Be the conversion hero
Vienna was my first talk where performance stopped being the main topic and became one pillar among five. It is also where I first used the “Wow!” versus “Whuuuut?” opening, which stayed in every audit talk after it.
The idea is simple. You can rate any website on a few measures, and those measures decide whether visitors stay and buy.
Security: audit users and code
Check your security headers and SSL. Then audit who has admin access. Old freelancers and ex-employees with admin rights are more common than you’d think. Add two-factor login and a CAPTCHA on public forms, and review any custom code you didn’t write yourself.
Performance: Google wants you to speed up
Core Web Vitals had just become a ranking signal. Test with Pingdom, PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse, but remember that the lab is not the real world.
Accessibility and SEO: is it on Google yet?
Run Lighthouse’s accessibility checks, write real alt text and follow the WordPress accessibility team’s guidelines. Use Search Console to see whether Google can find and understand your pages.
UX: the hero part
UX and psychology are a match made in heaven. Interview potential users, sharpen the messaging, give every page one purpose. The audit finds the problems. Fixing them, one by one, is how you become the conversion hero.
