The problem: traffic, but no conversions
Wren & Root is a Portland-based premium home goods brand selling soy candles, linen textiles, and hand-thrown ceramics via Shopify. Co-founder Maya Chen had spent the past year building a loyal Instagram following of 68,000 — and it showed in the analytics. The store consistently drew 42,000 monthly visitors. But only 1.72% of them bought something.
Maya's instinct was that it was a targeting problem. She tested new ad audiences, shifted budget from awareness to retargeting, and tried three different ad creatives. Nothing moved the needle. The traffic kept coming. The conversions stayed flat.
What the audit found
After running Conviq's four-pillar AI audit, the diagnosis took 24 hours — and it wasn't the ads. Three compounding problems were quietly killing conversions, none of them visible from the ad dashboard.
- Mobile LCP: 4.4 seconds.The hero image was served at full desktop resolution — 820 KB — on mobile devices. Google's threshold for "Good" is 2.5 seconds. An estimated 64% of Wren & Root's traffic was mobile. Every visitor was waiting nearly two seconds longer than they should have been before they could see anything.
- No size guide on the throw blanket PDP. The throw blanket was the store's highest-traffic product. When customers clicked "Find my size," they were routed to a static FAQ page — breaking the purchase flow and adding 3 navigation steps to what should be a 1-click interaction.
- Trust signals buried below the fold.Wren & Root had 1,200 five-star reviews, and press coverage in Real Simple and Apartment Therapy. None of it was visible above the add-to-cart button. The social proof that would have closed hesitant buyers was two full scrolls away from the decision point.
Three fixes, one afternoon
Maya's developer implemented all three priority fixes in a single afternoon using Conviq's step-by-step recommendations. The hero image was re-exported at mobile-appropriate resolution and served via Shopify's CDN with lazy loading — mobile LCP dropped from 4.4 seconds to 1.9 seconds. A size guide modal was added to the throw blanket PDP using a free Shopify app, with measurements pulled directly from the FAQ page. And the trust block — review count, press logos, and a 30-day guarantee badge — was moved directly above the add-to-cart button.
No new apps. No ad spend. No A/B test waiting period. Three targeted changes to the store they already had.
The outcome
Eight weeks after implementation, Maya pulled the numbers. Conversion rate had climbed from 1.72% to 2.12% — a 23% relative improvement. Mobile CVR more than doubled the gain, rising 59%. Average order value ticked up to $76 as the improved product page encouraged more deliberate, confident purchases.
At 42,000 monthly visits and $76 AOV, the math translated to approximately $10,500 in additional monthly revenue — or $126,000 annualized. The Conviq audit cost €49.