A Shopify store review you can run in an afternoon

Most Shopify stores don't need a redesign. They need a handful of fixes that nobody has had time to find. This is the review we run, written so you can run it yourself.

1. Speed on a phone

Open PageSpeed Insights, test your home page and your best-selling product page, and read the mobile result. Look at Largest Contentful Paint: how long until the main image or heading appears. The usual causes of a slow store are oversized images, too many apps loading scripts on every page, and heavy theme sections such as video backgrounds.

Uninstalling an app doesn't always remove its code. Check your theme files for leftover snippets after you remove one.

2. Tracking you can trust

• Place a test order and check it appears once, not twice, in Google Analytics and in Meta Events Manager.
• Check that the order value and currency are correct.
• If you run Meta ads, check that the Conversions API is connected, so purchases are counted even when the browser blocks the pixel.

Double-counted purchases are common. They make ads look better than they are, and the ad platforms then optimize for the wrong thing.

3. Product feed

Open Google Merchant Center and look at the Products page for disapproved or limited items. Missing product identifiers, mismatched prices and missing shipping settings are the usual reasons. Each disapproved product is one that can't show in Google Shopping.

4. Checkout

Buy something on your own phone, as a new customer. Count the steps, note anything confusing, and check that shipping costs appear before the last step. Surprise shipping costs at the end are a common reason people abandon a cart.

5. Search basics

• Every product has a unique title and description, not the manufacturer's copy.
• Collection pages have a short paragraph that says what is in them.
• Product pages include structured data, so Google can show price and availability.
• There are no broken links from old products or collections.

What to fix first

Fix tracking first, because every other decision depends on numbers you can trust. Then fix speed on the product page, then feed errors, then search. Write each problem down with the page it affects, and work through the list in that order.