The process of conducting a user experience audit can be extremely beneficial to your business, especially if you want to ensure continued growth. However, not all companies conduct UX audits or even know that they need one in the first place, making this task appear overwhelming and difficult to understand if you are unfamiliar with it. To help you avoid these issues and learn how to conduct a successful UX audit, let’s walk through some tips and tricks on conducting your own UX audit for your business.

What is User Experience (UX)?

User Experience is more than just how something looks. It includes how the user feels while they're doing it, why they're doing it, and how likely they are to come back and do it again. A User Experience Audit is one way that you can find ways to improve any number of those three factors.

Why do you need to conduct a UX Audit?

Conducting a UX Audit will allow you to assess the usability of your product or service, identify issues and areas that need improvement, and improve customer experience. In order to increase user adoption and retention rates, it's important to find out what current customers are looking for in regards to design. Conducting regular audits is an essential component of maintaining strong user engagement.

Step 1: Find The Right Audience

It's crucial that the person you choose to do your UX audit have experience with the field and speak the same language as you and other members of your team. You'll want someone who can immediately walk into your office or workspace, sit down at a computer and start offering feedback. You'll also want someone who will be able to ask questions and offer solutions based on his own experience, instead of just reading guidelines out of a book.

Step 2: Planning Is Key

After the planning stage, you will want to set a date, time and location for the review. Get an outside perspective by inviting people who are unfamiliar with your product. The goal is not just to get feedback from those who use it on a daily basis; it's about getting input from other users and seeing what new ideas emerge.

Step 3: Select Tools That Will Help You Communicate

When selecting tools to help you communicate with clients and customers, remember that simplicity is key. It's great if you can get some graphics created so that people are reminded of what their product or service does. Keep in mind that when it comes to mobile, many of the menu options on software apps are already quite limited so making things difficult by having long text blocks and complicated graphics is likely not helpful. Of course, there may be exceptions here depending on what kind of company you're running!

Final Note

While this list may seem overwhelming, the truth is that these five points can help you stay on course and avoid making potentially costly mistakes. You now know what you should and shouldn't do before setting out on an intense UX project, so get out there and start doing it!