UX Audit: Why it’s valuable, the business benefits and ensuring users keep coming back

Need help with a UX review of a digital product, site or app

Circular UX audit example

A digital dip in success

Your digital product, e-commerce platform or website is not seeing the success it once had, or you are noticing an increase in drops outs, abandoned carts or incomplete journeys. Finding yourself asking why is this happening but not knowing if it’s just some quick fixes or a major redesign needed to solve the issues.

As a business leader, your approach to digital is often the difference between success and failure, don’t worry you are not alone in facing these challenges. Thinking about conversion rate optimisation eventually becomes the front of mind for any digital product or site owner.

However, the question is with so many elements and moving parts to consider what should you work on first?

Arise the need for a user experience (UX) audit, a quality assurance activity with the goal to review the design of products and evaluate them from a user’s perspective to ensure it meets defined criteria.

What is a UX audit?

A design review that uses a usability-inspection process in which (typically) one reviewer examines a design to identify usability problems, carefully evaluating from a user’s perspective.

The end to end evaluation of the experience your customers receive when they interact with your business looks to identify usability issues and problem areas that cause gaps in design continuity, create pain points for users and reduce conversion rate.

If an agency conducts a UX design audit, you will typically expect:

• A detailed audit report
• Discussion with a specialist of the evaluation results
• Obtain a list of recommended changes

The business value of a UX audit

Why should a business leader invest in the cost of having an audit conducted? Users always look for the easiest route so if the option you offer has complexity or unnecessary difficulty ultimately users will go elsewhere, usually to your competitors.

When surveyed 76% of respondents will switch to a competitor if they have just one bad experience — State of UX in the Enterprise 2019, Userzoom.

A satisfied user means they are able to complete specific goals or actions, be that making a purchase, completing an application or signing up for a monthly subscription.

Get a Fresh Perspective

Another approach a business leader might take is using an in-house design team rather than an external agency or consultancy; although potentially lower in cost it will take considerable time and resources.

Reviews always work best when done by someone not involved in creating the design. Similarly, the reason people are bad at proofreading their own writing is that the mind plays tricks into only seeing what was intended to be written, not what is actually in front of them!

A fresh perspective will likely give unbiased and better feedback:

• An outsider is not emotionally invested in the design
• Is oblivious to any internal team politics
• Easily spot glaring issues that may stay hidden from someone who’s been staring at the same design for too long

When should you do a UX audit?

The longer you wait to conduct a review, the greater chance for undiscovered issues to be lurking and causing users frustration. However, because an expert’s time is quite precious (and potentially expensive), many organisations consider a review before the launch of a new product or major redesign to identify significant strengths and weaknesses of the current live design.

Think of a design review in a UX audit format like a health check which can be done at various stages in the design life cycle such as:

• Launch or redesign — launching a new product or redesigning an existing one
• Underperformance — a product or site performance is worse than desired
• Regular Checkup and ongoing feature release — part of regular maintenance, it’s good practice to schedule periodic audits (2–5 years outside of the main design lifecycle)

Expected outputs and outcomes

There is no universal format for the UX audit report since its size and structure depend on the specific situation and work complexity. A combination of some slides, presentation and discussion is typically expected.

Outputs

• Presentation deck summarising key findings
• Heuristic evaluation across shared elements
• Heuristic evaluations for each main individual element of the journey
• Accessibility evaluation with key concerns highlighted
• Discussion of the results with a specialist

Outcomes

• Aware of the pain points affecting your users and potential reasons for dropout areas
• A suggestion of how to fix each individual issue identified
• Resolve usability issues in a priority order
• The overall set of recommendations and next steps

You can download an explanation brochure, which includes samples and case studies of UX audits.

Heuristic evaluation example

Audit approach

Similar to the outputs and outcomes, there is no universal approach in the industry for a UX audit; having deep knowledge of usability best practices these core components are recommended to be included:

1. Understand business objectives
2. Define the number of platforms and user journeys
3. Analyse data (if provided)
4. Perform heuristic usability evaluation
5. Perform accessibility evaluation
6. Compile findings and recommend improvements

For the full method check out this how to guide — UX Audit 101: Step by step guide for conducting a UX review with template and tips

How much does it cost?

The cost of a UX audit depends on the complexity of the work, the defined scope and who you decide to perform the audit (an in-house team, an individual freelancer or an agency) and finally the duration of the audit.

All the following elements will give you a wide range of prices from £1,000 — £10,000+. Due to the scale and size of an audit, we have created differing levels being light, detailed and complex.

For the latest pricing visit the UX Audit page, download an explainer document or book a free intro call to kick start the discussion with Circular UX.

UX audit levels

Now to start that UX audit

You now have the understanding of what a UX audit is, its value and why for a business leader it could be the difference between success and failure; remember a design review is like giving your digital product a health check and is a valuable tool to complete regularly.

If you cannot perform an audit, consider hiring Circular UX to conduct an unbiased, expert UX review of your digital service.

If you would like to join the discussion or share your thoughts, please reach out for a chat or to ask your questions. You can email me via my personal site or connect professionally on LinkedIn; I also have a Medium space with further content and remember to follow.