5 benefits of a UX review and how to go about it

There are a multitude of ways a service, product, website or app can be reviewed or given a ‘health check’. These vary from expert reviews, heuristic evaluations, competitor analysis, contextual inquiries, usability testing, online surveys and more.

Research findings can help validate or squash internal debates or design ideas, and provide direction for long-term business roadmaps and strategic initiatives.

Here are a few reasons why a ‘health check’ or review can help your business:

1. Validate your design and strategic roadmaps — Having a UX Review conducted through the lens of your customer is very eye opening. It highlights how your customers use your product and how best to optimise to their needs. Having this 3rdparty validation on hand can provide teams with clear direction for iteration, design and development. Further, this research can provide all business units with insights into whether their strategies and roadmaps are aligned with their customer in mind.
2. Increase in ROI (return on investment) — Small problems can lead to big dropouts or customer frustration, potentially costing the business huge amounts of money. Test early and often to iron out these issues and ensure customers can understand and use your product, meaning more click throughs and potentially higher returns.
3. Decreased Bounce Rates — Speaking to your customers in a one-on-one environment can be both insightful and impactful for product teams. Often it’s not only how they use your product during testing, but learning about their motivations and behaviours — uncovering why they leave or bail out rather than complete or convert. These insights provide tangible guidance on how to develop a product which your customers will want to use, refer and return.
4. Gain a Competitive Advantage — Conducting competitor reviews will provide insights on where you stand against your competitors. Combined with user testing, a deep understanding of the customer and their needs is obtained. A benchmarking exercise can also be conducted by applying these methods at different stages of product life cycles, be it your own or your competitors. This is an effective way of measuring your progress over time with hard metrics and feature developments.
5. Quick Wins with Low Cost — Whilst thorough research and user testing can provide deep understanding of your customers, an expert review is a fast and cost effective activity which, within 2–3 days can identify both fundamental issues as well as ‘quick fixes’ around possible user pain points and usability issues. These ‘quick fixes’ can be assessed and implemented in shorter turn around times if bigger, more robust re-designs are not part of the development strategy or pending release date.

The approaches mentioned can help a product once it’s in the market. However, the customer should always be involved in the end to end design process to ensure your product is offering maximum value.

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