What is a UX audit?
UX or usability audit is the process of evaluating the digital product or service in terms of user experience. In other words, it pinpoints the problematic areas of your solution and reveals missing opportunities that may cause lower conversion or poor user engagement.
It’s not a tool to solve all those matters, but it’s an excellent foundation for further fixing or redesigning. And the truth is, both big companies and growing startups can benefit from it.
What happens during a UX audit?
As with all types of design audits, most of them are done by research. UX auditing teams spend several days going through user interviews, reviewing product data and its documentation. They also focus on usability heuristics that provides seamless user journey to the target audience.
During the process, the UX team uses various tools and metrics to make the analysis as comprehensive as possible. They gather quantitative data and qualitative data, check user flow and very often conduct usability testing. All of it, to get as much feedback as possible and boost customer satisfaction and with that, conversion. UX designers check engagement, conversion metrics, sales data, traffic, do wireframing and more.
Because of UX audit, product designers can find out:
* if the app navigation is clear for the target users (usability issues),
* how actual users behave within the app,
* if any functionalities are redundant/missing,
* if the product/service meets the user’s needs,
* what data is collected, and which should be gathered.
By the end of the UX audit, you should get a report with all the findings and follow-up suggestions (but more about it later). However, there’s no universal format for it. Everything depends on the project’s complexity, size, etc.
What do you gain from UX audit?
Design audits done by an experienced agency can bring many benefits to the business. For one, it gives you actionable feedback in the form of a UX audit report that you can work on based on in-depth analysis, not just assumptions.
UX audits also give you all the information that can be the base for redesign or fixes on major and minor usability issues, like updating user flows, to improve user experience and enhance customer engagement. And finally, they provide you with everything you need to boost conversions and ROI.