<span class="span-reading-time rt-reading-time" style="display: block;"><span class="rt-label rt-prefix">Reading Time: </span> <span class="rt-time"> 6</span> <span class="rt-label rt-postfix">minutes</span></span>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://octet-gatsby.in2.cdn-alpha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Image-41-1024x576.webp" alt="" class="wp-image-9414" srcset="https://octet-gatsby.in2.cdn-alpha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Image-41-1024x576.webp 1024w, https://octet-gatsby.in2.cdn-alpha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Image-41-300x169.webp 300w, https://octet-gatsby.in2.cdn-alpha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Image-41-768x432.webp 768w, https://octet-gatsby.in2.cdn-alpha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Image-41-1536x864.webp 1536w, https://octet-gatsby.in2.cdn-alpha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Image-41.webp 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Imagine you have developed a product with all the bells and whistles, and you are confident that the product is going to rock in the market and be the top performer.</span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But weeks after you launch it, you find that the product has hardly got any users and people are posting poor reviews. What will you do in such a case?</span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Is it a failure of your product or your product’s design? This is where you need to have UX design audit.</span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It is easy to measure if the user loves the design of an app or a website, but it is rather difficult to identify where the design has failed.</span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There may be several inconsistencies in the design, which may feel isolated at first, but they are all connected. These inconsistencies are identified during the UX design audit phase.</span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In this article, we are going to dive deep into understanding what is UX audit, how it helps businesses to improve their performance, and how designers should conduct an audit.</span></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Meaning of UX design audit</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://octet-gatsby.in2.cdn-alpha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1.-Meaning-of-UX-audit.png" alt="Meaning of UX audit" class="wp-image-6123"/></figure>



<p></p>



<p>A UX design audit is an important part of the design evaluation and structuring process. Think of it as a health check of your product. It ensures that the product is performing consistently across all channels and it is meeting all expectations.</p>



<p>UX design audit helps to discover <a href="https://www.questionpro.com/blog/usability-problems/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">usability problems</a> by research and analysis. It helps in pinpointing critical gaps in the user journey that prevents customers from executing the target actions they’re supposed to take.</p>



<p>During an audit, experts review all <a href="https://www.flux-academy.com/blog/the-visual-design-elements-and-principles-that-make-good-design" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">visual design elements</a> used in the product &#8211; be it a website or an app. UX design audit answers crucial questions like:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>What is the friction <a href="https://octet.design/journal/user-experience/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">users experience</a> in their customer journey?</li>



<li>How do these frictions influence customers’ behaviour?</li>



<li>Where is that point users leave a website or a product?</li>
</ul>



<p>The variety of methods used during the UX design audit allows one to view problems from different angles and find their most likely reasons.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Why UX design audit is important?</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Check whether the designs are done according to the “best practices” or not.&nbsp;</span></li>



<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Evaluate a particular component or workflow and how they are interacting with the other components.</span></li>



<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Identify the opportunities for improvement by analyzing what works, what doesn’t and what might be missing.</span></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Benefits of UX design audit</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://octet-gatsby.in2.cdn-alpha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2.-Benefits-of-UX-audit.png" alt="Benefits of UX audit" class="wp-image-6124"/></figure>



<p></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. Relying on data to improve designs</h3>



<p>During a UX Design Audit, experts collect all available data at the start of the project and in case your product doesn’t have any past data, they advise you on deploying tools you should use to gather more useful info.</p>



<p>This way, by using data, they take the guesswork out of the design.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. Learning how actual users behave</h3>



<p>During UX Design Audit, auditors conduct user testing to get to know it from the user&#8217;s perspective. Here, they analyze whether the product meets user goals, errors encountered by users and compliance with business standards like <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/design/nielsens-heuristics" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Nielsen heuristics</a>.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. Savings in development costs and increase in profits</h3>



<p>The design-first approach is beneficial to cut development costs as well as time, and by improving the designs first, you can invest much less during the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/development-phase" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">development phase</a>.</p>



<p>Also, by improving the messaging, <a href="https://octet.design/journal/role-of-user-flow-in-ux-design/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">user flows</a> and streamlining onboarding, you&#8217;ll make users understand your product faster, increase conversion and result in a higher Net Promoter Score, lower churn rate and increased number of referrals.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How to conduct UX design audit?</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://octet-gatsby.in2.cdn-alpha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/3.-How-to-conduct-UX-audit.png" alt="How to conduct UX audit" class="wp-image-6125"/></figure>



<p></p>



<p>As you are now familiar with what UX design audit is, let’s understand how can conduct it effectively.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. Understand business objectives</h3>



<p>You cannot find out whether the product is aligned with the <a href="https://www.orgvue.com/resources/articles/organizational-strategy-aligning-with-business-objectives/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">business objectives</a> unless you don’t know them in the first place. Before starting out any project, be it design or audit, it is imperative for designers to understand the goals a business wants to achieve.</p>



<p>The best way to do this is by conducting stakeholder interviews, which involve key people from different departments, that are concerned with the product or website’s performance. This would include the CEO or the founder, Chief Product Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Product Owner, Product Manager, Marketing Manager and people from the Sales and Customer Support team.</p>



