UX audit can give you and your team incredible insights into customer problems, needs, and obstacles. UX audit will drive your every business, marketing, and UX decision.

Main benefits

If you are an online store product manager, founder, or designer, you probably asked yourself these questions:

• Why are our customers abandoning out of the store so quickly? 

• Did they find the information helpful, or did they turn to your competitors? 

• Did everything work in your store as users expected it? 

• Is something frustrating them? 

• How can you make their experience more rewarding? 

• With what purpose customers came to our store, and did they achieve it? 

Those are basic questions, but they are very hard to know without a customer-oriented approach and extensive research.

Without conducting a usability test, you and your team are risking releasing new designs without defining the main problems and actions your customers are facing. In that case, you will direct your online store toward results governed by assumptions and the team's most influential person. 

To avoid such an outcome, you will need real data to test your and your boss's assumptions. Until then, all you can rely upon is a head-start over your competition until they catch up.

We can help by providing you and your team with independent data through extensive research. From that data, you will be able to make decisions based on research and facts.

• You get competitor analysis 

• You find out what is easy to fix issues 

• You can prioritize the urgency of issues 

• You have insight into what problems with each screen are 

• Increase user satisfaction 

• Increase brand competitiveness

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Conducting a CX review will provide you an outline of your product customer experience obstacles. CX teams can start by mapping customer's touchpoints across channels. From there, your CX team can see what methods to apply. After a list of issues has been compiled, your CX team should sort the items according to impact and priority. 

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Audit roadmap

Here is SuperSuper CX audit process example (please note that the process is adapted to suit individual client):

1.Analyze and brand strategy, goals, and challenges

This first step is crucial to understand the company's long-term vision and direction.

2.Define your brand's core value asset

Find what drives people to your brand, and see how CX teams can enhance it. Increase your brand's value and grow the target audience by creating personalized solutions. 

3. Analyze your customers and group them accordingly

Identify your core customers are and what they like and don't like about your company. Segmenting customers into smaller groups based on customer personas allows your CX team to provide more efficient solutions for each group.

4.Research your competition

See how your brands differ from your competitors, and vice versa. 

5.Map your customers' journey atlas and most important user flows

Customer journey atlas is a compilation of all your significant customer journeys.

At this point, you should define the most critical journeys and user flows.

6. Refine the most critical touchpoints

Analyze and define touchpoints for your most essential journeys.

Talk to your current and potential customers to empathize better. What are your customers are thinking about your brand and product, and how are they behaving? You can use any CX quality research method at this point.

7.Prototype

Test several versions of solutions to your goal. Conduct in-person customer testing, online surveys, and focus groups to see how your solution will hold up against your customers. Validate the CX team's assumptions and refine your customer experience goals.

8. Design  a winning solution

Determine which solution worked and yielded the best results. Prepare the graphic assets for development.

What shortcomings can occur in an audit?

When the agency finishes with an audit, your team needs to measure and improve CX continuously.

How your internal team can cooperate with an external CX agency?

Your internal CX team has an understanding of bottlenecks and customer behavior. 

External team, i.e., consultancy or CX agency, has expert knowledge attained on various similar projects. The combination, and fresh look that agency have, will bring the best results.

Should you hire a CX agency or for the CX audit orhandle it internally?

CX agency have many advantages compared with your internal team:

• can start quickly - no need to hire a team member
• can stop quickly - if you need to control the expenses
• have experience with various similar projects for other clients

What are the indicators of a great audit?

Indicators for high-quality audit are:

• if it address properly and solve your challenge
• if it is easy to understand
• providing prioritization and rating recommendations
• being written in a concisely and objectively

How long does it take to carry out an audit?

It can take about 1-4 months to carry out the audit process, from the first workshop to the final winning solution.

Cost analysis

For best results, your in-house team can work with the dedicated agency for some or all phases of the audit. The independent CX consultant professional can bring a unique view and solutions to your CX team, and your CX team has the best in-depth context knowledge. 

The internal CX team can cost a lot because it is a recurring monthly investment. Independent CX consultants cost more in the short term but less in the long run if you hire one on a project basis.

External consultant agency prices start from USD 100 per hour. For average audit and results analytically, it usually costs around USD $5.000,00.

We offer a cost-effective and high-quality audit service, so be sure to send us an email if you need any help.

Should you consider doing a user experience audit for your online store?

A professional UX Audit is here to help founders, product owners, designers, and developers see their product through a fresh set of eyes because they're too close to it.

• Product owners who have a digital product that is not converting and want to find and fix critical user-flow problems.
• Founders who have a prototype but want to catch any apparent tweaks and improvements before moving to development (because auditing a prototype is cheaper than re-coding a live feature).
• Product managers and founders need external and unbiased eyes to help identify 'low hanging fruit' you can't see because you're too close to the product.
• Investors who want to support their portfolio companies with a UX partner can help keep teams laser-focused on incremental UX changes while not losing sight of the full customer experience.
• Product teams who want to benchmark their UX to see how they stack up against competitors and identify where to prioritize resources for future UX improvements.

What exactly will you get with a user experience audit?

The UX Audit report on user research will be about 30 - 50 pages, but we will present it easier to understand and implement it visually. The report will cover the following:

• Usability 

• Information architecture 

• Conversion & user flows 

• Visual Design 

• Content, messaging & language 

• Competitors (optional) 

• Email communications (optional)

We have tailored the UX Audit to your product experience (e.g., user on-boarding, checkout, etc.). We can discuss this on our first call together.

You will also get a one-hour video conference where we go over the audit findings to start a conversation with your team that lasts long after our engagement ends.

How much does user research cost?

The pricing starts at $5,000.00 and depends on the complexity and number of platforms (e.g., desktop, mobile, tablet). 

How long does user research take?

Many teams use traditional usability testing, which can often be time-consuming due to recruiting participants and planning the sessions. Usability testing can easily take six weeks or longer.

UX Audits can be done faster, generally within 3 – 4 weeks. After a UX Audit, many teams still do usability testing, but testing is far more informed and focused due to the UX audit’s insights.

Depending on your needs, we may include in a UX Audit:

• Competitor analysis: Reviewing the UX of a competitor product can help your team with actionable examples of what to do and what not to do.

• Conceptual wireframes: Based on the UX Audit recommendations, I can create wireframes for critical pages of the experience to help communicate ideas and jumpstart your team's design process.

• Support as you implement: As your team acts on the recommendations, we can remain to be present through reviewing designs, giving feedback, and serving as a second set of eyes. 

Why we are the right agency to identify customer experience issues?

You, as a client, might be wondering the following: 

• will the issues report fit into our production schedule?

• will the issues report be actionable?

• I am  not sure when we will get the issues report

• I am not sure about the issues to report quality 

• I am not sure will we have good communication with the agency

Rest assured that we understand you and that the product will be ready at the agreed time, actionable, high-quality, and bespoke communication. We have 11 years of working experience with various sized companies through different stages. 

We developed our skillset with you in mind. Our communication and deliverables are designed and presented so you can start implementing them immediately. There is no need to overburden your team with issues report research.

SuperSuper Agency offers high-quality experience consultation and design; send us an email if you need any help.