What Is a UX Audit?

A UX audit (also called a usability audit or heuristic evaluation) is a systematic expert review of your product against established usability principles, accessibility standards, and UX best practices. It identifies where your product creates friction for users, which friction points are causing business problems (conversion loss, churn, support tickets), and what to fix first.

Think of it as a health check for your product's user experience — conducted by someone who knows what good looks like and can spot problems that are invisible to people who use the product every day.

What Does a UX Audit Cover?

A comprehensive UX audit has five main components:

1. Heuristic Evaluation

Your product is evaluated against Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics and your industry's established UX patterns. This covers: information architecture, navigation clarity, error prevention, feedback and system status, consistency, and cognitive load management.

2. User Flow Analysis

Every critical user journey is mapped and walked through — onboarding, core task completion, account management, upgrade, and support. We identify where the journey breaks down or becomes unnecessarily complex.

3. Accessibility Review

Your product is checked against WCAG 2.1 AA standards. This includes: color contrast ratios, keyboard navigation, screen reader compatibility, focus management, and form accessibility. Accessibility issues are also usability issues — they affect all users, not just those with disabilities.

4. Mobile UX Review

If your product has a mobile web or native app experience, it's reviewed separately for touch target sizing, mobile navigation patterns, performance perception, and mobile-specific UX issues.

5. Conversion Funnel Analysis

With access to your analytics, we analyze drop-off rates at each stage of the critical user journey — signup, onboarding, first core action, upgrade, and return visit. This grounds the audit in quantitative evidence rather than just expert opinion.

What Deliverables Do You Receive?

A professional UX audit delivers:

An issues register with every identified problem, severity rating (critical / major / minor), and the usability principle violated
Business impact assessment for each issue (conversion, retention, or support ticket impact)
Prioritized recommendation report with before/after design examples for the top issues
Implementation roadmap with effort estimates
Executive summary for stakeholder communication

How Long Does a UX Audit Take?

For a typical SaaS product with 8-15 core screens, a comprehensive audit takes 2-3 weeks. Products with significantly more surface area or multiple user roles take longer. We typically deliver a preliminary read in week two and the full report in week three.

How to Get the Most Value from a UX Audit

Provide analytics access before the audit starts — quantitative data makes expert evaluation far more actionable. Share any existing user research, support ticket summaries, or NPS feedback. Be present for the readout session — the conversation around findings is often more valuable than the report itself.

What to Expect from a Professional UX Audit