Quality Check: How UX Audit Helps Websites Gain Engagement

Billions of people are now using the internet for everything—whether it's for streaming videos, playing games, communicating with friends, or starting a business. Today, everything you need, you can buy on the internet.

This is a good sign to start a business online because you have millions of potential customers who will generate great revenue for your business. However, before you can start attracting customers to buy from your business, you need an ecommerce website. But it takes a lot of work to create your own website.

It requires a lot of planning, design, and testing before you can roll it out. In this blog, we'll take a closer look at the testing phase and see why a UX audit is important when creating your ecommerce website.

What is a UX Audit?

A UX audit or usability audit is the evaluation of the user experience for web apps and websites. This can be helpful when analyzing a website to identify usability issues in your digital product design. The test also identifies areas where the user has abandoned his journey and is leaving the site.

While UX audits don't necessarily resolve every problem with websites or apps, a thorough user audit could help you determine your website's main problem, increasing your product's performance if you address the problem.

When Should I Conduct a UX Audit?

Marketing experts typically recommend conducting UX audits when websites and applications are live. The primary objective of a UX audit is to determine the problem that prevents users from converting into engagement and sales and from pinpointing the weakness of the design.

It reveals the bottlenecks in user experience and eliminates any bottlenecks that may happen in the customer experience. Therefore, it is advisable to conduct an audit when implementing new functionality and to determine whether the users have issues when using the site or app.

When introducing something new to your website, conduct a UX audit because the results can tell how the users interact with your website and the factors that lead to a positive or negative user experience.

UX Audit Checklist

A user experience audit is an evaluation based on varying criteria. With benchmarks, audits will know if the website meets the set of objectives. If there are no UX strategies, you can likely begin developing these before completing a UX Audit.

Here are some of the information you prepare before conducting a UX audit.

Website Analytics

To start auditing to must collect relevant data for the test like the number of clicks, website visitors, engagements, and other metrics. You can use Google Analytics to gather this information. These data are vital in identifying user behavior and what changes you will make to achieve a certain outcome.

For example, your analytics show that most visitors spend less than 20 seconds on your website. Is there something wrong with your user interface? Is it hard to understand the navigation? Analytics will help find these problems.

Furthermore, it can also measure your conversion data to ensure that your business goals and KPIs are achieved.

User Personas

Identifying your customers and knowing their user personas will help ensure that your customers engaging with your website match your target audience. If your user experience audit shows a change in your user demographics, designers can make the appropriate changes to your website.

For example, if you are selling skin care products, your target audience would be women, but don't count out men who are also inclined to these products. Your audit may show that more and more men are going to your website. As a result, you designers can make changes to show male inclusivity, and you can even add products exclusively for men.

Previous UX Audit Report

If you've already conducted a UX audit report, you need to pull them out to have a basis for the current audit you are preparing. For example, these reports will show if the previous problem of your website has been addressed or if still recurring.

Budget and Timeline Preparation

A UX audit is expensive, so the budget and resources must be ready. A low-scale UX auditing starts at $1000. This amount is already big enough for small businesses. So make sure you are ready to spend and that it won't compromise your other business functions.

Furthermore, you should also prepare a timeline. You need time for UX auditing, and you can't rush it, but you also need to be on schedule. The longer it takes, the more resources you burn, so follow a timetable.

How to Conduct a UX Audit?

Now that you know what a UX audit is and the necessary things to prepare, you are ready to conduct usability testing for your website. Here are some essential steps to ensure you conduct an effective UX audit.

Use Behavioral Metrics

Behavioral metrics can give vital information on how users interact with your website. For example, you see the user flows that lead to conversion or abandonment. You can also see the browsing patterns of your users. For example, do they check out the company information first? Do they go directly to the product pages or check the first payment and shipping options?

You can gather many behavioral data points, which you can use to improve your website further and give your customers a positive user experience.

Do Surveys and Interviews

To get accurate results from your UX audits is to conduct surveys and interviews with your actual users. Of course, metrics can only give you so much data, but by collecting feedback from real people, you are closer to understanding the user experience.

You can conduct surveys and interviews through emails, phones, text messaging, and online forms. Then, with the feedback from your customers, you validate the data collected from your metrics and develop more accurate strategies for perfecting your website's user experience.

Competitor Analysis

Of course, besides looking at your imperfections and success, it also helps to take a peek at your competitors. If they are performing better than you, consider taking notes of their strategies. You can always test their strategies and improve them to attract more customers to your business.

Organize and Analyze the Data Collected

Once you've done all the necessary tests, summarize and organize all the data points so you can see a clear picture of your UX audit. Organizing also helps you disseminate the results to your designers and keep them in the loop. 

It's also important to document the results so that when you are ready for another UX audit process in the future, you have a starting point for improvements and tweaks.

Creation of Evidence-Supported Recommendations

Finally, list possible data-backed recommendations for improvements to your UX. Although not all of your recommendations can be applied all at once, listing recommendations can help you identify which to prioritize in improving your website.

However, if you are making improvements to your website, it is best to start by removing images, uploading new products, and changing themes, something you can do in a short period to keep your operations active. A major change in design or update will cost you, so ensure you have your funds ready.

Get Your UX Audits Here at Mesmeric

Whether you're launching a product, a service, or a website, the testing phase is important. A website UX audit pinpoints your website's strengths and weaknesses, so you can craft a user experience that your audience will like. 

Usability testing is a long process. There is much to prepare, metrics to analyze, and tests to do. We hope this blog post helps you with your UX audit process.

If you need professional help making your website from scratch, Mesmeric is your one-stop shop for website services. We have web design, development, and hosting packages. It comes with unlimited maintenance and support, and we also do UX/UI audits. Learn more about our services and work with us today!