A UX audit provides a thorough examination of your product's usability, helping to identify and address issues that may be hindering user satisfaction and overall performance.
UX professionals use UX audits to evaluate existing products and glean insights into users’ needs and behaviors.
This process provides more robust, qualitative data for UX teams aiming to optimize the user experience, as other UX evaluation methods typically only provide insight into a user’s problems.
Conducting a UX audit offers numerous benefits, including providing actionable insights that guide focused improvements.
When these improvements are implemented and tracked, positive changes in metrics can validate the impact of design efforts, making it easier to gain buy-in for further research and development.
Raghav Karkera, senior UX designer for AWS Wickr, said companies implementing additional product iterations or a redesign should consider conducting a UX audit to continuously improve a product and its user experience for customers.
"In the discovery phase of a project, teams can analyze collected data to determine whether new iterations or redesigns are needed for a product, and whether they can provide a meaningful impact for customers," he explained.
From there, teams can begin the UX auditing process to ensure the product meets user experience expectations and overall business goals.
"It can be hard to scope out time for discovery during the initial UX evaluation process, or even determine how large of an effort the initiative may take using other UX evaluation methods," Karkera said.
With UX audits, teams can initiate audits with just a single designer and incrementally add additional members to the project to solve for any resource constraints and streamline processes.
He added UX audits can be customized to fit any time and resource requirements for teams, making UX audits more cost-efficient compared to other larger research methods used in the discovery phase.
Charlie Claxton, senior vice president, global head of design, Thomson Reuters, said a company should consider conducting a UX audit when several key indicators suggest UX issues are affecting performance and customer satisfaction.
One primary sign is an increase in user dissatisfaction, which can be measured through metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS).
"If there's a sustained problem in behavioral metrics, where minor improvements are not yielding significant results, this is another red flag," he said. "Metrics like Time on Task and Completion Rate can reveal these persistent issues."
Additionally, an increase in behaviors indicating user frustration, such as high drop-off rates within a conversion funnel or a spike in customer care calls for help using the product, are strong signals that a UX audit is needed.
Finally, a notable rise in competitive pressure that impacts customer retention, as measured by metrics like Net Revenue Retention (NRR), further underscores the need for a thorough examination of the user experience.
The perspective of Gartner analyst Will Grant perspective, it's good practice to perform them at regular intervals, if the developers are not already operating with an iterative design methodology.
"If you think about the digital products that you use all the time, and that you admire, they are built in a continuous research way," he said.
A UX audit differs significantly from other UX evaluation methods, such as heuristic evaluations and user research, in terms of cost, time, and resource requirements.
"A UX audit is holistic and often encompasses elements of heuristic evaluations and user research," Claxton said.
Heuristic evaluations are quick, utilizing a systematic, scorecard approach to identify usability issues efficiently. In contrast, user research, which employs various methods, tends to be more exhaustive and time-consuming.
He added UX audits, being more comprehensive, typically incur higher costs due to their resource-intensive nature.
They gather data from multiple sources, including user behavior analytics, usability reports, business goal evaluations, and competitive benchmarking.
"This extensive data collection requires more significant investment in terms of both time and money," Claxton said.
Additionally, UX audits often necessitate the involvement of several professionals with diverse skill sets.
"Analytical skills are essential for interpreting data, while UX expertise is needed to evaluate usability studies," he explained. "Moreover, a deep understanding of business data and the ability to interpret it are crucial."
The best time to implement a UX audit during the product development lifecycle can vary, but several optimal moments stand out.
"Conducting a UX audit post-launch allows teams to assess how new features or adjustments to existing features are performing in a real-world context," Claxton said.
This timing helps identify any immediate issues and areas for improvement based on actual user interactions.
He pointed out another ideal time for a UX audit is before a major redesign, as performing an audit at this stage helps direct the team to existing problems with the current product, ensuring that the redesign addresses the most critical usability issues.
"This proactive approach can save time and resources by focusing efforts on the areas that will most enhance user experience," he explained.
A UX audit can also be highly beneficial when there is a noticeable spike in user complaints or an increase in patterns of negative behavior.
"These signs indicate that something is wrong or off with the product, and a thorough UX audit can help pinpoint the root causes of user dissatisfaction and guide necessary improvements," Claxton said.
Grant said to attain executive buy-in for a UX audit, software developers must lead with compelling evidence.
"Begin by establishing benchmarks to understand the current state of customer satisfaction, such as analyzing app store reviews and the volume of support tickets related to the product," said.
For consumer-facing products, track obvious metrics like store revenue or the daily rate of shopping cart abandonment.
"By setting baseline metrics, you can then focus on improving these indicators, which often captures the attention of senior executives," he explained.
He added presenting data that demonstrates how these metrics can be improved through a UX audit can be particularly persuasive, while highlighting the potential for positive changes in customer satisfaction and operational efficiency makes a strong case.
Grant also recommended emphasizing the financial implications: engineering developers and front-end programmers are costly resources.
"If they are building the wrong features and constantly reworking them, it results in significant wasted expenditure," he said.
By conducting user experience research before writing any code, you mitigate the risk of developing the wrong solutions: This approach ensures that development work is efficient and effective, reducing defects and unnecessary iterations.
"Framing the UX audit as a strategy to optimize resource allocation and reduce costs can resonate with executives focused on the bottom line, making them more likely to support the initiative," Grant said.
