Free landing page audit: what you get for free and where it stops
A free landing page audit is possible: four free tools check speed, visitor behaviour, accessibility and the first screen, and a checklist covers the rest of the page. What free does not give you is judgement: which problem costs the most, how you compare with competitors, and the new copy. Run the free audit first, and pay when the page carries real ad spend.
By Anthony Roose
7 min read
What does a free landing page audit cover?
“Free landing page audit” means three different things in search results. Each gives you a different result, so pick the one that fits the question you have.
- Free tools. Each one checks one layer of the page: speed, behaviour, accessibility or the first screen. You get data, not a verdict.
- A self-audit with a checklist. You do the thinking. The landing page audit checklist holds 24 yes-or-no checks, each with a pass line.
- An agency’s free audit. A short review of your page, offered as the first step toward a paid project.
The first two together make a real audit. The third depends on who does it and what they want to sell you.
Free tools and what each one checks
No single free tool audits a landing page. Five of them, used together, cover the layers that decide whether a visitor stays.
| Tool | What it checks | What it misses |
|---|---|---|
| Google PageSpeed Insights | Load speed and Core Web Vitals, from a lab test and real Chrome users | Whether the page makes sense to a visitor |
| Microsoft Clarity | Heatmaps, scroll depth and session recordings | Why visitors leave; it needs a week of traffic first |
| WAVE | Contrast, missing form labels and images without alt text | Copy, offer and message match |
| Google Analytics 4 | Engagement rate, bounce rate and key events | Which element on the page caused them |
| 5sec.io free test | Six first-screen checks, with the evidence quoted from your page | Below the fold, the form and competitors |
Speed: Google PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed Insights shows lab data from a controlled test and field data from real Chrome users over 28 days. A new page or a page with little traffic has too little field data, and the tool then reports the whole site instead.
Read the mobile result first. Google’s Core Web Vitals ask for the largest element within 2.5 seconds, a response to taps within 200 milliseconds, and a layout shift score under 0.1.
Behaviour: Microsoft Clarity
Clarity records sessions and draws heatmaps of clicks and scroll depth. Microsoft’s Clarity FAQ calls it a free service forever, with no traffic limits and no paid upgrade.
It needs a tracking code and traffic. Install it, wait a week, then watch the recordings of visitors who left without converting.
Accessibility: WAVE
WAVE from WebAIM checks a page for accessibility errors: paste the URL and it marks them on the page. It flags low contrast, form fields without labels and images without alt text.
Those errors cost conversions on every device. WCAG 2.2 sets 4.5:1 as the minimum contrast for body text, and a pale grey button label often fails it.
Numbers: Google Analytics 4
GA4 tells you that visitors leave, not why. Google’s help page on engagement rate and bounce rate counts a session as engaged when it lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event or has two or more page views. The bounce rate is the share of sessions that were not engaged.
Use it to pick the page to audit: the landing page with the most paid visitors and the lowest engagement rate goes first.
First screen: the 5sec.io free test
The free test reads your first screen the way a new visitor does and returns a pass or fail on six checks: what you sell, who it is for, what they get, what to do next, whether the text works without the image, and whether the image helps. Each result quotes the evidence from your page. You get five free tests a month.
The first screen matters most because most attention stays there. Nielsen Norman Group found 57 percent of viewing time lands above the fold.
In short Four free tools and a checklist cover speed, behaviour, access, the first screen and the rest of the page. What they leave to you is the ranking and the rewrite.
How to run a free landing page audit in one afternoon
- Write down the traffic source, the ad or email text, and the one action the page asks for.
- Run the free five-second test on the first screen. Then put the ad and the headline side by side: message match is the check no tool does for you.
- Run PageSpeed Insights on mobile and note the three Core Web Vitals against the thresholds.
- Run WAVE. Fix contrast and form labels first: they block visitors on every device.
- Install Clarity. After a week, watch ten recordings of visitors who left.
- Work through the checklist for the parts below the fold: proof, offer, form.
- Write each finding with the element behind it, and rank the list by how many visitors it touches. The first screen touches all of them.
What about an agency’s free audit?
Many agencies offer a free audit. It can help, as long as you know what it is: a sample of their work, chosen to lead to a paid project. Four questions tell you whether it is worth your time.
- Does each finding quote your page? A finding names the headline, button or field it is about. General advice fits every page and helps none.
- Are the fixes ranked? Twenty points without an order leave the hard choice with you.
- Does it look at your traffic? An audit that never asks which ad sends the visitors cannot judge message match.
- What do you keep? A written report you can act on without hiring them is worth an hour. A call that ends in a quote is a sales call.
Where free stops
Free tools give you data on one layer each. Four things stay with you, or with someone you pay.
- The cause. Clarity shows visitors leave at the price. It does not say whether the price, the missing proof or the headline sent them away.
- The ranking. A long list without an order leads to fixing the easy things first, not the ones that cost the most visitors.
- The rewrite. The free test flags a vague headline and suggests a fix. A new headline in your buyer’s words, tested against your competitors, takes a person.
- The comparison. No free tool puts your first screen next to the three pages your buyer opens in the other tabs.
That is where the paid audits on 5sec.io start. The Above the Fold Audit (€249) and the Full-Page Audit (€499) add a conversion expert who checks about 15 key pages against a 12-point rubric, compares three competitors and rewrites the weakest headlines, within five business days. The guide to what a landing page audit costs compares freelancers and agencies too.
When to stay free and when to pay
- Stay free when the first screen fails. Fix what the five-second test flags, then test again. Paying for depth on a page that loses visitors in five seconds wastes the audit.
- Stay free when traffic is low. A page with a few hundred visitors a month and no ad budget earns its fixes from the checklist and your own time.
- Pay when the page carries ad spend. Every visitor you pay for lands on the same problems. A conversion rate below the median for your industry is the signal.
- Pay when the obvious fixes did not move the rate. The free tools found what they can see. What is left needs judgement on cause and copy.
Start your audit with the free test
See what a stranger takes from your first screen in five seconds, with the evidence quoted from your page.