Leveraging UX Audits for Competitive Advantage

Technical Advisor: Mike Walker, VP of Operations (Bio)

UX audit evaluation

A User Experience Audit – also known as UX Audit – identifies the areas of a digital product that require improvement and shows which aspects of a website or application are frustrating users and hindering conversions. Similar to financial audits, UX audits use empirical techniques to enlarge the current state of affairs and provide heuristic-based recommendations for enhancements—in this case, user-centric ones.

In the end, leveraging UX audits ought to inform you about ways to increase conversions by simplifying the process by which users accomplish their objectives on your website or software. The goal of this UX audit beginners’ guide is to provide teams with the fundamental knowledge they need to carry out their audit or to better comprehend the advantages and constraints of a third-party inspection.

UX audit evaluation

A User Experience Audit also known as UX Audit identifies the areas of a digital product that require improvement and shows which aspects of a website or application are frustrating users and hindering conversions. Similar to financial audits, UX audits use empirical techniques to enlarge the current state of affairs and provide heuristic-based recommendations for enhancements—in this case, user-centric ones.

In the end, leveraging UX audits ought to inform you about ways to increase conversions by simplifying the process by which users accomplish their objectives on your website or software. The goal of this UX audit beginners’ guide is to provide teams with the fundamental knowledge they need to carry out their audit or to better comprehend the advantages and constraints of a third-party inspection.

UX audit best practices

Mentioned below are some of the best practices to conduct a UX Audit:

Stay Organized

You’ll probably gather a lot of data, including notes, photos, measurements, and other information, depending on the size of the product. To arrange and evaluate analytics data, use a spreadsheet. To save related media, such as screenshots, utilize cloud storage.

Record Everything

Take screenshots, make notes, and send links to all issues that have been highlighted. These documents will help you remember everything and give stakeholders comprehensive, useful feedback.

Recommend Actionable Measures

Give stakeholders steps they can do to address the issues you see. Instead of being based on conjecture or speculation, these decisions must reflect actual understanding.

Prioritize Your Findings

Inform stakeholders of the significance of the concerns you discover, such as high, medium, and low. Normally, you would rank these in order of importance depending on how serious the issue is and how it affects the user experience.

UX audit checklist

Here’s a quick guide explaining how to utilize a Nielsen heuristics checklist also known as a UX audit checklist to get started:

When evaluating a product using the design audit checklist, an evaluator or several looks at the interface and determines whether or not it complies with a list of usability guidelines.

As you assess the application from the perspective of an average user, take screenshots and notes of any trouble spots you identify.

If your product has numerous usability flaws, don’t give up; they are all chances for improvement.

Once this process is complete, compile all of your findings into a UX evaluation report.

UX audit evaluation criteria

The following factors serve as the recommended steps of a UX Audit Evaluation Criteria:

Understand the Business Objectives

Understanding the company’s objectives for the product under audit must be the first step. This will assist in providing you with relevant background information about the digital product under audit as well as the aims and primary objectives of the business’s current trajectory.

Finalize the Number of Platforms

This will assist you in determining the audit’s scope and may be contingent upon the amount of time and assets available to finish the audit. The most valuable user type may be given priority when it comes to digital products where many user types may be involved or where different pathways may be taken during multiple journeys.

Analyze Data

If the company uses Google Analytics to monitor the efficacy of its digital goods, looking through the data will provide you with useful insights into a variety of quantitative interactions and behaviors that are occurring.

Perform Heuristic Usability Evaluation

One popular method for finding design errors in a digital experience’s user interface is heuristic evaluation. As you attempt to complete tasks that the user would complete on their own, strive to put yourself in the end user’s shoes and see things from their point of view when conducting the evaluation.

Perform Accessibility Evaluation

The term “digital accessibility” describes how easily any user, regardless of ability or disability, may use a website, app, or other digital experience. It’s critical to see online accessibility as an opportunity rather than a burden because they are frequently quicker, simpler to use, and ranks higher in search engine results.

