Module 5: The Conversion Audit
Knowledge without a system decays. This final module gives you the system: a 30-minute audit you can run on any page, a matrix for prioritizing what you find, and the maintenance loop that turns one-time fixes into compounding quarterly gains.
The 30-minute audit
Here's the full protocol — thirty minutes, one page, five checks, twenty points. Check one: the 5-Second Test (Module 1) — show the page to someone cold for five seconds, score 0–3 on the three questions, then 1 bonus point if the CTA is visible without scrolling. Check two: the One-Job check — state the page's job in one sentence (2 points if you can, 0 if you can't), confirm one primary CTA (1 point), confirm secondary links look secondary (1 point). Check three: the proof inventory — proof bar under the hero (1 point), testimonial beside each CTA (1 point), dedicated proof section (1 point), about page with story/credentials/photo (1 point).
Check four: the Friction Audit (Module 3) — count the fields against the targets (1 point), count clicks and loads (1 point), load time on cellular under three seconds (1 point), CTA thumb-reachable with no horizontal scroll (1 point). Check five: the mobile pass — complete the action one-thumbed on a mid-range phone (2 points if smooth, 0 if you hit a snag). Total it out of 20. Under 12 means the page needs real work; 12–16 means targeted fixes; 17+ means you're optimizing at the margins — run A/B tests from here.
Run it on your money pages first — the pages tied directly to revenue, usually the homepage and one or two service pages — then work down by traffic. A score is only useful if it's honest. Don't award the 5-Second Test points because you think visitors "probably get it" — run the actual test with an actual stranger. The scorecard is in the template below; print it or copy it, and keep every audit you run. Scores over time are the story of your site getting better.
The 20-point audit scorecard
Build brief
Run the full 30-minute audit on your homepage right now. Score each of the five checks out of 4. What's your total out of 20, and which check scored lowest?
Saved
Prioritizing: the impact-effort matrix
An audit hands you a list of problems. The impact-effort matrix tells you what order to fix them in. Score every fix twice, 1 to 3: impact — how much will this move conversion if it works (3 = the page's weakest variable, 1 = a marginal gain)? And effort — how hard is it to ship (3 = a rewrite or rebuild, 1 = an afternoon's work)? Then sort: high-impact, low-effort first — the quick wins. High-impact, high-effort second — the projects. Low-impact anything goes to the bottom of the list, no matter how easy.
Here's the 80/20 you'll discover: the above-the-fold rewrite and the form simplification almost always land in the quick-win quadrant, and they almost always out-pull everything else combined. A morning rewriting the hero and an afternoon cutting the form will beat a month of styling tweaks. That's not a guess — it's the hierarchy from Module 4 applied to your audit results. Do the quick wins this week. Schedule the projects. Ignore the rest until the wins are shipped.
And the thing not to do: don't redesign the whole site because the audit found issues. A redesign resets every data point you have — your analytics baselines, your test results, your sense of what works — and replaces known problems with unknown ones. Redesign only when the offer or the audience fundamentally changes. Otherwise, fix the top three issues from the audit, re-score the page, and repeat. Optimization compounds; redesigns restart the clock.
Impact ranking
Which fixes move conversion most
Example for illustration — not real results. The lesson's rule: the hero rewrite and form cleanup almost always out-pull everything else combined.
Build brief
Take your 3 lowest-scoring audit items. Score each on impact (1–3) and effort (1–3). Which is your quick win — high impact, low effort — and when exactly will you ship it (day and time)?
Saved
The maintenance loop
Sites decay. Offers drift, pages accumulate cruft, a "temporary" pop-up becomes permanent. The maintenance loop is four habits that keep a site sharp. One: track conversion rate monthly — same definition every month (Module 0's baseline), written down where you'll see it. A number you don't look at can't warn you. Two: the changelog habit — every change to the site gets a dated one-line entry: "Mar 4 — cut contact form from 9 fields to 4." When the number moves, the changelog tells you why.
Three: quarterly mini-audits — one money page per quarter, 30 minutes, same scorecard. Four pages a year, every page stays honest. Four: one test always running — there's always a next hypothesis from Module 4. Small wins compound: a few percent a quarter, four quarters in a row, turns into a meaningfully better business without a single redesign. Conversion is not a project with an end date. It's a habit with a compounding return.
Zoom out and look at what you've built across six modules: a diagnostic equation, a clarity test, a focus rule, an evidence system, a friction protocol, a testing discipline, and now an audit routine. That's not a bag of tricks — it's a complete practice. Run it on your site, then on a friend's, then on every site you ever touch. The 5-Second Test works on any page on the internet, and now you can't unsee the failures. That's the real graduation: you don't just know conversion — you see it everywhere.
Build brief
Set up your maintenance loop: which day each month will you check your conversion rate? Which page gets the first quarterly audit, and when? Write the actual dates — a loop without dates is a wish.
Saved
Jordan audits his site: homepage scores 9/20 (fails the 5-Second Test, 11-field form, no proof above the fold). He has one free weekend. What's the right plan?
Your turn: Fill in the full 20-point scorecard for your top 3 pages: page name, each check's score out of 4, total, and the top 3 fixes per page ranked by the impact-effort matrix.
Saved.
Your next 24 hours
Start your changelog today — one document, one line per change, dated. Then ship your audit's quick win within 48 hours. The system only works if the first fix actually ships.
Steal this template
THE 30-MINUTE AUDIT SCORECARD
Page: ___ · Date: ___ · Tested on: ___ (phone)
1. 5-Second Test (0–3) + CTA visible (0–1): __/4 ☐
2. One-Job check — job in one sentence (0–2), one primary CTA (0–1), secondary links quiet (0–1): __/4 ☐
3. Proof inventory — bar under hero (0–1), proof by CTAs (0–1), proof section (0–1), about page (0–1): __/4 ☐
4. Friction Audit — fields on target (0–1), clicks/loads sane (0–1), loads fast on cellular (0–1), thumb-friendly (0–1): __/4 ☐
5. Mobile pass — complete the action one-thumbed (0–4): __/4 ☐
TOTAL: __/20 — under 12: real work · 12–16: targeted fixes · 17+: optimize at the margins
Top 3 fixes (impact × effort): 1. ___ 2. ___ 3. ___
Quick win shipping within 48h: ___
Module 5 cheat sheet
- The audit: 5-Second Test, One-Job check, proof inventory, Friction Audit, mobile pass — 20 points.
- Score honestly: run the real test with a real stranger, not your best guess.
- Prioritize with impact × effort: quick wins this week, projects scheduled, the rest waits.
- Above-the-fold rewrite + form cut = the 80/20 of fixes. Do them first.
- Never redesign to fix audit findings — optimize the top 3, re-score, repeat.
- The loop: monthly conversion check, dated changelog, quarterly audit, one test always running.