Your audit report uses technical terms from web performance, UX research, and content analysis. Here's what they all mean in plain language.
Why it matters: Accessibility fixes widen who can use your site at all, and the duty is enforceable: the European Accessibility Act names e-commerce, and US ADA Title III claims are filed over websites every year.
Why it matters: Copy that reads as machine-written invites the reader to discount it. This shows you which passages sound generated, so you can put your own voice back.
Why it matters: AI search assistants now mediate a growing share of high-intent buyer queries — pages without structured data and Q&A formatting are invisible to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini citations.
Why it matters: Inconsistent colour and identity reads as a different company on each page. This shows you exactly where your pages drift apart.
Why it matters: A button labelled "Submit" tells the visitor nothing about what happens next. One that names the outcome ("Get my free audit") does.
Why it matters: A visitor who has to reread a sentence is spending attention on your writing instead of your offer. This shows you which passages cost them that effort.
Why it matters: Every extra option adds to the time a visitor needs to decide, and a page that feels busy makes the same offer harder to accept. [Source: Hick-Hyman law]
Why it matters: Most off-brand colour creep comes from third-party widgets or pages owned by different teams — palette drift is the cheapest brand-consistency issue to fix once you can see it.
Why it matters: Repetitive copy reads as filler and signals thin content to both readers and search ranking models — pages with varied vocabulary outperform on time-on-page.
Why it matters: Eye-tracking studies show under a third of mobile visitors read past the first viewport — a value statement below the fold is read by the minority, no matter how good the copy is. [Source: Buscher et al. 2009 (CHI, peer-reviewed)]
Why it matters: A slow page makes the visitor wait before they can do anything, and speed is a Google ranking signal through Core Web Vitals.
Why it matters: Costs that appear only at checkout make the visitor recalculate a decision they had already made. Visible, comparable pricing keeps the decision in one place.
Why it matters: Pages where each paragraph builds on the last hold visitors twice as long as pages that jump between unrelated ideas.
Why it matters: Pages with tone mismatched to audience (over-enthusiastic B2B, flat consumer copy) read as off-brand and lose engagement on first scroll.
Why it matters: A tangled sentence makes a scanner stop and reparse it. Short, direct sentences keep a cold visitor moving toward the call to action.
Why it matters: Pages failing the SEO basics often miss the first-page click distribution entirely — fixing a missing title or canonical typically recovers traffic within one crawl cycle. [Source: Google Search Central]
Why it matters: A page pitched above its audience makes readers work to follow it. The per-vertical read tells you which fix applies to your kind of site.
Why it matters: A visible risk-reversal line ("30-day money-back guarantee") near the primary call to action answers the objection a hesitant visitor is already having.
Why it matters: Reviews, badges and contact details answer the question a hesitant visitor is already asking before they hand over card details.
Why it matters: A hero that says who you are for and what you sell lets a visitor decide in one screen instead of hunting for it.
Why it matters: A primary call to action placed outside the predicted attention hotspot is one the visitor has to hunt for, even when everything else on the page is identical.
Why it matters: Passive constructions hide who does what. Active voice tells the shopper what the product does for them.
Why it matters: Foundational accessibility problems distort every check that runs after them, so fixing these first is what makes the rest of the report worth reading.
Why it matters: Sites that resolve a design blocker before re-running typically gain 20-35 points on their Conversions audit score.
Why it matters: A page this slow is one most visitors never see finish loading, which is why speed comes before anything cosmetic.
Why it matters: Bold text that only looks like a heading is invisible to screen-readers and to search engines reading your page structure.
Why it matters: Text too close in colour to its background is hard to read for anyone with reduced vision, in bright sunlight, or on a dimmed screen, and failing the contrast rule carries legal exposure in the EU and the US.
Why it matters: The headline pulls the visitor toward one thing and the button offers another, so they have to work out for themselves that the two connect.
