Conversion audit

Your website is booking meetings, yet conversion stalls below two per cent. I have lived that frustration for clients and my own programmes. The culprit was never traffic volume or ad spend. It was unseen friction hidden in plain sight.

This chapter shows how to surface that friction through a structured conversion audit. You will walk the customer journey step by step, pinpoint drop-offs in analytics, slice data by segment, and collect ten quick wins ready for next sprint. The audit earns test budget and confidence before a single A/B variant is coded.

Follow each section in order. By the end you will know exactly where meetings leak and have a prioritised fix list for rapid uplift.

Start with a customer journey walkthrough. Open an incognito browser, visit your ad or organic entry page, and attempt to book a demo. Narrate every hesitation aloud and record the screen. This live commentary exposes confusing labels, slow loaders, and dead-end links that analytics alone cannot show.

Repeat on mobile using a 4G connection. B2B buyers research between calls, and mobile friction often hides behind desktop comfort. Note each extra tap or pinch-zoom required. Any step that forces zoom signals poor responsiveness.

Capture the full path in a flow diagram. Mark moments of delight in green and friction in red. This visual becomes a quick reference during stakeholder discussions when opinions diverge.

Archive the recording and diagram in your optimisation folder. They form the baseline against which all future changes will be measured.

The walkthrough reveals symptoms; analytics now quantifies them. That data deep dive comes next.

Open your analytics dashboard and build a funnel from first landing-page view to booked meeting. Focus on absolute drop numbers, not just percentages. A five-per-cent dip from ten thousand visitors hurts more than a twenty-per-cent dip from one hundred.

Pay special attention to micro-conversions. Scroll depth on long-form pages, click-to-form ratios on pricing, and error messages on submission. High exits after scroll fifty per cent hint at weak section headers. Low click-to-form ratios often mean unclear value propositions.

Export the funnel to a spreadsheet. Add a column for potential causes based on the walkthrough notes. Matching qualitative friction to quantitative loss turns guesswork into targeted hypotheses.

Flag any step with over fifteen-per-cent relative drop or more than two hundred absolute exits. These become high-priority investigation points.

Numbers alone lack context. Segments supply that context, which we address next.

Segment the funnel by traffic source, device, and company size. Patterns pop quickly. For one consultancy client, paid search visitors converted half as well as organic, yet opened twice as many pricing pages. The insight pointed to mismatched ad promises, not product interest.

Use a pivot table to compare segment drop-offs side by side. Highlight rows where a segment underperforms the site average by twenty-per-cent or more. Those gaps often require message alignment rather than layout tweaks.

Overlay qualitative data. Heatmaps show where enterprise users hover on integration sections, while start-ups skip straight to cost. Personalise future landing variants accordingly.

Document each segment insight in a living research log. Include a quick hypothesis such as “Add enterprise logos above the fold for ABM traffic”. This log feeds the quick win backlog.

With segments mapped, you can now shortlist immediate fixes that need no code split test, detailed in the next section.

Create a top-ten quick-win list. Each item must take under sixty minutes to implement and have clear impact logic. Examples include compressing hero images to cut load time, rewriting form headers to state benefit, and adding social proof near price.

Score each win on impact, ease, and confidence from one to five. Multiply scores for a total and sort descending. Pick the top three for this sprint. Leave lower scores for later or combine them into future experiments.

Implement changes one at a time and monitor the specific funnel step for forty-eight hours. Rapid feedback confirms effect without waiting for a full multivariate test.

Add a note in your research log: change, timestamp, metric shift. Transparent records prevent forgotten wins and repeated mistakes.

The quick wins conclude the audit. A brief recap cements what you learnt and primes you for qualitative research.

A structured conversion audit walks the journey, quantifies loss, exposes segment quirks, and produces an actionable quick-win list. The process replaces hunches with evidence and secures stakeholder buy-in for the tests that follow.

Complete the audit in one focused day. Ship the top fixes, then move to qualitative research armed with clarity on where and why visitors struggle. Tiny, consistent lifts now compound into major gains across every sprint.