Is it Time for a UX Audit?

What is a User Experience (UX) Audit?

A UX Audit is a valuable diagnostic tool for your product that identifies areas that are causing headaches for users. During the audit, user experience experts take a methodical approach to uncover the source of the problems. At the end of the audit, you’ll get actionable findings.

In the e-commerce example above, you’d get information on how to boost conversions by making it easier for visitors to achieve their goals on your site.

Benefits of a UX Audit

UX is more than design: it’s strategy. It’s all about your users and how they experience every aspect of your product or platform. A UX audit applies the scientific method to test your interface and to understand the way people interact and respond to it – which is important, because you are not your user. Ultimately, this leads to better solutions and real, measurable value.

In fact, companies that invest in UX enjoy a lower customer acquisition cost, lower support costs, and increased customer retention. A Forrester study found that on average, every dollar invested in UX brings in 100 dollars in return.

According to a 2013 Study by Walker Information, user-centric strategies are going to make the difference between your brand and the next one. But by 2015, only 28% of global digital companies (out of almost 2,500 respondents) reported a focus on differentiation through customer experience. In other words, everyone should be focused on UX, but most companies aren’t. That means prioritizing good UX could give you a serious competitive advantage.

If you don’t have an internal UX team (or if that team is swamped), a UX Audit can fill in the gaps and give you a clear path toward a better user experience. After your audit, you’ll be armed with hard data to base future improvements on, not just hunches or guesses.

3 Signs a UX Audit is Right for You

1. You have an existing product or service. It’s a good idea to do a UX Audit when your product has been live for a while, so you have a backlog of data to analyze. New features and products, on the other hand, typically go through usability testing during development instead of an audit.
2. You don’t have a UX team. Companies with dedicated in-house UX teams are less likely to need a UX Audit because they continually evaluate and tweak the product.  Product teams that don’t have dedicated UX resources are poised to benefit the most from a UX Audit.
3. You’re too close to the product. It can be hard for internal teams to create distance between themselves and the product they built. It’s also tough to separate yourself from the preconceived thoughts and opinions you have about your users and their needs. If that sounds familiar, you’ll be able to reap faster, more reliable results by engaging with an external party for your UX Audit.

What Does the Process Look Like?

Our UX Audit has four distinct phases:

Discover and understand: No one knows your product or your target market like you do. So we start by working with you to deeply understand your business, value proposition, and where you stand in your market.

Analyze with empathy in mind: Next, we’ll put ourselves in your users’ shoes, looking for areas of friction. Our designers will thoroughly evaluate your product’s:

• Overall experience
• Feature-by-feature experience and design
• Accessibility
• Information architecture
• Visual language consistency

Define the opportunity: Now it’s time to problem solve. Using the research we’ve collected, we’ll use industry best practices to find the best solution.

Test and validate: We’ll create prototypes of the existing flow and our recommended new flow. Users will experience both versions, and we’ll gather their feedback on usability.