CHAPTER 6

USER EXPERIENCE (UX) AUDIT

Here’s where everything really comes together. In your analytics, SEO, and PPC audits, you’re looking at the numbers and discerning the stories they tell. But your UX audit is all about the people. At the end of the day, we’re marketing to real people with real thoughts, preferences, and opinions. And that’s who we need to optimize for.

UX auditing and testing are important because sometimes we’re too close to our own sites to see what’s really going on. When you iterate a page or campaign all day, you know everything about it. The navigation is intuitive to you.

But that’s not always the case for the end user. In fact, an irritating or confusing site could be hurting your conversion rate, and you’d never know unless you tested it. In this section, we’ll discuss how to create a high-performing user experience worthy of your brand. 

CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS

Sometimes the best way to gather feedback is to engage your users directly. One option is to conduct monitored usability tests in person or via webcam: This way, you’ll ideally get them chatting so you can track how they’d organically use your site. You can also arrange small focus group sessions (5 to 10 people) to learn what they want from your product.

Net Promoter Score surveys elicit revealing insights, too. In these surveys, customers answer one simple question about your company: “On a scale of one to 10, how likely is it that you’d recommend [brand] to a friend or colleague?” The folks at Zapier recommend sending this survey via email to “1/90th of your users every day for 90 days.” 

CONVERSION JOURNEY ANALYSIS

As you through through your customer’s journey, ask yourself the following questions below. If the answer is “no”, it might be an opportunity for improving your conversion rate.

As you discover UX/UI elements that don’t answer a key question well, or don’t function well, or could be improved - screenshot them for future reference (include the screenshot in your audit report for immediate context). 

Homepage hero section 

The above the fold section should answer 3 key questions within the first couple of seconds after landing on it: 

• Where am I? (logo of the company) 

• What can I do here? (what is your product/service and how can I buy it/subscribe) 

• Why should I do it here and not somewhere else? (how is your product/service better/different than that of competitors) 

Other important elements to consider: 

• Is the hero image relevant to your business? 

• Is the text font large enough and contrasting with background? 

• Is there a prominent CTA button contrasting with background? 

• Is the navigation clear and doesn’t contain any irrelevant links?

Take a look at the image below… does it answer those key questions? Does your website? 

Homepage midsection

• Is your product/service explained clearly and benefits are presented?

• Are there any social proof elements e.g. customer testimonials, logos of clients, ratings from aggregator websites?

Footer 

• Testimonial, navigation and call to action is best practice… does your page footer include these elements? 

Signup page

• Does your signup form have any unnecessary fields that are causing people to abandon the signup process?

• If you really need to collect more information from users, is your signup form split into couple steps? 

• Are you giving users the option to sign up using other accounts (Facebook, Google, GitHub)? 

• If you have password rules, are they shown either before or during filling out the password field?

Pricing page 

Follow the same steps to see how your best competitors (or other high-achieving companies in general) have their funnels designed, take their best ideas and test them on your website. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

Lastly, the core question you should always ask is: Can I reduce friction here to make conversion easier (while maintaining quality)?