Why it matters: Replacing "click here" with descriptive link text typically lifts the linked page's SEO rank for relevant queries by 1-3 positions. [Source: Nielsen Norman 2023]
Why it matters: A feature says what the product is. A benefit says what changes for the visitor, which is the thing they are actually deciding about.
Why it matters: Every site says "world-class". A specific number, name or example is the part a visitor cannot get from your competitor's page.
Why it matters: A visible spelling mistake in product copy is the cheapest available signal that nobody is minding the shop.
Why it matters: Headings are how a screen-reader user skims a page and how search engines read its structure. A skipped level breaks both at once.
Why it matters: Coherent hero-and-subhead pairs read as higher-relevance — visitors expect coherent communicators and discount sites that read as scattered. [Source: Sperber & Wilson relevance theory]
Why it matters: Script execution is time the visitor spends looking at a page that will not answer them yet. On a mid-range phone it is the difference between a page that feels instant and one that feels stuck.
Why it matters: Alt text is what a screen-reader announces and what image search indexes. Without it the picture is invisible to both.
Why it matters: A screen-reader reads alt text out in full, so an overlong description turns one image into a paragraph the listener has to sit through.
Why it matters: Plain-language CTAs and the paragraphs around them outperform jargon-heavy versions across decades of direct-response testing. [Source: Sweller Cognitive Load Theory]
Why it matters: A phone busy running scripts cannot respond to taps. Visitors read that as a page that is broken rather than one that is still loading.
Why it matters: A page with more than 5 seconds of long tasks during load typically fails Google's INP threshold and gets demoted in mobile search results. [Source: Google Core Web Vitals 2024]
Why it matters: A value proposition below the fold is one the visitor sees only if they already decided to scroll. On a phone that is most of the page.
Why it matters: Sector certifications are one of the fastest trust signals you can show — and on regulated pages, their absence can disqualify the site for serious buyers. [Source: Cialdini authority research]
Why it matters: A hero that says who you are for and what you sell lets a visitor decide in one screen instead of hunting for it.
Why it matters: A logo strip above the fold answers "who else trusts these people" before a B2B visitor has to go looking for it.
Why it matters: A page with no named customer on it asks the visitor to take your word for it. Attributed quotes near the primary call to action let someone else make the case.
Why it matters: A checkout that asks for personal details without saying what happens to them gives the visitor a reason to stop, and EU and UK data-protection law requires the notice.
Why it matters: A visitor weighs what they might lose more heavily than what they might gain. A refund or guarantee line near the call to action names the downside and closes it. [Source: Kahneman & Tversky (loss aversion, Nobel)]
Why it matters: A checkout with no recognisable payment or security mark asks the visitor to trust an unfamiliar form with their card.
Why it matters: Visible real-world contact info (phone + address + named email) is one of the top 10 web-credibility drivers — far higher impact than generic trust badges. [Source: Stanford Web Credibility (BJ Fogg, n=4,500)]
Why it matters: Skimmers navigate by subheadings. A wall of text gives them nothing to land on, so they leave rather than hunt. [Source: Nielsen Norman F-pattern research]
Why it matters: A visible return-policy line near the buy button lifts e-commerce cart conversion measurably. [Source: Baymard Institute / Petersen & Kumar 2009]
Why it matters: Real founder/team headshots measurably lift trust ratings vs. anonymous or stock-photo'd pages. [Source: Riegelsberger et al. 2003 (CHI, peer-reviewed)]
Why it matters: Pages that depend entirely on JavaScript can lose visitors on flaky connections and rank worse when crawlers cannot read the content.
Why it matters: A page that says "we" more often than "you" is describing itself rather than the reader's problem.
Why it matters: B2B buyers expect some depth, but a page at grade 16 makes the reader work before they reach the form.
Why it matters: Shoppers skim. Copy pitched above grade 9 slows down the one decision a product page exists to support.
Why it matters: Local customers are choosing someone to call. Copy that reads like a law firm puts distance between you and them.
