The store audit an operator would actually run.
Paste your store URL. In under a minute you get a scored teardown across six pillars: technical foundation, search visibility, AI search visibility, conversion, speed, and trust. Then a prioritized fix list, written like I am sitting next to you, not a generic checklist.
Paste a store URL and the audit fetches the public pages, runs about 35 checks, and grades each one pass, partial, or fail. Checks roll up into six pillars, the pillars combine into one weighted score out of 100, and the fix list is ordered by what a failed check actually costs. Nothing is written to the store: it reads what a crawler or a first-time shopper would see. Most checks go past whether something exists to grade how well it is implemented, because on a real storefront the answer to "do you have reviews" is almost always yes, and the answer to "can Google read them" often is not. Two of the pillars are written up in full: how to audit a Shopify product page covers the conversion checks, and store speed and conversion covers the speed ones.
- Scoring: each check scores 1 for a pass, 0.25 for a partial, 0 for a fail, multiplied by its weight. Most checks weigh 1; the ones that move real money, such as Product schema, reviews, and email capture, weigh 2 or 3.
- Pillar score = weighted points earned divided by weighted points available, x 100. The pillars are then combined on a weighted average, not a flat one: conversion counts most, then AI search visibility, then performance, then search visibility, then technical foundation, then trust.
- The six pillars: technical foundation, search visibility, AI search visibility, conversion and merchandising, performance, trust and credibility.
- Performance is measured by Google PageSpeed on a throttled mobile connection, which is why that pillar lands up to a minute after the rest and why your score is marked provisional until it does. It is graded against what DTC storefronts achieve in practice, instead of a lab ideal almost no store meets.
- Bands: 80 and up means the fundamentals are working, 62 to 79 is solid with real gaps, 45 to 61 is leaking on several fronts, 28 to 44 is leaving a lot on the table, under 28 means the basics come before more traffic.
- If the store renders entirely in the browser, the audit says so instead of scoring it. A number built on a page the crawler could not read would be measuring the fetch, not the store.
- Common mistake: chasing the overall number. An 85 with a 40 on AI search visibility is one weak pillar carried by five strong ones, and the pillar is where the work is.
The scan read your page. It cannot read your situation, your margins, or what you have already tried. One line is enough.
A scan cannot see your traffic or your basket. Give it those two and it will size what a point of conversion is actually worth on your numbers.
This scan reads one page. A real engagement looks at your analytics, your margins, and your roadmap. If the findings hit a nerve, let's talk about what's actually capping growth.
Start a conversation →An optional deeper look is The Read: two weeks, fixed fee from $5,000, across your analytics, margins and roadmap, credited back if you sign a tier within 30 days.
What a store audit actually measures
Most "free website graders" check a dozen technical boxes and hand you a number. That number is useless on its own, because a store does not fail for one reason. It leaks in several places at once. Traffic arrives, and somewhere between the click and the checkout it drains away through a slow first paint, a missing review widget, no email capture, or a page that AI engines cannot read. This audit looks at all of those at once and tells you which leak is costing you the most.
It scores six pillars. Technical foundation is whether the basics are in place: title, meta description, one clean H1, a mobile viewport, a canonical tag. Search visibility is whether Google can find, crawl, and understand you: robots.txt, an XML sitemap, indexability, Open Graph tags, image alt text, enough real content to rank. AI search visibility is the newest and most under-built: structured data, FAQ and Product schema, and an llms.txt file, the signals that get a brand cited inside ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. Conversion and merchandising is the commercial layer: social proof, shipping and returns messaging, email capture, a clear call to action, honest urgency. Performance uses real mobile data from Google PageSpeed, because on a phone every second of load time costs orders. Trust is what makes a first-time buyer believe you: HTTPS, guarantees, a reachable contact path, a real social presence.
Shopify audit checklist
The audit runs about 35 checks on the URL you paste, grouped into six pillars. Of those, six come from Google PageSpeed and Lighthouse on mobile, and the rest are read from the page itself. When the audit can reach a product page, it runs four more there: product structured data, reviews, the add-to-cart button and image alt text.
Technical foundation: page title, meta description, H1 heading, mobile viewport, language attribute, canonical URL, favicon, and Lighthouse accessibility.
Search visibility: indexability, robots.txt, XML sitemap, Open Graph tags for social previews, title relevance, heading structure, image alt text, content depth, and the Lighthouse SEO score.
AI search visibility: server-rendered content, Schema.org structured data, FAQ schema, Product schema, and an llms.txt file.
