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How Nudgent measures conversion health
Fourteen questions, seven about the people reading a page and seven about the AI agents reading it: how each is scored, what it rests on, and what it leaves out.
Two readers, fourteen questions
People decide on what they can take in and whether they trust it. AI agents decide on what they can read, check and quote. An audit asks each of them seven questions, and the two sets are different.
For people
- Cognitive ClarityCan I process this without strain?
- Decision ClarityIs the next step obvious?
- Trust SignalDoes this feel safe?
- Motivation StrengthIs the value clear before the ask?
- Comfort LevelAre my anxieties addressed?
- Flow CoherenceDo the steps connect logically?
- Identity MatchCan I see myself here?
For AI agents
- ExtractabilityCan I read this without fighting the page?
- Passage RetrievabilityCan an engine lift a self-contained answer out of this page?
- Claim VerifiabilityAre these claims attributed and checkable?
- AnswerabilityDoes the page carry the facts an agent would cite?
- FreshnessAre the dates and recency signals current?
- Markup HygieneIs the structured data clean enough to parse?
- Entity & AuthorityIs the entity named here and corroborated elsewhere?
How the scores are built
Every question is scored from 0 to 10. The two overall scores sit side by side and are never added together, because a page can be easy for people and unreadable for an agent, or the other way round.
For people
10 is excellent and 0 is broken: 8 to 10 is strong, 5 to 7 needs work and 0 to 4 is critical. The overall score is the sum of the seven, scaled to 100.
For AI agents
The overall score weights the seven by how much each matters on that kind of screen; by default, whether the page carries the facts an agent would cite and whether a passage makes sense lifted on its own count for the most.
It then falls into one of three bands: below 45, agents are unlikely to use the page; 45 to 64, they can find and use it; 65 and above, it is well prepared for them. A page that blocks bots lands in the lowest band whatever it scores, and one that partly blocks them cannot rise above the middle.
What the scores rest on
Each problem an audit reports cites the principle it rests on, from a library of more than 130.
For people
Nearly a hundred named principles from psychology, behavioural economics and decision research: Cialdini on social proof and commitment, Kahneman on loss aversion, Fogg on what it takes for someone to act, and Sweller on cognitive load, among others.
For AI agents
Close to forty more, drawn from the standards a parser actually reads, such as Schema.org, the WCAG accessibility guidelines and Open Graph, and from information-retrieval research into how an engine chooses a passage to quote.
For your kind of business
Before the analysis starts, the page is classified by industry and business model. Where we have written a brief for that kind of business, the analysis reads the page against it.
How calibration works, and how far it has got
What each audit records today, and the part that is still missing.
Recorded today
Each audit records what it predicted: the scores, the problems it found and the order it ranked the fixes in. When a page is audited again after changes, the score changes are recorded against the fixes that were made, and benchmarks for each industry and type of page are recomputed every night.
Not there yet
The test that matters most is whether a fix moved the conversion rate, and that needs teams to tell us their results. Too few have so far for us to tune the scores against conversion outcomes. Until that changes, the scores are a structured reading of the page, not a forecast backed by results, and this page will say so.
What an audit does not measure
Six things outside an audit's reach, so you know where to use something else.
Live traffic or sessions
An audit reads the page itself, from its URL or from a screenshot you upload, which is also how it reaches screens behind a login.
Brand strategy
Positioning is judged only as far as it shows on the page.
What to charge
We score whether a pricing page reads clearly, not whether the prices are right.
Search, ads and attribution
Ranking, ad performance and attribution are left to the tools built for them.
Visual taste
Looks count only where they change how clear or trustworthy a page feels.
Bot protection
The agent questions note when a CAPTCHA or a rate limit keeps agents out, and never recommend removing a defence you rely on.
Questions
For the source behind any principle in your report, or how a recommendation traces back to it, email hello@nudgent.com and we will send it.
We change this page when the questions or the scoring change. The date at the top is the last time we did.