10 Shopify CRO Fixes That Actually Move Revenue

Why Most CRO Advice Doesn't Work

Generic "add trust badges" advice misses the point. Every store has different friction points. But after auditing 90+ Shopify stores, we see the same 10 issues killing revenue in the majority of cases.

Here's what to fix first, ranked by typical revenue impact.

1. Mobile CTA Below the Fold

Impact: High — 70%+ of your traffic is mobile.

If your "Add to Cart" button isn't visible without scrolling on a phone, you're losing sales every hour. Check your product pages on a real phone, not desktop preview.

Fix: Move the primary CTA into the first viewport. Consider a sticky add-to-cart bar on scroll.

2. Missing Trust Signals Near Checkout

Impact: High — Reduces cart abandonment by 15-25%.

Shoppers need reassurance at the moment of commitment. If your checkout area has no trust badges, money-back guarantee, or security indicators — you're asking for blind trust.

Fix: Add payment icons, guarantee badge, and security lock icon directly adjacent to the checkout button.

3. Slow Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Impact: High — Every 100ms delay costs ~1% conversions.

If your product page hero image takes more than 2.5 seconds to load, Google penalizes your ranking AND visitors bounce before they see your product.

Fix: Compress hero images, use WebP format, lazy-load below-fold images, remove render-blocking scripts.

4. No Product Schema Markup

Impact: Medium — Affects both Google and AI search visibility.

Without structured data, search engines can't display your price, ratings, or availability in results. And AI assistants like ChatGPT can't recommend your products.

Fix: Add Product schema with price, availability, reviews, and brand. Test with Google's Rich Results validator.

5. Cart Abandonment UX Friction

Impact: High — 70% of carts are abandoned.

Common killers: surprise shipping costs revealed late, forced account creation, too many form fields, no guest checkout option.

Fix: Show shipping costs early (ideally on product page), enable guest checkout, reduce form fields to the minimum.

6. No Social Proof on Product Pages

Impact: Medium — Reviews increase conversions 12-25%.

Empty review sections are worse than no review section at all. They signal "nobody buys this."

Fix: If you have few reviews, use photo reviews, customer photos, or "X people bought this today" indicators instead. Import reviews from other platforms.

7. Confusing Navigation

Impact: Medium — If they can't find it, they can't buy it.

Mega-menus with 50 links, unclear category names, and no search functionality create decision paralysis.

Fix: Limit top-level nav to 5-7 items. Add smart search with autocomplete. Use clear, customer-language category names.

8. Missing Exit Intent Recovery

Impact: Medium — Recovers 5-10% of leaving visitors.

When someone moves to close the tab, you have one last chance to save the conversion.

Fix: Add an exit-intent popup with a specific offer (10% off, free shipping) that captures email at minimum. Don't show to returning visitors.

9. Weak Product Descriptions

Impact: Medium — Features don't sell. Benefits do.

If your product descriptions just list specs, you're making customers do the mental work of figuring out why they should care.

Fix: Lead with the problem your product solves. Use the format: benefit → feature → proof.

10. No AI-Readiness for LLM Search

Impact: Growing — AI is the new search.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews are answering shopping queries directly. If your store isn't machine-readable, you're invisible to these systems.

Fix: Add comprehensive schema markup, structured product data, clear FAQ sections, and make sure your content answers common questions directly.

What's Next?

This checklist catches the obvious issues. But every store has unique friction that requires a trained eye to spot.

If you want the full picture — your top conversion blockers ranked by revenue impact — that's exactly what our QuickScan delivers in 48 hours.