a replatform or redesign and want to know what to keep
  • You have inherited a store from another agency or developer
  • You are about to scale ad spend and want the funnel tracked correctly first
  • You are buying or investing in an ecommerce business and need technical due diligence

You probably do not need one when

  • The store is new and has too little traffic to measure behaviour
  • You already know the fix and just need someone to build it
  • The real problem is product, pricing, or traffic volume rather than the site
  • You want a ranking guarantee or a link-building campaign — we are engineers, not an SEO agency
  • Nobody will have the time or budget to act on the findings for months

Tooling

What the audit is built on

Tools find symptoms quickly; the judgement is in reading them against your code and your numbers. These are the sources a typical audit draws on. Access is read-only, and you can revoke it the day we finish.

Field data
Google Search ConsoleChrome UX ReportGA4Platform analytics
Lab testing
PageSpeed InsightsLighthouseWebPageTestChrome DevTools
Crawl
Full-site crawlXML sitemapsrobots.txtStructured data validation
Experience
Real-device testingTest orders through checkoutSession recordings, if availableHeuristic UX review
Code
Theme or storefront repositoryApps and pluginsIntegrationsHosting configuration
Security & a11y
Security headersDependency auditaxe and WAVEKeyboard and screen reader checks

What we audit

Any platform, any stage

Platforms

ShopifyShopify PlusWooCommerceMedusa.jsHeadless storefrontsNext.js commerceCustom-built stores

Audit types

Full ecommerce website auditPerformance and Core Web Vitals auditCheckout and conversion auditTechnical SEO auditAnalytics and tracking auditSecurity auditAccessibility audit

Moments

Pre-migration auditPost-launch auditInherited codebase reviewTechnical due diligencePeak-season readiness

Deliverables

What you get at the end

Not a 90-page PDF of scanner output. A document someone can start working from the following Monday.

A written audit report

Every finding explained in plain language — what is wrong, where, why it matters, and the evidence — with URLs and screenshots rather than scores out of 100.

A prioritised fix list

Each issue ranked by likely impact and effort, grouped into quick wins, planned work, and bigger decisions, in a spreadsheet your team can turn into tickets.

A walkthrough call

We go through the findings with you and whoever will do the work, answer questions, and agree what to tackle first.

Optional implementation

If you want us to make the fixes, we quote them separately against the list. If you have your own developers, the report is written for them.

Process

How an ecommerce audit runs

Five stages. Most of the time goes into the third, which is the part an automated tool cannot do.

01

Scope

A short call about your platform, your goals, and what prompted the audit. We agree which areas to go deep on, and the price, before starting.

02

Access

Read-only access to analytics, Search Console, the store admin, and the code or theme. Nothing on the live store is changed.

03

Review

Field data first, then a hands-on pass through every area on the checklist — including test orders through checkout on real devices.

04

Report

Findings written up with evidence, then ranked by impact and effort into a fix list.

05

Walkthrough

We take you through it, answer questions, and help plan the first round of fixes — with us or without us.

Request an audit

Tell us about your store

Two minutes of answers is enough for us to scope it. You do not need to give us access to anything yet.

  1. 01We take a first look at the store from the outside.
  2. 02We reply with a few questions, a proposed scope, and a fixed price.
  3. 03You decide. Nothing starts, and nothing is owed, until you say yes.

About the store

What prompted the audit? (choose all that apply)

Your details

No obligation. We reply with a scope and a fixed price before any work starts.

FAQ

Questions we get asked

What is an ecommerce website audit?

A structured review of an online store to find what is costing it sales: slow pages, checkout friction, broken tracking, indexing problems, security gaps, and issues in the code or apps underneath. A useful audit ends in a prioritised list of fixes, not just a list of problems.

What does an ecommerce website audit include?

Ours covers nine areas: performance and Core Web Vitals, technical SEO and indexability, product and category pages, search and navigation, cart and checkout, analytics and tracking, security and compliance, accessibility, and the platform, code, and integrations underneath. You can also commission a narrower audit of just one or two of them.

How is this different from running an online audit tool?

Tools like Lighthouse or a site crawler are part of the process, and they are good at spotting symptoms. They cannot tell you that a slow product page is caused by a reviews app loading on every route, that purchases are double-counted because two tags fire, or that one payment method silently fails on a particular mobile browser. That is the part that takes an engineer, and it is the part that decides what a fix will cost.

How long does an ecommerce audit take?

It depends on the size of the store and how many areas are in scope. A focused audit of one area is quicker than a full review of a large catalogue with several integrations. We give you a timeline with the price when we scope it, and the clock starts once we have access.

How much does an ecommerce website audit cost?

It is priced per store, based on the platform, the size of the catalogue, and which areas you want covered. We agree the price before starting, so there are no hourly surprises. If you want us to implement the fixes afterwards, that is quoted separately against the findings.

How often should you audit an ecommerce website?

A full audit once a year is reasonable for most stores, plus a lighter check after any major change — a redesign, a theme update, a migration, or a batch of new apps — and before peak season. Between audits, watch Core Web Vitals and Search Console indexing monthly, since those tend to drift first.

Can you audit a Shopify store?

Yes. On Shopify, most problems come from the theme and the apps rather than the platform: duplicated scripts, apps that load on every page, duplicate collection URLs, and checkout changes that depend on your plan. We audit against what Shopify actually lets you change, so every recommendation is one you can act on.

Can you audit a WooCommerce site?

Yes. WooCommerce audits usually turn up overlapping plugins, uncached cart and checkout requests, a database bloated by years of orders and transients, and hosting sized for a smaller store. Because it runs on WordPress, we also check core, theme, and plugin versions against known vulnerabilities.

Can you audit a headless or custom-built store?

Yes, and this is where an engineering-led audit is most useful. On a headless build — for example Medusa.js with a Next.js storefront — we look at rendering strategy, caching, API latency, and how the storefront and backend handle errors, as well as everything a shopper sees.

Is this an SEO audit?

Partly. We cover technical SEO thoroughly — crawlability, indexing, faceted navigation, canonicals, structured data, and Core Web Vitals — because those are engineering problems. We do not do keyword strategy, content marketing, or link building. If the audit shows that is where the gap is, we will say so.

What access do you need?

Read-only access to Google Analytics, Search Console, and your store admin, plus the theme or code repository if there is one. We do not change anything on the live store during an audit, and you can revoke access the moment we finish.

Will you fix the issues you find?

If you want us to. Some clients hand the fix list to their own team, some to their existing agency, and some ask us to do it. The report is written so any competent developer can work from it.

Should we audit before migrating platforms?

Yes. A pre-migration audit tells you which URLs carry your rankings and need redirects, which apps or custom features have to be rebuilt, and which existing problems are worth fixing during the move rather than carrying across. That is far cheaper than finding out after launch.

Do you audit stores in the US, UK, Europe, and Australia?

Yes. Audits are done remotely, so where the store is based changes little — except that we check the things that differ by market, such as VAT display, local payment methods, GDPR and CCPA consent, and the European Accessibility Act for stores selling into the EU. We are registered in Sri Lanka and work with clients remotely.

Where to go next

Read further, or see what we build

All services →

Work with us

Have something you want built?

Small enough to care about the details. Experienced enough to build the difficult parts. Tell us about the problem and we'll come back with a technical direction, scope, and timeline.

You work directly with the people building your product.