How to Conduct a UX Audit [A Checklist]

What is a UX Audit?

A UX audit is an evaluation of a digital product’s user experience to identify pain points, usability issues, and areas for optimization. It involves gathering qualitative and quantitative data to analyze how users interact with a website or app and how effectively it meets their needs. The goal is to pinpoint obstacles that prevent users from achieving their objectives and to recommend practical solutions.

Unlike simple usability testing, a ux review or heuristic analysis, a UX audit is more holistic and typically involves a blend of methods. The process is iterative and requires collaboration with stakeholders to understand business goals, user expectations, and technical constraints. A successful UX audit requires careful planning and a clear understanding of business objectives. Without a well-defined purpose, conducting an audit can become a futile exercise that wastes resources without yielding valuable insights.

Why perform a UX audit

Investing in a design audit can have a significant impact on business outcomes. According to industry reports, companies that focus on improving user experience can see increased customer satisfaction, higher retention rates, and greater conversion rates. Moreover, identifying usability issues early can save time and money during development and redesign processes. In short, an audit aims at the elimination of UX issues.

Components of a UX Audit

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, most UX audits include several core components:

Desk Research

This stage involves collecting existing data and documentation related to the product, such as user personas, previous research reports, and customer feedback. Desk research helps establish a baseline understanding and to identify areas worth deeper investigation. Additionally, reviewing support tickets and customer complaints can highlight recurring usability issues.

Flow & User Journey Analysis

Analyzing user flows helps to understand how users navigate through the product and where they encounter difficulties. This is the blood of UX design. By mapping out key interactions and decision points, auditors can uncover inefficiencies and potential pain points. This analysis often includes creating user journey maps to visualize how users interact with the interface across different touchpoints.

Heuristic Evaluation

This involves evaluating the product against established UX best practices (heuristics) to identify violations and potential usability issues. Typically, a set of heuristics like Nielsen’s principles is used as a benchmark. The analysis may cover aspects such as consistency, error prevention, and system feedback.

Below, we've added an infographic that covers all ten Nielsen's usability heuristics.

Analytics Review

Analyzing quantitative data from analytics tools (such as Google Analytics or Mixpanel) provides insights into user behavior, drop-off rates, and feature engagement. Heatmaps and click-tracking tools can further reveal where users struggle or abandon tasks. This data-driven approach is essential for validating hypotheses formed during the initial research phases.

Usability Testing

This involves observing real users as they interact with the product to detect usability problems firsthand. Usability testing can be moderated or unmoderated and is invaluable for capturing authentic user feedback. Testing sessions should include users from the target demographic to ensure relevance and accuracy.

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We typically either do usability testing on launched products, or, if we quickly need to test a revamped flow, we use a prototyping tool like Figma.

Additional Activities

Depending on the context, a UX audit might (and should) also include stakeholder interviews, customer support analysis, or competitor benchmarking. Each of these methods adds depth to the insights gathered. Conducting interviews with team members who are directly involved in the design and development process can also reveal internal assumptions that may impact user experience.

UX Audit Process: A Checklist

Let's cover a typical process to perform UX audit. Although details may vary, this is a solid UX audit checklist that's applicable in vast majority of cases.

Interview stakeholders

You shouldn't conduct UX just for the sake of it. It's also not just a tool to enhance usability. Audits have a potential to be much more. To make sure you deliver the most value, you absolutely have to talk to stakeholders first.

The line-up for stakeholder interviews may vary. You may want to talk to customer success, sales, the C-level executives, the UX team, etc. These conversations will help shed light on various issues that will inform your audit decisions and priorities. Additionally, stakeholder interviews ensure you set the right expectations and deliver the expected outcomes. Let's cover the next steps.

Desk Research & Analytics

The stakeholders typically supply a lot of qualitative insights. To get a more complete picture you should find as much quantitative data as possible. This part of a UX audit is a solid start into user research.

See if you can get access to Google Analytics, HotJar, Amplitude, Mixpanel, MS Clarity or any other similar tools. Additionally, you may also request any deliverables that the team already uses internally: persona files, metric reports, conversion funnel, etc. Getting this context helps save time and tackle actual business issues.

Identify major UX design issues

Once you've gathered all necessary context, you should identify and prioritize areas of improvement. We typically prioritize issues that have the most impact on business. You don't always need to audit an entire product: especially if it's a complex product or service.

This stage is also a good time to check in with the business stakeholders. That way you set up your audit process for success.

Choose appropriate activities

We've already talked about the activities that a user experience audit may entail. However, it's worth noting that you don't need all of them. First of all, there are different project constraints such as time and budgets. Therefore, you should prioritize activities that deliver the most impact.