Conversion and merchandising: social proof and reviews, shipping and returns messaging, email or SMS capture, a clear primary call to action, and urgency or scarcity cues.
Performance: the mobile performance score, Largest Contentful Paint, and layout stability (CLS).
Trust: HTTPS, guarantees and trust signals, a visible contact or support path, policy pages, social profile links, and Lighthouse best practices.
Shopify generates a robots.txt and an XML sitemap for every store and serves it over HTTPS, so those checks usually pass on Shopify. The rest depend on the theme and apps you run: titles, alt text, schema, and how much of the page is rendered on the server.
What the Shopify SEO audit checks
The SEO side of the audit is two pillars. Search visibility checks that Google can find, crawl and understand the page. The page has to be indexable, with a robots.txt and a sitemap in place. The title should say what the store sells, not only its name, and the page should be broken into H2 sections, with alt text on images and enough real copy to rank.
AI search visibility checks that an AI engine can read and cite the page. The content has to be in the server HTML rather than appearing only after JavaScript runs. It also looks for Product and FAQ schema and for an llms.txt file.
How the recommendations are written
The checks produce raw signals, and the recommendations are the useful part. This audit ranks findings by leverage, biggest revenue or visibility impact first, and writes them in the voice of someone who has run stores at scale instead of a tool reciting best practice. Order matters as much as the list: fixing your AI schema before you have a single review widget is rearranging furniture in a house with a leaking roof. The plan tells you what to do first and why.
What one URL can and cannot see
A single-page scan sees everything in the HTML your browser already downloads, plus real performance data and your robots, sitemap, and llms files. What it cannot see is your analytics, your real conversion rate, your margins, or what happens inside checkout. Treat this as a fast first read that tells you where to point a deeper look. When you want that deeper look, the tools below go further on the numbers, and you can always start a conversation.
If you are at an earlier stage and want to know which growth wall you are about to hit, run the DTC Growth Scorecard. When this audit flags a conversion gap, the Conversion vs Margin calculator puts a dollar figure on it. The full set of free DTC and Shopify app calculators is here.
Shopify store audit FAQ
What is the best free Shopify store audit tool?
The best free Shopify store audit tool depends on what you need checked. Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse are free and good, but they measure speed and technical health only. Audit apps in the Shopify App Store need an install and admin access. A manual review by an agency or consultant goes deepest, but it usually takes days. This tool covers the ground between them. Paste a URL, with no install or login, and in 20 to 40 seconds it runs about 35 checks across six pillars: technical foundation, search visibility, AI search visibility, conversion, speed and trust. Speed uses real mobile data from Google PageSpeed, and the fixes come ranked by impact. The overall score needs no signup, and your email gets you the full report.
Who can do a conversion rate audit of my Shopify store?
For conversion work past the storefront, Taylor Sicard, who built this tool, offers The Read, from $5,000: an optional two-week, fixed-fee look across your analytics, margins and roadmap, credited back if you sign a tier within 30 days. This scan reads the public page only, so it cannot see your analytics or checkout. Run it first for a fast read of the storefront.
What is a Shopify store audit?
A store audit is a structured review of everything between your traffic and your revenue: the technical foundation, how findable you are in search and AI engines, how well the page converts, how fast it loads, and whether it earns trust. This tool runs roughly 35 checks from a single URL and scores each area, then ranks the fixes by leverage so you know what to do first.
How can an audit work from just a URL?
A surprising amount is visible in the page a browser already downloads: the title and meta tags, headings, structured data, schema, Open Graph tags, review and trust signals, email capture, calls to action, and the platform itself. The tool reads all of that, pulls real mobile performance data from Google PageSpeed, checks for robots.txt, sitemap and llms.txt, then has an AI layer prioritize the findings in plain language. It cannot see your analytics or checkout, so it is a fast first read, not a replacement for a full engagement.
Does it only work on Shopify stores?
No. It detects the platform automatically and tailors the conversion and merchandising checks for stores. Any public website can be scanned, but the conversion lens is built for DTC commerce, which is where the audit is most useful.
Is the audit really free?
Yes, free. You see your overall score with no signup. Your email gets you the findings, the full prioritized report and the emailed copy. It also adds you to the Commerce Dispatch, about one email a week, which is the trade that keeps the audit free. In the EU and UK that's an optional box instead, and one click unsubscribes either way.
Who built this and why should I trust the recommendations?
Taylor Sicard, an early Shopify employee who helped build and scale the Partner Program, founded and sold a SaaS company to Tiny, and has built portfolios of consumer brands to mid nine figures in annual revenue. The recommendations are written from operating experience, not generic best-practice checklists.