Mobile UX Audit

Mobile is usually 65–80% of ecommerce traffic and ~50% of revenue. The gap between traffic share and revenue share is the audit's job: find the thumb-reach errors, the slow hero images, the checkout fields that kill the sale.

Quick Reference

Problems this skill solves

1. Conversion rate 40% lower on mobile than desktop with no clear diagnosis.
2. Cart abandonment spiking at the address-entry step — usually a mobile-keyboard/autofill problem.
3. PDP hero image taking 4+ seconds to load because the team uses the same 3000px-wide asset as desktop.
4. Checkout buttons in the top third of the screen requiring an awkward thumb stretch.
5. Apple Pay / Google Pay not enabled on a store where 70% of users are on iOS or Android.
6. Modals and popups that cover the close button on small screens.
7. Tap targets smaller than the thumb pad, producing fat-finger errors on filters and quantity steppers.

Workflow

Step 1 — Measure Core Web Vitals in the field

Pull the last 28 days of real-user metrics from PageSpeed Insights (CrUX), Google Search Console, or your RUM tool (Datadog, New Relic, Sentry, or Shopify's built-in). Record p75 LCP, INP, CLS for mobile. Compare to the Quick Reference table. Lab-test tools (Lighthouse) give consistent scores but do not reflect real users — always lead with field data.

Step 2 — Walk the funnel on a real device

Not an emulator, not Chrome DevTools device mode. Use an actual iPhone and an actual mid-range Android (Pixel 6a or similar — not the latest flagship). Walk: home → category → PDP → add to cart → cart → checkout → payment. Note every friction: slow load, mis-sized tap target, layout shift, confusing state, keyboard-covers-field moment.

Step 3 — Audit thumb reach

The comfortable thumb zone on a 6-inch phone is the bottom two-thirds of the screen. Anything in the top third (headers, close buttons, primary CTAs) requires a reach or a hand shift. Map every primary CTA on the funnel and flag anything above the middle.

Step 4 — Audit form fields

List every field in the checkout. Score each: required or optional, keyboard type (email, tel, numeric), autocomplete attribute, inline validation. Target ≤8 required fields total. Common kill-fields: "confirm password," "phone number for delivery updates," "how did you hear about us."

Step 5 — Audit the payment step

List enabled pay methods. For every market the store serves:

• Apple Pay enabled with domain verification? Required for iOS conversion.
• Google Pay enabled? Required for Android conversion.
• One local method per region (iDEAL in NL, Bancontact in BE, Klarna / Afterpay for installments, SEPA in EU, Pix in BR, UPI in IN).
• Card fields with proper keyboard (numeric, cardtype icons, CVV as numeric).
• 3DS flow is not full-page redirect (use inline 3DS).

Step 6 — Image and asset audit

• Hero images: served as WebP or AVIF, responsive srcset, ≤200KB at mobile breakpoint.
• Below-fold images: lazy-loaded.
• Fonts: WOFF2, subset to used characters, preloaded for critical text.
• No layout shift from image or ad loads (width and height attributes or aspect-ratio boxes).
• Video: don't autoplay. If used, poster image first, lazy-load the <video> element.

Step 7 — Document findings with priority

Produce a ranked list: P0 (blocks checkout), P1 (measurably hurts conversion), P2 (polish). Each item gets the friction described, the screen(s) affected, and a concrete fix.

Example 1 — Shopify store, 62% mobile traffic, 28% mobile conversion rate vs. desktop

Findings from a 2-hour audit:

• P0: Apple Pay not enabled despite 58% of mobile users on iOS. Domain unverified in Apple Pay portal. Estimated impact: +8–12% mobile checkout completion.
• P0: Checkout has 14 fields including optional company name, phone "for delivery," and a captcha that fails 30% of the time on mobile. Impact: +5–8% checkout completion from field reduction.
• P1: Hero image is a 4000px JPEG at 1.2MB. Re-export at 1200px WebP (~120KB). LCP drops from 3.8s to 1.9s.
• P1: Add-to-cart button top-right of PDP on mobile, requiring thumb reach. Move to sticky-bottom.
• P1: Filter modal on category page covers the close-X behind the OS status bar on iPhone. Add 44pt top padding.
• P2: "Suggested for you" section loads below the hero with a 300ms layout shift (CLS 0.18). Reserve space.
• P2: Login prompt appears after 15 seconds on every page. Reduce to once-per-session.

Estimated combined lift: 20–30% on mobile conversion over 4–6 weeks after deployment.

Example 2 — Headless store (Next.js + commerce API), strong desktop, poor mobile INP

The team already optimizes LCP and CLS and has green Core Web Vitals on desktop. Mobile INP is 420ms — users tap and nothing happens for nearly half a second.

• P0: Main-thread blocked by an analytics bundle firing synchronously on every route change. Move to a web worker or defer 2 seconds after route settle. Expected INP drop: 420ms → 180ms.
• P0: The "add to cart" handler calls three tracking scripts synchronously before showing the cart drawer. Fire tracking async, show drawer immediately. Expected: drawer opens in <100ms instead of 600ms.
• P1: Image carousel on PDP uses a heavy library (40KB) that blocks interaction. Swap for CSS-scroll-snap approach, 2KB, same UX.
• P1: Variant selector re-renders the entire PDP on each change. Memoize properly or split into a sibling component.
• P2: Service worker caches stale HTML for 24h, so bug fixes don't reach users fast. Reduce TTL to 1h and add a "fresh version available" toast.

Strong teams still have mobile-INP debt. The fix is usually "less JavaScript on tap," not "smaller hero image."

Common mistakes

1. Auditing only on the latest iPhone. A mid-range Android at 4G is the real median user.
2. Using Lighthouse as the only signal. Lab scores miss cold-start jank and main-thread contention.
3. Treating mobile as "desktop minus width." The thumb pattern, keyboard behavior, and attention span are fundamentally different.
4. Fixing LCP with a CDN and declaring victory. LCP is three factors: server response, render-blocking resources, and hero-asset size. The CDN only touches one.
5. Forcing account creation before checkout. This is a 20%+ conversion hit on cold traffic.
6. Modals with no visible close button on 4-inch screens. Test on a small device; buttons crop out.
7. Infinite-scroll product listing without pagination cues. Users feel lost and leave.
8. Autoplay video on mobile. Eats data, battery, and autoplay policies often block it anyway.
9. Sticky headers that eat 20% of vertical real estate. On a phone, every pixel counts.
10. Not testing with JavaScript disabled. Many mobile users have flaky JS loading; a site that only works with full JS is broken for them.

Resources

• references/output-template.md — Audit report template with P0/P1/P2 structure.
• references/core-web-vitals.md — How to measure and interpret LCP, INP, CLS in the field.
• references/checkout-checklist.md — Mobile checkout audit checklist with field-by-field notes.
• references/thumb-zones.md — Thumb-reach diagrams and interaction patterns.
• assets/mobile-audit-checklist.md — Full pre-publish audit checklist.