A staple activity that virtually all audits include is heuristic evaluation. A heuristic is a rule of thumb that helps designers build highly useable products. There are different sets of heuristics, but the one that we use the most is Nielsen't 10 usability heuristics. These ten are the industry standard.

The way heuristic evaluation works in practice is that we document all product flows. Then, we mark areas that break the rules. Once we're done documenting these issues, we then prioritize the issues based on severity and ease of fixing.

Heuristic evaluation aside, there are other activities that we sometimes employ. For instance, if heuristic evaluation doesn't offer a solid explanation as to why certain flows are underperforming, we may conduct usability testing and user interviews to shed light on the situation.

Prepare a UX audit report

Here's a hard truth we've learned at Excited. No one reads lengthy reports. It's our job as a design partner to ensure the report is understood and acted upon. You can't just hand over a 100-page PDF and call it a day.

That's why it's paramount to make the report easy to implement. The way we typically do it is that, on top of comprehensive explainers, we also offer a table that sorts all issues and prioritizes them. It's also helpful to comment on within whose purview the fix should be: a UX designer, a developer, a content manager, etc. That way, this table is easily convertable into tasks for the client's team.

Execute

Once UX auditors document and explain issues, the client may hire you to make the changes. Alternatively, the customer may decide to the fixing internally. While either of the two should work fine, it's always better to implement your own suggestions.

Upon implementing the redesign, you should then measure the results in accordance the goals you've set for yourself. This is how you know whether you've conducted a successful UX audit. Only then an audit is complete.

When to Conduct a UX Audit

Conducting a comprehensive UX audit should never be an arbitrary decision. It is essential to have clear goals to justify the time and resources invested. Here are some scenarios when a UX audit is particularly valuable:

• Underperforming Metrics: If key performance indicators (KPIs) related to user engagement, conversion rates, or satisfaction are consistently below expectations, a UX audit and additional UX research can help diagnose the root causes.
• Redesign Considerations: Before embarking on a redesign, it’s wise to audit the existing interface to understand which elements can be retained and which need improvement.
• User Complaints and Feedback: If users frequently report issues related to usability and user satisfaction, an audit can systematically address these problems by identifying patterns and underlying causes.
• Product Scaling or New Features: When a product is being scaled to accommodate more users or adding new features, auditing the UX can ensure smooth integration without compromising the current experience.

What to Expect from the Results

The final deliverable of a UX audit typically includes a comprehensive report outlining the following:

• List of Issues: A clear and prioritized list of usability problems identified during the audit.
• Severity Assessment: A ranking of issues based on their impact on user experience and business outcomes.
• Ease of Fixing: An estimation of the effort required to resolve each issue.
• Recommendations: Practical suggestions for improving the identified issues, including proposed design changes or process adjustments.

This is what we provide, and this is what you should expect to get from a design partner.

Tips for conducting a UX Audit

UX audit could take quite a long time if done properly. Make sure to set up the right expectations. That's why it's the job of of experts to make sure all relevant stakeholders understand the process. You shouldn't ever skip the discovery phase. It sets you up for success or failure.

Additionally, you don't always need to audit the entire product for a thorough UX audit. Depending on the goals, the time of UX experts is better spent on the flows that offer key UX value.

UX design audits aren't just about heuristic evaluation. Make sure you carry out the audit that takes into account not just usability but broader business objectives. There's a number of UX activities that help you just that.

Tools like google analytics are your friend. Sometimes, you need to advocate for your decisions in front stakeholders: numbers is what does the talking best.

UX Audit Case Study: Xilo, a Web B2B Solution

Background

XILO, a SaaS company specializing in insurance quoting automation, faced usability challenges that hindered user engagement and efficiency. Their customer forms were lengthy and complex, leading to frustration and drop-offs. To improve the experience, they partnered with us, Excited, for a UX audit and redesign.

Solution

We streamlined XILO’s forms into a step-by-step, conversational flow, reducing friction and improving usability. We also introduced a cohesive design system, an intuitive dashboard, and a custom workflow builder to enhance automation and user control.

Results

The redesign significantly improved user engagement and operational efficiency. XILO expanded its client base across 38 states and successfully raised $14 million in seed funding, proving the impact of a well-executed UX audit.

Conclusion

A UX audit is a powerful tool for any business looking to optimize its digital product’s usability and performance. By systematically analyzing user interactions and identifying areas for improvement, companies can ensure that their products meet user expectations and drive positive outcomes. Whether driven by performance challenges or the need for a redesign, conducting a UX audit with clear objectives will always yield valuable insights and guide data-driven improvements.