A Shopify store audit checklist you can run yourself

Theme and apps

Start here because Shopify names the theme, the installed apps and any third-party code added to the store as the biggest factors in how fast a store runs (Shopify Help Center: Improving your online store performance (opens in a new tab)).

Theme version. In the admin, open Online Store and click the published theme's version number. It either says the theme is up to date or shows that an update is waiting (Shopify Help Center: Updating themes (opens in a new tab)). Only themes from the Shopify Theme Store receive updates there.

Theme source and age. Vintage themes are no longer available in the Theme Store, and Shopify's free vintage themes get nothing beyond security fixes. Shopify also advises against themes from outside the Theme Store, because they are not vetted for quality or compatibility (Shopify Help Center: Theme architecture versions and sources (opens in a new tab)). If the store runs on either, note it: it limits what can be fixed cheaply.

Installed apps. Go through Settings, Apps and ask of each one what it does for sales today. Shopify's advice is to check that each app and piece of third-party code creates enough value to offset what it costs in speed. List any you no longer use; removing one properly means taking its code out of the theme too, not only uninstalling it.

App embeds. In the theme editor, open App embeds and switch off any embed for an app you have stopped using, on a duplicate of the theme first.

Page weight and speed

Shopify measures your store with real visits. The performance summary on the Online Store page ranks loading speed, interactivity and visual stability as Good, Moderate or Poor, from real user data over the past 30 days, and the full reports break it down by page type and by page (Shopify Help Center: Web performance reports (opens in a new tab)). The table shows the thresholds Shopify uses.

Check the product page and collection page reports, not just the home page, because those are the pages people buy from. If a measure is Moderate or Poor, the reports' timeline marks app installs, theme updates and new code, which often points to when it started.

For a closer look at a single page, Shopify points to Google's PageSpeed Insights. Then look for the usual weight on the page itself: oversized images, long pages with many sections, animations and carousels, app widgets, and tags added through a tag manager (Shopify Help Center: Improving your online store performance (opens in a new tab)).

If the store is ranked Poor and the cause is not obvious, that is the work of a Shopify speed and conversion sprint.

Product pages

Open your three best-selling products on a phone and check each one against the same list.

The title says what the product is in plain words. The price, the options and whether it is in stock are clear without scrolling far. Choosing an option changes the photo and the price where it should. The photos load quickly and show the product properly, and each has alt text that describes it.

Shipping costs, delivery times and the returns policy are one tap away from the buy button, not hidden in the footer. The add-to-cart button is easy to reach with a thumb, and adding to cart gives clear feedback.

Sold-out products say so and do what you intend: hide, show as sold out or take back-orders. Products you have stopped selling either redirect to the closest product or are hidden on purpose, which the redirects section below covers.

Mobile checkout

Place a test order. Shopify lets you simulate a sale through its Test payment gateway or Shopify Payments' test mode, and test orders do not show in your payouts or reports (Shopify Help Center: Placing a test order (opens in a new tab)). One caution from the same page: customers cannot place live orders while your payment provider is in test mode, so switch it off as soon as you are done. The alternative is a real order you cancel and refund at once, which may cost a processing fee.

Do it on a phone, from a product page to the order confirmation email. Check the cart, the discount code field, shipping rates for the places you sell to most, taxes, every payment method you offer, and what the confirmation email and the order in your admin say.

Then do it once more as a returning customer, and once with a discount code, since those paths can fail on their own.

Tracking

On Shopify, tracking pixels are managed in the Customer events section of the admin. App pixels come from marketing and analytics apps; custom pixels are added by hand (Shopify Help Center: Pixels and customer events (opens in a new tab)).

List every pixel, and every tracking script still pasted into the theme. The common faults are the same tool installed twice (an app pixel plus old code in the theme, which can count one purchase twice), a pixel for a tool you no longer use, and a purchase event that never fires.

To check, place one real order that you cancel and refund: each analytics or ads tool should show one purchase for it, with the right value. If one shows two or none, that tool's numbers have been wrong for as long as the fault has existed.

Redirects and broken links

Click every link in your main menu and footer on a phone. Then open Content, Menus and View URL redirects to see what is already in place (Shopify Help Center: Creating and managing URL redirects (opens in a new tab)).

Every product, collection or page you deleted or renamed should redirect to the closest live page. Two rules from Shopify's page catch people out: a redirect only works from an address that is actually broken, so if the old page still loads, the redirect does nothing; and a store can hold up to 100,000 redirects (opens in a new tab) unless it is on Plus.

If the store is in Google Search Console, its Page indexing report lists addresses that returned "Not found (404)". Google's guidance is that a 404 is fine for a page removed with no replacement, and that a moved page should get a 301 redirect to its new address (Search Console Help: Page indexing report (opens in a new tab)).

Run the free review instead

Short on time? The free Shopify store review reads the outside of your store, usually in under a minute, with no login, no app to install and no email.

Questions about auditing a Shopify store