Conversion rate optimisation: a 14-point checklist for your online shop

You buy more traffic, but you build a better conversion rate. And it works on every channel at once. This checklist is the framework we at ad.boutique use to review online shops before we talk about budget. It is part of our guide to e-commerce marketing.

In short

The conversion rate rises fastest if you work in this order:

1. Measurement and speed: is purchase tracking correct? Does the shop load quickly on mobile?
2. Checkout: no surprises, no unnecessary fields, the right payment methods.
3. Product page: the benefit is immediately clear, images in use, variants unambiguous.
4. Trust: reviews, shipping, returns, real people behind the shop.

The 14 points below are grouped by these areas. Each point has a check question you can answer in five minutes.

What the conversion rate is

The conversion rate is the share of visits that end in an order.

Conversion rate = orders divided by sessions, multiplied by 100

With 40 orders from 2,000 sessions, it is 2 per cent. The example is purely arithmetical, not a benchmark.

Three things make the number meaningful:

• Separate by device. Mobile almost always converts differently from desktop. An average hides the problem.
• Separate by source. Cold social clicks buy less often than people searching for your brand name.
• Read it together with the basket. A higher rate with a smaller basket is not automatically a win.

The 14 points

Area: speed and measurement

1. Mobile loading time on product pages

Check question: does your most important product page show the main image on a phone within 2.5 seconds at most? That is the guideline for Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), the time until the largest visible element appears. Do not only measure the homepage, but the pages where ads land. Typical brakes: uncompressed images, sliders in the header, too many apps and scripts.

2. Apps, scripts and pop-ups

Check question: which apps and tracking scripts run on every page, and do you need all of them? Every shop app, every chat widget and every pop-up costs loading time or attention. A discount pop-up that covers the product page after two seconds often loses more than it brings.

3. Purchase tracking counts every order once

Check question: do the purchases in analytics, Meta and Google roughly match the orders in the shop back end? Without reliable tracking, you measure every test wrongly. Server-side tracking helps to close gaps caused by browsers and blockers, more on this in the article server-side tracking for online shops.

Area: product page

4. The benefit on the first screen

Check question: does someone understand, without scrolling, why they want the product? The first screen needs the product name, price, an image of it in use and one sentence with the personal benefit. Feature lists come further down.

5. Images and video in use

Check question: does the gallery show the product in use, at size and in detail? Cut-out images alone are rarely enough. A short video or creator material on the product page answers questions that would otherwise lead to drop-offs.

6. Variants, sizes and availability

Check question: is it unambiguous which variant is selected, whether it is in stock and which size fits? Unclear sizes lead to drop-offs or returns. A size chart and a note such as "runs small" help with both.

7. Price, delivery time and total cost

Check question: can you see on the product page what the product costs including shipping and when it will arrive? Delivery time and shipping costs belong next to the buy button, not in the footer.

Area: trust

8. Reviews close to the buy button

Check question: are there genuine reviews, and can you see them before you buy? A star rating under the product title and reviews with text further down. Reviews without text, or all with five stars, tend to look suspicious.

9. Shipping and returns, clear and early

Check question: can you find shipping costs, delivery time and return conditions without searching? One sentence under the buy button is often enough: shipping costs, delivery time, return period.

10. Recognisable people and contact

Check question: do I know who is behind the shop and how to reach them? Legal notice, a way to get in touch, an "about us" page with real people. With unknown brands, this often decides whether someone buys for the first time.

Area: basket and checkout

11. No surprise costs

Check question: is the amount in the last checkout step the same as the customer expected? According to the Baymard Institute, unplanned extra costs have for years been among the most common reasons for abandonment. A free shipping threshold in the basket ("X more for free shipping") can also increase the basket size.

12. Guest checkout and few fields

Check question: can people order without a customer account, and does the checkout only ask for what is needed for delivery and invoicing? Mandatory accounts, duplicate address fields and mandatory phone numbers cost orders. Autofill and address suggestions save typing on a phone.

13. Your customers' payment methods

Check question: does the checkout offer the payment methods your target group expects, and express payments on mobile? In the DACH region, depending on the market, these include pay by invoice, PayPal, credit card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, plus eps in Austria and TWINT in Switzerland. Other markets have their own favourites. Which payment methods are really used is shown by your shop data.

Area: mobile and after the purchase

14. The mobile purchase journey and confirmation

Check question: can you get from the product to the confirmation on a phone with your thumb, without zooming, and do you then immediately get a clear order confirmation? A sticky buy button, large tap targets and fields with the right keyboard all belong to this. The confirmation page and the first email are also the best place for the second purchase: newsletter, matching products, a request for a review.

Order: what to tackle first

Not all points are worth the same. This is how we prioritise:

A pointer from a project outside retail: for the new-build project Noma in Vienna, the biggest conversion lever was not a new visual, but loading time. The page was far too slow on a phone at first. That is not a shop, but the lesson applies just the same: speed beats design.

Testing properly: one variable per test

An A/B test compares two versions of a page that are shown at the same time to randomly split visitors. For the result to mean something:

1. One change per test. New button text or a new gallery, not both.
2. Write down the hypothesis first. "Shipping costs next to the button reduce checkout abandonment."
3. Wait for enough orders. With few orders per week, test big changes rather than shades of colour.
4. Run it for at least one full week. Different weekdays buy differently.
5. Measure revenue per visitor, not just the conversion rate.

If your shop has too few orders for clean tests, work with before-and-after comparisons over periods of the same length and with obvious improvements from the list. Not every change needs a test; you simply fix a broken payment method.

From our projects

For Miina, a three-step booking flow lifted booking conversion by 31 per cent, from 4.65 to 6.09 per cent. Not a shop, but the same lesson: fewer steps and clear questions bring more conversions from the same traffic.

For manadental, a purchase via creator content cost €82, via the product video €215. What the product page and the ad show helps decide how much a purchase costs.

At ad.boutique in Vienna and Zurich, we build and rework shops and product pages ourselves, not just campaigns. More on the page e-commerce and on the page e-commerce marketing agency.

What the checklist cannot do

A checklist finds friction, it does not replace a product that people want. If the price is not right compared with the competition, or the ads bring in the wrong people, even the best checkout helps little. Then the lever lies in the offer and the creatives, not in the shop.