1 stage: preparing
We may describe preparation with this triangle:
We have to decide why we need this research for. As ridiculous as that sounds, this is the most important stage. Often specialists do not see the specific goal or do not understand how to state it. All this may result in incorrect research methods or even research for the sake of research.
That’s why, first, put down the purpose and objectives of research, why we want to carry out it.
Lifehack: to put down a purpose, decide on the problem or main question you want to answer.
For example, many complain about the inconvenience of the site.
Purpose: identifying the weaknesses of our site because of which users cannot… (do something).
Determine what we’re missing, how to check the convenience of the site. If we decide that a UX audit can help us, move on to the next steps.
Imagine that in the course of a long discussion, we decided to do a UX audit. Then put down why exactly this method will lead us to the desired results.
What format you want to get results in, what the report should contain. This is important to understand so as not to cherish illusions. Still, an audit is a limited method because it will only has your subjective opinion.
Also, it’s worth answering the following questions:
- What information do we already have?
- What else do we need to study?
- What is our target audience? And who is really using the product?
- Do we have analytical data? Which?
- What are our direct and indirect competitors? What are their pros and cons?
2 stage: collecting analytics (if any)
First, we study already connected analytics. For example, you may have Google Analytics.
The important items to be studied:
- number of visitors;
- purchase/registration funnel;
- traffic sources;
- statistics page by page;
- used operating systems, browsers;
- data on used devices;
- bounce rate;
- number of pages per session;
- session average time;
- download speed.
If you have no data, move on to another option!
What we can use:
A resource for a technical audit of the site. It analyzes many technical factors and provides a priority list of recommendations to improve the site.
Semrush is a paid resource (tariffs from $120) but it has a free technical audit of your site by main parameters. In addition, there’s an audit of internal links and site load speed.
You can use it for free — but only up to 500 URLs. The license will cost you £149. Screaming Frog analyzes almost everything — link validity, response time, meta tags duplicates, sitemap.
Netpeak retrieves a comprehensive SEO audit including broken links, dangling nodes; tracks emoji in meta tags and page response. The advantage is that it retrieves a report in Russian which every SEO-related specialist can understand.
Google Lighthouse is an audit tool with open source code on GitHub. You just need to install Google’s extension and you will see how a particular site meets Google’s standards in web development.
Another one site analyzer in English. The trial version tests only 5 pages and generates an overall report for several categories:
- Availability.
- User experience.
- Marketing (resource popularity according to Alexa).
- Technologies.
Following the results of the analysis, the service assesses the site on a 10-point scale.
3 stage: competitor analysis
Every business has its competitors. Even if there are no direct competitors, there must be indirect ones who solve the same users’ problems.
At this stage, analyze the market and find out which alternatives it offers.
When analyzing the competitors focus on:
- product offering;
- communication strategy with the audience;
- presentation of information.
Study information on competitors from public sources: reviews, comments, social media. You can get out of this data what users like and what they have problems with.
Services for analysis:
One of the common tools to analyze the traffic, doesn’t require registration, the basic functions are often enough.
Alexa — one of the most popular services to analyze the traffic from Amazon.
Socialblade — gives free statistics of accounts on YouTube, Twitch, Instagram и Twitter.
Plus a very good article about competitive analysis.
4 stage: product analysis
To make the analysis as helpful as possible, place yourself in the user’s shoes, cut off your own experience and assess site convenience like the first time. Carefully go over these points:
- How to register (interaction inside the product, emails and codes that are sent to your email). The initial impression from of the site directly depends on how convenient is the registration.
- How to contact the team in case of questions and problems. For this, test and assess the communication form and various channels: bots in messengers, social media.
- How to perform the target action. Pay special attention to this experience on the site because using audit the client wants to solve a problem: motivate users to buy, participate in a promo.
- How to log into the account and log out. It’s useful if a person often shifts between accounts on the device.
- Whether all links lead to the right pages, whether filters work correctly.
- Whether the buttons and sections are conveniently arranged and grouped, whether there are any difficulties in navigating the site.
In addition to the main scenarios, there are always alternative ones: return, cancel the order immediately after registration, refusal to participate in the promo. Analyze them too, because the user should be comfortable always and everywhere.
During the audit process, look at the product in two ways:
- As a beginner. The interface should be clear, the functions of all buttons should be obvious, pages should open correctly.
- As an advanced user. Evaluate how fast and easy it is to perform repetitive actions: filling in data, selecting an address.
These stages will help not to forget anything when assessing the product.
5 stage: open source analysis
Reviews from open sources can help to find confirmation or rejection of hypotheses that emerged in the course of the audit.
Open sources worth checking:
- Review sites on Google or different stores. Pay attention to frequently repeated reviews, put single comments on a list of things that can be improved.
- User comments under the client’s posts on social media. Usually there you can find messages that something does not work on the site. How company representatives respond to feedback deserves special attention, this is part of the user experience too.
In conclusion
- Ranking the difficulties found
2. Write and prioritize all points of growth collected in the course of analysis. For this, use the RICE framework: the most important factors should be first. They will relate to the purpose of the audit: if it is necessary to find reasons why users quit registration, the very first on the list will be errors, the solution of which will allow visitors to easily create an account.
3. Divide all defects and errors into three lists:
- The most important problems.
- Small and insignificant errors (e.g., repeating text).
- Technical errors.
Make sure to accompany this with screenshots and explanations.
4. Discuss your findings with your team to make conclusions and write down next steps.
Hope, it will be useful for you! Good luck;)
