Free Ecommerce Audit UK: A Ranked Fix List From the Checkout to Xero

An ecommerce audit is a written check of a live online store and the systems behind it. We test the checkout, page speed, product data, marketplaces, tracking, and the links to stock, couriers and accounts. Every finding comes with evidence you can open yourself, the likely cost of leaving it, and the effort to fix it. The output is one ranked list, so your team knows what to do on Monday.

Start with data, then walk the store as a buyer. We read analytics, Search Console and a month of orders and returns. Then we place real orders on a phone and a laptop, refund one, and follow each order through stock, the courier label and the accounting entry. Last, we interview the people who run the shop. We write down every gap between what the data says and what staff describe.

Established UK businesses with a store that already takes orders every day: brands, retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers selling direct or to trade. It fits best when you sell on more than one channel, such as your own site plus Amazon.co.uk or eBay, with an accounting or ERP system behind it. If the store is not live yet, a launch plan is a better first step than an audit.

An SEO audit asks whether search engines can find and rank your pages. An ecommerce audit asks whether the business behind those pages makes money on each order: checkout, pricing display, stock accuracy, courier costs, refunds and the books. Search is one section of ours. If search turns out to be your biggest gap, our UK SEO audit goes deeper on crawling, indexing and AI search visibility.

Either is a sensible first check. A crawler such as Screaming Frog and a speed test such as Google PageSpeed Insights will, between them, flag slow pages, missing tags and broken links in minutes, and ChatGPT can explain what those reports mean. Neither can place an order, see that a Klarna refund never reached Xero, or notice that staff retype Amazon orders into Sage every morning. Those gaps need a person who follows the order end to end.

Shopify and Shopify Plus, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce (Magento), BigCommerce and custom storefronts. Behind the store we read Xero, Sage 50, Sage 200 and Sage Intacct, QuickBooks UK, NetSuite, Dynamics 365 Business Central and Odoo, plus Brightpearl, Linnworks and Mintsoft for orders and stock. The method stays the same on every platform. The weak points differ, so the checklist adjusts.

Common causes are apps that each load their own scripts, oversized product images and a theme that renders too much before the first product appears. Google’s Web Vitals guidance says the main content should appear within 2.5 seconds and a tap should get a response within 200 milliseconds, measured at the 75th percentile. We name the scripts and images behind each miss.

A Shopify audit uses the same ten areas, plus checks that only apply on Shopify. We list every installed app and the scripts each one loads, test the theme on a phone, and follow Shopify Payments payouts into Xero or Sage. If you sell to trade buyers or to other countries, we check how prices and stock are set for each group. Each finding names the app, setting or theme file behind it.

Yes. We compare listings, prices and stock across your own store and Amazon.co.uk, eBay UK, OnBuy, ManoMano or the B&Q marketplace, wherever you sell. We look for oversells from slow stock syncs, fees that make one channel lose money once returns are counted, and marketplace sales reaching the books as one lump with no VAT split.

Yes. We map how Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments, Klarna, Clearpay and GoCardless pay out, and whether each payout, fee and refund lands in the books against the right sale. Our test orders include a buy now, pay later refund and a part refund, so we can see whether each one lands against the original sale. We also check which payment options appear on a phone at checkout, because a missing wallet is an easy sale to lose.

Yes. We compare the delivery dates and prices shown on product pages and at checkout with what Royal Mail, DPD, Evri or your 3PL (the outside warehouse that picks and posts your orders) actually deliver. We look at cut-off times, how labels are created, how tracking reaches the customer and what a returned parcel costs, because delivery promises drive both conversion and complaints.

Yes. A trade store adds account pricing, credit terms, minimum order quantities, quotes and invoices on terms. We check whether trade buyers see their own prices, whether orders reach the ERP without retyping, and whether invoices and payments match. Our work for GPSUK on Commerceflo and the Sow Easy WooCommerce and Odoo build both sit in this kind of trade ordering.

Yes. The CMA’s price transparency guidance, published 18 November 2025, describes drip pricing as prices added as a shopper moves through a purchase. The same day the CMA said it can fine companies up to 10% of global turnover. We walk your checkout and list every charge that first appears after the product page, such as a mandatory fee or a delivery charge shown late, so your team and lawyers can decide what to change.

Under GOV.UK rules, shoppers must be told about a right to cancel most online orders up to 14 days after delivery, and the window grows to 12 months when nobody tells them. We screenshot the order-confirmation email and the returns-portal screen from our own test order and mark whether each one states that right, a price with all taxes included and the delivery cost.

Yes. The ICO says the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 lets you set some cookies without consent, including ones that collect statistical information. Its guidance also says that exception does not cover online advertising, such as ad measurement. We list every tag your store fires, sort each into analytics or advertising, and check your banner. Your data protection lead makes the final call.

HMRC’s VAT Notice 700/22 says records moved between software must use digital links, such as an API transfer or a CSV import, and that copy and paste does not count. We look for the places a person types sales, marketplace payouts or refunds from one screen into Xero, Sage or QuickBooks by hand. Your accountant confirms the fix against the notice.

We map how EU orders are priced, taxed and shipped, and where that information sits in your systems, then hand the questions to your accountant, because VAT treatment depends on your set-up. If your store uses an AI chatbot or recommendations for EU shoppers, we list it so your legal team can check it against EU rules, including the EU AI Act. Both calls belong to a qualified adviser, and the report says so.

There is no standard price, because the word audit covers anything from an automated report to weeks of work. The nearest published reference is for SEO audits: Red Eagle Tech, a North London agency, puts one-off SEO audits at £500 to £7.5k, and £5k to £15k+ for sites over 500 pages (updated 9 July 2026, VAT not stated). An ecommerce audit that also covers systems and operations goes further than that. The FactoryJet audit is free: no fee for the scope call, the report or the walkthrough.

Yes. You pay nothing for the scope call, the test orders we agree with you, the written report or the walkthrough with the founder, and you keep the report whatever you decide. We offer it free because a ranked list of real findings from your own store shows how we work better than any sales call. Some stores hand the list to their own team. Others ask us to quote for the fixes.

Three inputs set the timeline: how many systems an order passes through, how fast the read-only logins arrive, and whether trade ordering is in scope. Each extra system adds another hop to trace with test orders. Logins that take a week to arrive add a week. We put the agreed dates in writing with the scope, before work starts.

Read-only access is enough: analytics, Search Console, the store admin as a staff user and a viewer login for the accounting system. We never need write access to audit. You can remove every login the day the report lands. If a test order is needed, we agree it with you first and refund it, so it does not distort your sales or stock figures.

The audit is free, and its scope is agreed in writing before work starts. If you then ask us to fix things, each phase has a fixed price, quoted in writing and signed on its own. Changes are quoted and approved per request. You own the code and the repository from day one, defects are fixed inside the build price for an agreed cover period, and support is optional, quoted per change, with no monthly minimum.

A written report and a walkthrough call with the founder. Each finding has the evidence (a screenshot, an order number or a log line), the likely cost of leaving it, the effort to fix it and who should do it: your team, your current agency, a supplier or us. The list is ranked, so the first five items are the ones worth starting this month.

No. The report is written so your own developers, your current agency or a freelancer can act on it. If you hire us for the fixes, the same people who wrote the report do the work, priced phase by phase, and nothing starts until you sign that phase.

We say so only when the evidence points there, and we show what staying would cost next to what moving would involve: redirects, customer accounts, order history and every integration. We recommend a move only when fixing in place would cost more than moving. When a move is right, our Shopify migration team plans redirects and data first, so rankings and order history survive the switch.