A UX audit is a great annual analysis of your website and the pain points that your users may be facing. Your goal is to evaluate your user interface and your user experience. This type of audit can shed light on your users and their behaviors while also providing context into why they may not be converting on your website. As Webflow UX/UI designers, we at Responsival understand how crucial a UX audit can be for maintaining healthy website performance metrics and scaling your business even further. Today, we’re diving into everything you need to know about UX audits to decide if you need one for your website. Let’s get started. 

When to Conduct a UX Audit

Keep your website health in check with regular UX audits

As we mentioned above, a UX audit is a great method for identifying user pain points on your website to then later solve. They really are a type of health check for your website. Especially for websites with large amounts of website traffic or businesses planning to scale, we recommend conducting a UX audit at least once or twice a year. 

Beyond your yearly UX audit check-up, you may want to consider a UX audit if you're noticing stagnant or underperforming website metrics. You may be getting a lot of website traffic but ultimately notice your users aren’t converting. Or, maybe you notice that users bounce from specific pages of your website. A thorough UX audit will provide you with the information you need to know to understand why your website performance isn’t up to par. 

UX audits are especially important when you are in need of or preparing for a website redesign. By examining your current website, a UX audit can shed light on problem areas that are causing issues for your users. Then, when you’re ready for a redesign, you can solve those issues to make sure the problems are resolved ongoing. 

How to Prepare for a UX Audit

Set your UX auditor up for success by painting a full picture of the status of your website now and what you hope to achieve later

When you choose to conduct a UX audit with an agency, you of course want to make sure you get the best results possible. The best way to do that is to prepare ahead of time to help your agency. You’ll want to have a few things prepared to share with your UX auditor. This includes:

• Clearly defined business goals - Your website design has a significant impact on your goals. Clearly define your website and business goals so that your UX auditor understands what’s most important to your business so they can make recommendations on how to better achieve the outcome you’re looking for. 
• Identify and prioritize your levels of conversion- Once you define your business goal, you need to identify what will serve as a conversion on your site and then prioritize the importance of each conversion to inform where and how to place calls to action on your site.
• User personas and target audiences - Your current audience and your target audience may not be fully aligned. By understanding who your target audience is, your UX auditor can examine what website details need to change to serve your ideal audience. Prepare user personas ahead of time to give your designer a deeper look into who you intend will use your website the most. 
• Website performance data - Data completely drives a UX audit. Without comprehensive historical data, your UX auditor will not be able to analyze user behavior and the problems on your website that may be causing issues. To assure you have the data you need, you should analyze your Google Analytics account to assure you have goals to track.

What to Expect From a UX Audit

From usability to user experience, a UX audit will provide you with insight into where your UX is failing

As we’ve discussed, a UX audit can provide valuable insights into issues on your website that may deter users. But, what exactly does a UX audit cover? UX auditors will look at several elements of your website, including usability, accessibility, and user experience. Let’s dive into a bit of the methodology used to conduct a UX audit. 

Usability Testing and Heuristics 

Jakob Neilsen of Neilsen Norman Group defined 10 usability heuristics for user interface design. These usability heuristics are named as such because they are a broad rule of thumb. Although these principles were created in the 90s, Neilson’s usability heuristics still serve as a great guide for modern-day design. 

• Visibility of systems - Designs should help users understand what’s going on when browsing your website. To ensure users are informed, your website should provide feedback and proper communication in a way that makes sense to your users and is presented to them quickly. 
• Match between systems and the real world - Your website should speak to your users at their level of understanding. From the terms you use, the images you show, and the organization of your information, everything needs to be comprehensible by your audience.  
• User control and freedom - Users will often take an action by mistake and need a clear exit plan. When you have easy undo solutions, your users will feel confident and in control. 
• Consistency and standards - Users have standards and expectations of how processes work while using a digital product. Instead of forcing users to learn something new, maintaining consistency can help increase your users’ cognitive load. 
• Error prevention - Errors are frustrating, so you want to prevent problems from occurring at all. Of the two types of errors, slips are seen as unconscious errors that happen because a user isn’t paying attention. However, mistakes stem from a dissonance between the design and how the user actually uses it. 
• Recognition rather than recall - All actions and options should be clear and visible to your users, and users should be able to understand the information presented to them without having to remember information from a different place. 
• Flexibility and efficiency of use - You should allow users to use accelerators, such as keyboard shortcuts, so that both experienced and inexperienced users can browse at their own pace. 
• Aesthetic and minimalist design - Cut any information on your site that isn’t relevant to your users. Your visuals and copy should be designed to help a user reach their primary goal. 
• Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors - Errors are not ideal, but they are inevitable. Your error message should clearly explain the problem and offer a solution for your users. 
• Help and documentation - While it would be ideal if all designs could be used without additional help, sometimes it’s just not possible. Your help documentation should be easy to find, concise, and actionable. 

Accessibility Testing

Your website should be inclusive to all users, no matter their abilities. In your UX audit, your auditor will look at your website accessibility, identify problem areas, and provide solutions. This analysis might cover the use of color, fonts, and accessibility plugins or apps on your website. 

User Experience Testing

As your UX audit is underway, one of the most important elements is testing the user experience on your website. Your UX auditor will take a deep dive into your website analytics to identify any areas where your users may be hitting a wall. From navigation, user flows, and CTAs, your UX audit will identify areas where your website design is misaligned with how your users actually navigate through your site.   

Design Systems Testing

Design systems are used to maintain consistency across your website. Your UX auditor will examine UI components across your entire website to identify areas that may disrupt a user’s experience on your website. 

Webflow Auditing Tool

Catch high-impact accessibility issues before they damage your website usability and your search performance

While conducting a UX audit more frequently than once a year is a big undertaking for most businesses, you’ll still want to catch crucial accessibility issues on your website that may impact a user’s ability to use your website as well as your search performance. Webflow has a great tool — the Audit panel — that can help you catch critical and moderate issues. Using the Audit panel, your team or your Webflow agency can help you find the following high-impact accessibility issues on your website:

• Missing alt text - Alt text describes the images on your website to your readers. This helps your users who are Blind or have visibility issues understand your content. Alt text also acts as a placeholder for images that haven’t loaded for a user. 
• Non-descriptive link text - Link text helps your users understand what the content of a particular link will be about and where it sends the user in terms of navigation. 
• Skipped heading level - Headings are used in website content to provide users with a sense of hierarchy of information. Skipping headings or having inconsistent headings can confuse users reading your site content. 
• Duplicate element ID - Webflow designers and developers utilize unique element identifiers to add custom code or styling. When IDs are duplicated, it can cause parts of your website to malfunction, leading to a buggier experience for your users. 

UX audits are a great way to keep your website’s health in check and address problem areas on your website. By looking at usability, accessibility, user experience, and more, you will better understand how you can improve your website to keep your users happy. At Responsival, our expert team of Webflow UX/UI designers understands how big of a role your website design is for your users and your business. No matter if you’re noticing underperforming website metrics or just need a website check-up, a UX audit will provide you with the insight you need to grow. Schedule a call with our team to see how we can help.