User Experience Audit is an assessment of the user experience within a website or application. The purpose of the audit is to verify errors, propose actions to correct errors, guide processes for optimization, and strengthen the positive feelings of the user after contact with the assessed website. In order to properly conduct a usability analysis of a website, it is necessary to look at the value of the website in a broader context. Before starting to verify and evaluate the website, the purpose of the website and its users should be determined. The context of using the website/application and user expectations are significant in the analysis. Verification of business goals and their comparison with the expectations of users entering the website are also of great importance.
Preparing a UX audit requires knowledge of designing interactions between the user and the digital world, sociological knowledge based on understanding user needs, and the ability to analytically look at quantitative and qualitative data from the field of user activities.
Depending on the stage of work, it is worth taking care of implementing analytical tools that will help better determine user traffic on the site and allow to determine the path that users take. When implementing analytical tools, remember to inform and enable the user to express consent or refusal to this type of verification.
In order to assess compliance with best design practices, a heuristic analysis method should be used. Heuristics are a set of guidelines that indicate good principles for creating user interfaces. They help identify problems on the page and assess usability in terms of standards and best practices. One of the frequently used heuristics is the Jakob Nielsen rule list. By knowing heuristics, you can easily verify whether basic elements on the page may be the cause of user difficulties.
When is it worth performing a website usability audit?
Each stage of website development is a good time to conduct a website analysis. UX analysis will work well both in the initial design phase and during product development. Usability audits should be conducted regularly to monitor user behavior on the website.
As website owners, we know our business inside and out, but how will a new user find their way around our site? Do users of the digital product easily achieve their goals? How do users navigate the site? Are the navigation paths clear? Are the forms easy to use? Does the purchasing process provide all the necessary information? Questions like these are the first step in conducting a user experience audit. These questions can be helpful in understanding user behavior.
UX Audit Plan and Checklists
It is good to approach each task with an action plan. Similarly, in UX analysis, it is good to follow the plan and examine individual critical areas of our site. You can use generally available UX checklists. Ready-made checklists can be adapted to different types of pages, such as stores or service pages, but they are only a basic list of elements that the page should contain and what structure of the page is recommended.
The first stage of UX analysis should be defining goals, tasks and fantuan database understanding the user context . Defining the target group and verifying how users use our digital products. Analytics data from tools such as Google Analytics are helpful at this stage. In the reports, we can find information such as: where users come from, what subpage is the first one that users land on (it is not always the home page), what devices users use, which subpages are of primary interest to users.
In the next stage, we analyze the collected data, defining the user's journey through the site. We verify different types of users and behaviors for individual groups.
Considering who our user is and their behaviors, we try to make our journey through the site in a similar way. This is one of the first stages in usability analysis. We conduct a cognitive journey, taking on the role of the user. As we move through the site, we should keep in mind the basic principles of usability according to, for example, Jakob Nielsen's heuristics.
Heuristic analysis
Heuristic analysis helps identify potential issues with UI compliance with design best practices. By evaluating a design against established heuristics, you can uncover areas that may cause frustration or confusion for users.
Nielsen’s heuristics are a set of 10 best practices for useful digital solutions and are as follows:
Show system status.
The user should know at every stage of the journey where he is and what action is taking place.
Important elements for this heuristic are breadcrumb paths and any messages informing about ongoing actions, such as "the form has been sent", "The order has been placed", "Registration was successful".
Maintain consistency between the system and reality.
The language used must be understandable to the user. It is important to ensure that messages, e.g. about errors, are self-explanatory. For example, instead of error 404 , the error description "the page you are looking for could not be found" should be used.
Give the user full control.
The user must have control over where they are. A common mistake is to prevent the user from returning to editing the cart at the checkout stage.
An “emergency exit” must be provided in the event of reaching the error site.
Stick to standards and stay consistent.
Users use many systems, so it is important to ensure that your site does not deviate from generally accepted standards and layouts. The layout of a given website must also be consistent across different subpages.
Prevent mistakes.
The user should be warned so that they do not have to correct their mistakes. Users of websites often have problems with the format of data to be entered in forms. To improve the usability of forms, the format of the entry should be suggested, e.g. for a postal code.
Show instead of forcing you to remember.
Users are overloaded with information that they need to remember, so you need to make it easier for them in every possible way. You should use visible labels in forms that don't disappear when you enter content. It's also good to suggest the history of browsing recent products or articles.
A help and documentation system must be provided.
Flexibility and efficiency
Our digital product is used by a variety of users, so it is important to ensure that our system is adapted to these different needs.
Take care of aesthetics and moderation.
The system should contain only necessary and essential information.
Elements that dissuade the user, for example, from finalizing the order at the final stage of purchase should be limited as much as possible.
Ensure effective error handling.
It is important to ensure that error messages are understandable to the user. Contact form validation must clearly indicate the cause of the error and highlight the field that causes the error.
Provide support and documentation.
Not every user knows our system, we need to provide help for new users. Every user should have constant access to help and documentation.
The results of heuristic analysis of the page can be used to improve the design at an early stage of the design process. With this analysis, we can improve the user experience and identify areas that require necessary improvement.
UX audit
