UX Audit – why do you need it and what are the key metrics?

What is a UX Audit? 

Think of it as an MOT for your car, or a health check-up with a doctor. The sooner you can recognise issues, the sooner you can deal with them. Conducting a UX audit should be part of your business routine, as ‘checking in’ with your website helps the core operation of your business run smoothly.  And the best part is, you don’t have to do it!   

Our designers conduct a UX audit by using a range of analytical methods to check on a digital product, whether it’s a website or an app. The focus is on offering heuristic-based recommendations that benefit both your business and its users so that potential problems are identified early.   

What happens during a UX audit? 

Our auditors review the digital product in stages according to the level of access available. We are then able to measure whether the product succeeds or fails based on a set of criteria. Some of these are empirical and measurable like Google’s Page Speed Insights, whereas others are more subjective and open to creative input like visual design. Whatever aspect of the product we look at, or the criteria we use, we are always referring back to the core business goals.   

Reviewing business and user objectives 

As an auditor, you should always expect the business you’re reviewing to have a set of business and user objectives. For example, a website that sells thousands of different products and ships all over the world will have very different business objectives to an app that allows a community of users to communicate together and share photos. Equally, the user objectives for both these examples will be different.   

Conversion metrics 

Attracting visitors to a webpage or app is just the first step, these visitors need to be prompted to action, and that action is integral to the previous category of business objectives. If you’re running an online e-commerce shop, obviously you want a visitor to make a purchase. Alternatively, if you were launching a communication app, you’d want to encourage visitors to your website to download the app and register for an account. Two very different conversion goals, with different routes to completing each.

Learn more about ways to increase ecommerce conversion rate in your businesses.>>

Visitor analytics 

As UX design is all about creating the best user experience, visitor analytics is one of the most important metrics when conducting a UX audit. Whether you run a business website or an online store you need to make sure that your visitors can easily navigate through it and find what they’re looking for, quickly and efficiently. It is also vital to know where they’re coming from and how they found their way to your website. That knowledge helps you create a unique offer and generate more leads. Tools like Google Analytics gather all the vital data, although focusing on just one metric, such as page leads, will risk neglecting other metrics that are equally important. Tracking the following metrics will provide the insights to influence informed data-driven decisions:   

•  Pageviews  
• Average Time on Page  
• Average Pages Per Session  
• Returning Visitors  
• Goal Conversion Rate  

During a UX audit, we focus on factors like time spent on site, bounce rate, leads ratio or page views. For example, from a UX perspective, it’s very important that the bounce rate is low, whereas the page view rate should be high. Using this metric, we can be assured that visitors are locating the content they searched for and are engaged with the content you’ve published.  

Engagement  

User engagement is another factor tied into business and user goals. With the correct levels of access, we can analyse your user traffic to see how long users are spending interacting with content. Are customers dropping out of the buying process before making a purchase? Is the bounce rate high? Is anyone using the contact form? Does anyone watch the instructional video on the homepage? Every digital product is different, but we know exactly which questions to ask to ensure you’re making the most of your content.  

UX Best practices  

Each metric is applied to the digital product. We interact with the product in real-time. Taking these results and holding them up to industry standards and expected norms.   

Summing up your audit with a summary and scoring  

 Identifying flaws in the digital product is not about picking apart the business and then piecing it back together. Instead, it’s about methodically approaching each element and pinpointing practical improvements. Having gone through this step by step it can be overwhelming to look at it all together. So, we’ve created a scoring system made up of the following metrics:  

• User Journeys   
• Visual Design   
• Device-specific  
• Accessibility   
• Technical   
• Navigation & Information architecture  

Recommendations  

The result of all this detailed analysis is a list of recommendations. Some of these may be simple “quick-wins” that can enhance the user experience in subtle but effective ways, such as moving a call-to-action button or adjusting the navigation structure. Other recommendations might require more substantial work to be carried out, but we will always clearly identify the benefits according to your original business goals.   

 Using a range of analytical methods to analyse your digital product and offer the necessary recommendations, a UX audit conducted by our designers is hassle-free and offers a huge benefit to your business and its users. And much like that MOT, it shouldn’t need to be done again any time soon.