Uncovering Potential: Why your website deserves a user experience audit

It’s important to review the usability of your website or online platform regularly. Usability can always be improved, and often good usability can slide when other things get our attention.

Signs you need a usability audit

• High bounce rates
  
• Low conversion rates
  
• Declining user engagement
  
• High number of customers support queries
  
• Negative user feedback

What is a usability audit?

A usability audit (or UX audit) is a systematic evaluation of a website or digital product's usability against established usability principles or heuristics. These can be tailored to suit specific priorities and requirements. Heuristic evaluation is one of many methods in the UX design toolbox to improve usability and has many benefits. Usability experts evaluate user journeys and interfaces. Issues based on the agreed principles are identified and recorded.

Why a heuristic evaluation?

1. Provides a quick and cost-effective way to identify usability issues.
   
2. Evaluates a website or online portal’s compliance with established usability best practices. Results can be compared and benchmarked with future iterations of the design, as the same criteria are used for evaluation.
   
3. Generates actionable recommendations for improvement. These can be addressed in stages, depending on the resources available and current priorities. High, medium and low effort can order improvements.
   
4. Facilitates stakeholder alignment by providing a structured framework for discussing and addressing usability issues, resulting in a shared understanding of goals and challenges and a clear roadmap for improvement. It can help get everyone on board and get agreement.