UX AUDIT: BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO BETTER WEBSITES & MOBILE APPS

Introduction to a UX Audit by WANDR, #1 UX Design Studio in Los Angeles

A user experience (UX) audit helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your website or app. Audits offer tremendous insight into the performance of digital products, yet many businesses overlook this important process.

The information that you gather through an audit allows you to find areas for improvement. You can focus on specific goals, such as increasing user engagement or boosting conversion rates. The audit can be as simple or complex as you prefer, making it an easy way for businesses to evaluate their websites and mobile apps. To help you get started, here is a beginner’s guide to the auditing process.

When asked to define UX design, most business owners may not have an answer. UX design is the process of developing websites and mobile apps to give users a better overall experience.

A UX audit takes a closer look at the design and its performance. The information that you obtain depends on the scope of the audit and what you hope to achieve. You can pinpoint elements on your site or app that continue to confuse users or that repeatedly result in customer complaints. You can also find out which web pages are causing visitor to leave your site or which features are keeping users from making in-app purchase.

Businesses often use these audits to determine what is working and what is not. The audit also provides a detailed look at various data and metrics to determine the needs of your users. When hiring an outside firm to complete the audit, you may also receive actionable steps for dealing with the areas that need improvement.

A typical UX audit includes components designed to provide feedback and data related to the performance of your website or mobile app. This may include the use of analytical software, user surveys, and tools to evaluate what is working and what is not working.

Here are some of the most used components:

●      Product evaluation

●      Website and mobile analytics

●      Sales figures

●      Conversion rates

●      User surveys

●      Stakeholder interviews

The resources used for the audit depend on the details that you want to gather. For a basic website audit, you may simply focus on the website analytics. For a detailed audit of a product for a major organization, additional tools may be needed.

Including more resources in the evaluation process offers more insight. When you combine analytics, sales figures, and user surveys, you get a complete picture of how the UX directly impacts sales or conversions.

Using the components discussed, the UX auditing process may provide a variety of deliverables based on your specific needs. The most common deliverables include:

●      Project assessments

●      Usability and user research

●      Information architecture reports

●      Competitor assessments

Most audit reports include an assessment of the project. This is a basic outline of the current state of the digital product. It also provides a baseline when comparing progress during future audits. Usability refers to the experience of navigating and using your app or website. These reports are typically completed using feedback from real users.

With user surveys, you can ask users to rate various features of the site or app. However, it is important to keep the surveys short. If there are too many questions, users are less likely to complete the surveys. Besides usability reports, an audit may offer more details about the users through detailed research. Auditors may look at the demographics of your target market, such as average age, income level, education level, geographical region, gender, and interests or hobbies.

Information architecture is the process of arranging parts to make the information understandable. With digital products, information architecting often involves the site map of the site or app, taxonomies, wireframes, and navigation. The site map offers a visualization of the basic structure of components and information. Looking at this diagram provides a better picture of how every page or display is connected.

In some cases, an audit may include assessments of the competition. Comparing the UX of the competition’s products gives more insight into how your product stacks up. This assessment is also helpful for UX designers, as it provides more information about industry standards. These are just a few examples of common deliverables. Hiring an audit company allows you to tailor these deliverables to suit your requirements. It also helps to have an outside perspective when compiling reports.

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