The 30-Minute Audit

People ask me to take a quick look at their business all the time.

I've done it enough now that I have a simple process to identify quick wins. It takes about 30 minutes and I almost always find something they couldn't see because they're too close to it.

Here's what I look at and in what order.

Start with the creative, not the data

Most people want to open the platforms first. I don't. I go to the website, the social pages, and whatever ads are running. I want to see what someone net new to the brand sees.

If I had no idea who this brand was and I saw this ad, would I understand what they sell and why I should care?

The answer is almost always no. The creative is talking to the internal team, not the customer. Product names that mean nothing to someone who's never heard of you. Features nobody asked about. Taglines that sound good in a brand meeting but don't actually say anything.

Look at where the traffic is going

A lot of brands send cold traffic to the wrong page. Bundles when the person has never bought from you. Product pages with no education. Collection pages with 40 SKUs and no guidance.

Cold traffic should land on your simplest, most clear offer. Usually that's your hero product with a clear reason to buy it right now. If someone has never heard of you and you're asking them to pick between a dozen options or commit to a high-dollar bundle, you've already lost them.

The landing page should match the promise of the ad. If the ad says "the most comfortable belt you'll ever own," the page better lead with that story, not a grid of every product you sell.

Check the product page

This is where most of the money gets left on the table.

Does the page answer "who is this for?" Who actually needs this and what problem does it solve for them? The best product pages scratch a pain point before they sell a solution.

Is the pricing doing its job? Most brands back into a price from a margin spreadsheet and never think about it again. But pricing is a positioning decision, not just a math problem. Does your price sit at a number that feels intentional, or does it feel random? If you're not big enough to have a pricing team, at least test whether moving up to the next round number changes perception without killing conversion. Sometimes a higher price actually converts better because it signals that the product is worth more.

Is the page trying to do too much? Long pages aren't the problem. Unfocused pages are. If there are six different messages competing for attention, nothing lands. The best pages have one core story supported by proof.

Is there a reason to buy now?

This is the one most brands miss and it deserves its own section.

The page might be fine. The product might be great. But there's nothing that makes someone pull the trigger today instead of closing the tab. A strong guarantee, a first-order discount, a clear free shipping threshold. In addition to that, every new customer is asking the same question: "What happens if I don't like it?" If you don't answer that, they leave and forget about you.

Pull up the site on phone

This takes 60 seconds and tells you a lot. Most people build and review their site on a laptop over fast wifi. Their customers are on a phone over a weaker connection.

Load the homepage. Load a product page. Try to add something to cart. Try to check out. If anything feels slow, clunky, or confusing, that's what your customer experiences every single time. Most DTC traffic is mobile. If the mobile experience isn't tight, nothing upstream matters as much as you think it does.

Check what happens when someone leaves

This is money that's already almost yours.

If someone visits your site and doesn't buy, and most won't, what happens next? Do they just disappear? Is there a pop-up or embedded offer to grab an email? Is it good enough that someone would actually hand over their address? A lot of brands either have nothing here or they're running a generic "Sign up for our newsletter" that nobody cares about. A good offer is specific. A dollar amount, a percentage, early access to something. If you're spending money to get people to the site and then letting them leave with no way to follow up, you're paying for that traffic twice.

Then there's abandon cart. Someone added your product to their cart, got distracted, and left. That person was close. The email they get next matters. How fast does it go out? Does it just say "you forgot something" or does it actually give them a reason to come back? Most brands have this set up but never look at it again after the first time. It takes an afternoon to fix and it's one of the best-returning things in the entire business.

Last, I look at the numbers

By the time I open analytics, I already have a hypothesis. The data either confirms it or tells me I'm wrong.

For getting customers in the door, I'm looking at three numbers. Cost to get someone to the site. What percentage of those people add to cart. What percentage of those people buy.

If it costs too much to get someone to the site, it's usually a creative or targeting problem. If people are getting there but not adding to cart, it's a product page problem. If they're adding to cart but not buying, it's a pricing, offer, or checkout problem.

For keeping them, I want to know if people are coming back. If the business is spending to acquire customers and nobody buys a second time, that's not a marketing problem. That's a product roadmap or experience problem. And no amount of ad spend fixes it.

Most people jump straight to "my ads aren't working" when the real problem is two steps later. The ad did its job. It got someone there. Something else didn't close.

Every time I do one of these, it comes back to the same thing. The person running the business knows too much about their own brand. They fill in blanks that someone new to brand can't. They skip past the confusion because they already know the answer.

The best audit you can do for your own business is to pretend you've never heard of it.

Pull up your site on your phone. Read your own ads. Try to buy something. If at any point you have to already know something about your brand for the experience to make sense, that's a problem.