<p>This way, you can have a holistic view of the website, and understand what is the importance of the product to each of them. After that, you can start assessing whether the product is meeting the set benchmarks or not.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. Learn what users want</h3>



<p>The second step after understanding the business objectives is getting to know about the users and what they expect from the product. You can learn about their behaviour and product usage patterns by conducting <a href="https://maze.co/guides/usability-testing/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">usability tests</a> and also conducting interviews, and take surveys to know what features they like and want to have in the product.</p>



<p>By doing this you can dive deeper into understanding their psyche and evaluate the product from a perspective to check whether it is meeting their needs or not. You can also prepare <a href="https://octet.design/journal/user-persona/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">user personas</a> based on the information you collected to identify their pain points and try to mitigate them by identifying the gaps and fixing them.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. Drill down into analytics</h3>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If you are evaluating a website, then it is highly likely that the client would have set up <a href="https://analytics.google.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Google Analytics</a>. And if they have a product, you should ask whether they are using any product analytics tool like </span><a href="https://www.pendo.io/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pendo</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, </span><a href="https://www.appcues.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Appcues</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, </span><a href="https://mixpanel.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mixpanel</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> etc.&nbsp;</span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The data obtained from them is a goldmine and you can quickly identify the user demographics which features or pages users are using the most and least, what paths are they taking and much more. You can then quickly identify the issues, look for anomalies and get started.</span></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">4. Conduct the audit</h3>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">After you have understood the business objectives, and user&#8217;s needs and have enough data to work with, it is now time to conduct the UX design audit.</span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Here, the experts, better known as UX auditors analyze your product from six different aspects:</span></p>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> User Experience &#8211; Heuristics, Flows, Usability Metrics, Interactions</span></li>



<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> <a href="https://octet.design/journal/user-interface/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">User Interface</a> &#8211; Design System, Visuals, Design System</span></li>



<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Performance &#8211; Technical performance, cross-platform compatibility and marketing funnels</span></li>



<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Branding &#8211; Guidelines, Identity, Communication, Differentiators</span></li>



<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Customer Experience &#8211; Behaviour, Reputation, Satisfaction, Engagement</span></li>



<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Inclusion &#8211; Inclusivity, Ethics, Sustainability</span></li>
</ol>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You have to thoroughly assess the product against the set benchmarks of any or all of these above six aspects. Throughout the process, you should take notes and screenshots detailing each and every challenge or pain point encountered.</span></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">5. Report your findings</h3>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Once the audit is concluded, you have to collate all the data and analyze it to extract insights into where the room for improvement lies. This information should be well presented in a document that is concise and clearly communicates the findings to your client.</span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Not only this, but you should also provide actionable recommendations, which will help your client to implement and measure their impact. It should be clear how each recommendation can be implemented and what it will do to help meet business and user objectives.</span></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Summing It up</h2>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">UX design audit is a highly crucial procedure that you need to perform to assess the reasons behind the gap between your expectations and actual product performance.&nbsp;</span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It is an investment that will pay you the best returns by optimising the performance of your product and revitalizing it to generate more revenue, <a href="https://www.ai-bees.io/post/25-strategies-to-improve-customer-loyalty" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">boost customer loyalty</a> and <a href="https://octet.design/journal/enterprise-ux-meaning-importance-and-process/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">enhance user satisfaction</a>.</span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With our professional </span><a href="https://octet.design/design-audit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">UX Design Audit services</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, you will find errors that can be fixed and explore new ways to <a href="https://bluprintx.com/improve-marketing-roi/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">enhance your ROI</a>. But that’s not it. You need to implement the suggested improvements too. </span></p>



<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Do you think your product requires improvements?&nbsp;Contact </span><a href="https://octet.design/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Octet Design Studio</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> now and we will help you conduct a professional UX audit and product redesign.</span></p>


<footer class="author-bio-section" ><div class="author-flex"><div class="author-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="90" height="90" src="https://octet-gatsby.in2.cdn-alpha.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/DSC_2115-1-1-1-150x150.png" class="attachment-90x90 size-90x90" alt="" /></div><div class="author-info"><div class="author-name"><strong>Dhruvil Rana</strong></div><p class="author-bio">Dhruvil Rana is a dedicated Senior UI UX Designer with 4.5 years of professional experience. His passion for design began early, having grown up in a family immersed in the field. He evolved from creating posters and ads during school to shaping digital experiences for businesses today. 

&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;

At Octet Design Studio, Dhruvil has worked on over 20 projects, leading a team of designers and delivering solutions that drive business growth through design excellence. His expertise focuses on creating user-centered designs and offering valuable insights into effective UX strategies. He is committed to enhancing user experiences and contributing to the success of the businesses he works with.
</p></div> </div><div class="authorbox-social-icons"> <a href="mailto:dhruvil@octet.design" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="E-mail" class="tooltip"><i class="fa fa-envelope-square fa-2x"></i> </a></div></footer>

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