Why it matters: Readers accept dense prose inside an article and not in the navigation around it, so simplify the wayfinding copy rather than the writing.
Why it matters: A SaaS page written above grade 12 asks a first-time visitor to decode the product before they can judge it.
Why it matters: Duplicate alt text slows screen-reader users down and clutters the spoken version of the page without adding meaning.
Why it matters: Duplicate adjacent links pad the tab order and the screen-reader link list, making the page feel longer to anyone not using a mouse.
Why it matters: Nothing appears on screen until these files finish downloading, so the visitor watches a blank page for the whole of that wait.
Why it matters: Sentences averaging 25 words or more make a shopper reread instead of scan. Under 18 keeps the page moving.
Why it matters: A visible recency signal (year-stamp, recent post, linked changelog) lifts trust ratings measurably for first-time visitors. [Source: Stanford Web Credibility (BJ Fogg)]
Why it matters: Replacing unsubstantiated superlatives with specific evidence (named ranking + year + score) lifts perceived credibility measurably. [Source: Cialdini Influence research]
Why it matters: Replacing anonymous testimonials with fully attributed ones is one of the cheapest single edits with measurable conversion lift. [Source: Cialdini social proof / Cheung 2009]
Why it matters: Four calls to action of equal weight ask the visitor to pick before they have decided to act at all. One primary choice removes that step.
Why it matters: Cutting 100 KB of unused JavaScript on a mobile-first site typically lifts Lighthouse Performance by 5-10 points and shaves 0.3-0.5 s off interactivity. [Source: web.dev 2023]
Why it matters: A link reading "click here" tells the visitor nothing about where it goes, so they either guess or stop. Descriptive wording sets the expectation before the click.
Why it matters: Specific numbers (named brands + counts + years) routinely outperform vague trust claims in A/B tests. [Source: Schindler & Yalch 2006 (J. Advertising Research)]
Why it matters: Under a third of mobile visitors read past the first viewport — value statements buried after setup are read by the minority. [Source: Buscher et al. 2009 (CHI, peer-reviewed)]
Why it matters: When everything on the page competes for attention, nothing directs it, and the visitor is left working out where to look.
Why it matters: Naming the audience and the concrete outcome turns a hero a visitor skims into one they can act on.
Why it matters: Under 100 words leaves the buyer's questions unanswered; over 800 buries the answers. The 200 to 500 range covers benefits and trust without either.
Why it matters: Under 150 words leaves a trial signup unexplained; past 700 the call to action is buried. The 300 to 700 range covers the value without either.
Why it matters: Roughly one in five visitors has a disability that affects how they browse; a higher score means fewer of them hit a wall on your site.
Why it matters: Fixing the highest-weighted checks first is the fastest route to turning more visitors into customers.
Why it matters: A scrambled focus order is one of the most common reasons keyboard users abandon a checkout or sign-up flow.
Why it matters: Without a main landmark, screen-reader users must tab through every menu link before reaching your content, and many give up first.
Why it matters: Critical findings are the ones actively costing you visitors, so each one fixed removes a reason someone left.
Why it matters: Working through the high-impact list typically takes a page from "underperforming" to "at the category benchmark".
Why it matters: A critical band means this part of the site is working against the pages it sits on, so its findings come before any cosmetic work.
Plain-language guides that put these terms in context.
AI tools don't rank your website; they either cite it or ignore it. That single shift is what "LLM SEO" is about, and small brands can win at it without an enterprise budget.
By Emma Pugsley, Co-founder
A product page is no longer only a page for humans to read; it's a data source for machines to extract and quote. The most important page in commerce is also the least legible to AI. If you understand how these systems actually read your pages, you can fix that. This guide walks through it.
By Emma Pugsley, Co-founder
Even minor errors in layout, text, or images can undermine trust and drag down conversion. Here are the 12 most common ones and how to fix each.
By Emma Pugsley, Co-founder
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