Compile Your Findings and Recommended Improvements

The last stage is to provide a summary of the results together with suggestions for further advancements. After finishing all of your assessments, you can also look at the service as a whole to gain more information.

What is a UX Audit

How simple it is for users to communicate with your website or app is revealed by a UX audit. It looks at your app or website from the user’s point of view. Usability, availability, interface design, data structure, and performance are all measured during audits to determine how satisfied users are.

A comprehensive UX audit evaluates your content’s responsiveness across several devices as well. Any design flaws keeping customers from interacting with your product can be found. Consider the following scenario: you are performing an audit for an online store. The audit would look at things like how simple it is to navigate if customers can locate what they need, and how user-friendly the checkout process is. After that, you can identify any obstacles for users.

User Experience Audit

You can conduct your audit if money is tight. But would this provide you with the most accurate understanding? Most likely not. UX is, as previously stated, a broad and complex field. It takes time to become a researcher—months or even years—to become one.

Bias is another important factor. You have a history with this product as someone who has helped to build it. Everything makes sense when viewed from a particular angle. But the user is not you. You have to be completely clueless to conduct a UX audit. Here are some of the most prominent benefits of it:

• Your website or application will flow more naturally and intuitively and be simpler to use. More people will be making purchases, subscribing, and accomplishing their goals.
• It will enable you to enhance and polish your user personas. More significantly, you’ll be able to comprehend the reasons behind some users’ lack of interest in your offering.
• You can find out why your CTAs aren’t converting as well as you would like them to by doing an audit. You’ll get advice on how to improve the wording, positioning, and design of your calls to action to dramatically increase sales and conversions.

Website user experience audit

UX designers can leverage useful real-world data from a design audit to pinpoint user pain areas and commercial value opportunities. The actual world performance of a product can only be partially revealed through testing during the design phase, particularly if the product will be used by thousands or even millions of people every day.

Every time a team releases a major product update or redesign, they usually undertake a UX audit as a component of the QA process. To make sure a product fulfills both business and user experience objectives, organizations can also plan recurring UX audits.

The resources available and the size of the organization will determine who performs a UX audit. UX audits are probably going to be carried out by internal design teams in a lot of small businesses and startups.

Some businesses employ outside auditors to assess their products and provide a report to obtain an impartial, objective UX audit. Large businesses may choose to work with UX design agencies, which can be costly but offer comprehensive audits along with insightful input. Startups and smaller companies may think about using a freelancer to achieve comparable outcomes.

Leveraging UX audits for competitive advantage

Leveraging UX audits can involve multiple ways and steps, some of which are mentioned below:

Usability Testing

We now arrive at usability testing. A usability testing session, to put it briefly, is a videotaped meeting with real or potential users during which the users attempt to accomplish tasks utilizing your designs.

Stakeholders’ Interviews

Holding an initial encounter with executives and management might offer crucial background information. In this manner, scholars can discover the issues the business is facing and the answers it seeks.

Heuristic Evaluation

More concretely, a heuristic evaluation in the context of a UX audit is having a group of designers assess your product while keeping an eye out for any problems with heuristics. Nielsen’s usability heuristics are the most widely used set of heuristics by professionals.

Interviews and Surveys

One of the most instructive aspects of the audit is most likely the user surveys and interviews. Conducting a survey or conducting an interview using your target audience might uncover a variety of problems, big and small.

Traffic Analytics

A website’s traffic can provide a wealth of information about the product. We can determine how successfully the users’ expectations are met by looking at metrics like bounce rates. The amount of time users spend on your page (also known as dwell time) indicates how engaged they are with the content.

Bottom line

A UX Audit is essential for any brand to help their brand grow and see exponential success. Following the above-mentioned ways and tips to conduct a UX audit, you can easily gain crucial insight to improve your user experience. You can also contact us at Pimberly to have the best management tools in town to enhance your website optimization.