You might think that only websites that haven’t been redesigned recently, or websites that don’t use the latest technology, need a UX audit. Still, even the most polished and slick website can miss the mark for user engagement, conversion and usability.
How well do you know your customers, and how well does your website meet their needs?
A shiny new site can have all the hallmarks of a perfect site; however, there may be structural, accessibility and design missteps that lead to customer frustration. This frustration can not only lead to a decrease in conversions against your key metrics but also contribute to your brand being damaged. That might sound dramatic, but if you look for stats on improved usability, you can see some pretty dramatic numbers:
- Improved UI (user interface) can increase conversion rates by up to 200%.
- Improved UX can boost sales by 400%.
- 88% of users are less likely to return after a bad user experience.
- 38% of visitors leave a website if its design is unattractive.
You can’t leave any deep dive into the stats without understanding the undeniable truth that improving the usability, design and findability of your site, and removing the barriers that prevent users from doing what they came there to do, will undoubtedly improve user perception of your brand and improve your conversion rates and engagement.
UX audits aren’t just for e-commerce sites either; they help improve usability and findability across any business’s site. Want to increase the number of enquiries you receive? Consistently get frustrated about the lack of engagement with your marketing pages? Wonder why very few people click on that big yellow button you really want them to click on? Then maybe a UX audit is worth investing in.
What is a UX audit?
A UX audit can mean quite different things depending on who you ask. Here at Make it Clear, we like to do things as thoroughly and clearly as possible. While some audits are a quick once-over against a checklist, Make it Clear works through a structured methodology that is tried, tested and refined through years of working with our clients and our partners.
Make it Clear’s UX Audit uses a combination of available site data, industry benchmarks, UX best practice and analysis against established heuristics to build a picture of your site’s performance and where improvements can be made. Our reports are written and laid out with visual references to your site, written in easy-to-understand language and complete with recommendations that are presented in a prioritised and practical way.
The point of all this isn’t to produce more reports for a shelf; it’s to make sure that whatever comes next diagnoses a real problem, rather than assuming one.
So, what should you expect when you commission a UX audit?
It is important not to jump into the audit blindly, without context and understanding. We need to know and agree on what “good” looks like and what your business goals are. This means sitting down with the key people in your business to understand your priorities, your goals and, critically, which user journeys actually matter to your business.
Yes, we want to improve the site for the user, but we can only do that by making it work for your business. A UX audit conducted without this context is just a list of our opinions, which may or may not work for your organisation. If it doesn’t work for your organisation, how can it work for your users? This is what makes Make it Clear’s UX audits worth the investment. The project is far beyond being a tick-box exercise; it becomes a targeted investigation into what is holding your enquiries, sales or engagement back.
Before we begin looking at your site in detail, we ask you for the data you already have. This could be any previous research you have done or analytics you have available, allowing us to see where journeys are actually breaking down, not where you assume they are. It also means looking at your SEO position, since usability and findability are two sides of the same coin, and reviewing whatever existing market research or reporting you’ve already commissioned.
This stage usually includes a look at an agreed number of competitors and comparators. It is important to understand that this is not to copy them, but to understand how they present their offer and structure their journeys, and where you have room to differentiate.
After we have completed the desk research, we continue to the part of the project that most people have in mind when they hear “UX audit”: one of our expert UX consultants going through your site, journey by journey, against recognised usability principles. Our audits do this through a combination of heuristic analysis and UX best practice. Our team works through a structured evaluation against established usability standards, alongside a review of design and design accessibility, and a best-practice audit of the journeys that matter most to your business.
The benefit of asking Make it Clear to carry out this audit for you is the impartial, external view we provide. It’s hard to see your own site with fresh eyes if you work with it daily and know it inside out.
Turning findings into something useful
Our audit tells you clearly whether the way you’re presenting different parts of your offer is helping or confusing your users. It gives you a clear steer on what’s holding back the outcomes you want to achieve while giving you actionable recommendations to improve the site.
An audit is only as good as how you act on it. The last stage should bring everything together into a single findings report with prioritised recommendations. It’s not just a long list of everything that’s wrong; we work with you to make this as actionable as possible.
We don’t just throw the report over the fence and let you deal with it. We present it back to your stakeholders and always allow room for questions and refinement. A good report should be pitched to its audience and act as a brief for your design or development team, or third-party agency, to work from.
Evidence-based
A UX audit is evidence-based and gives you the ammunition to justify those difficult design decisions. Make it Clear doesn’t complicate the process, but it’s easy to skip steps, and skipping steps is exactly how you end up with recommendations based on assumptions rather than evidence. If you’re going to invest in improving your site’s usability, it’s worth doing the audit properly; otherwise, you risk redesigning based on assumptions, only to find out six months later that you’ve fixed the wrong thing.
Ready to find out what's really going on in your product?
A UX audit from Make It Clear could be the clearest, fastest way to understand where your product is underperforming and what to do about it.
We’re a specialist UX/UI agency with experience in conducting UX audits. We don’t believe in reports that sit on shelves – every audit we deliver is built to be acted on.
If you’d like to start the conversation, book a call with our team here.
