What is a UX audit, and does your website or app need one?

A UX (user experience) audit is a structured review of a website or app to find where people get confused, stuck or give up. Instead of guessing why visitors don’t enquire or users don’t finish signing up, an audit looks at the evidence and gives you a prioritised list of fixes.

It’s like a survey before buying a house: it tells you what’s sound, what needs attention and what’s urgent, so you can decide what to spend money on.

A UX audit is worth considering if:

• Plenty of people visit, but few call, book or buy.
• Users start signing up or checking out but don’t finish.
• Customers ask questions the website should already answer.
• You’re planning a redesign and want to know what to fix first.
• Your app has features people don’t find or don’t use.
• Support requests keep coming back to the same problems.

A good audit combines several methods:

• Heuristic review. The site or app is checked against well-established usability principles, such as Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics: clear feedback, consistent design, error prevention, plain language and more.
• User flows. The key journeys are walked through step by step, for example “find a price and book” or “sign up and complete the first task”, noting every point of friction.
• Analytics. Where data is available, it shows where people drop off, which pages they land on and which devices they use.
• Mobile and accessibility checks. Text size, contrast, tap targets and how the site works on a phone.
• Content and clarity. Whether headlines, prices and calls to action answer what customers need to know.
• Usability testing (optional). Watching real people try key tasks often reveals problems no one inside the business notices.

An audit should end with something you can act on, not just a list of opinions. Expect:

• A clear summary of the biggest problems and why they matter.
• Annotated screenshots showing exactly where each issue is.
• Recommendations ranked by impact and effort, so quick wins come first.
• Suggestions for what to test or measure after the changes.

Some fixes are small, like moving a button or rewording a headline. Others point to a deeper change, such as reorganising the menu or redesigning a sign-up flow.

Every site is different, but some problems come up again and again in audits of small business websites and apps:

• The main action is hard to find. The “Book now” or “Call us” button sits below the fold on mobile, or competes with several other buttons.
• Prices are hidden. Visitors leave to find a competitor who shows them.
• Forms ask too much. Every extra field reduces the number of people who finish.
• Navigation uses internal language. Menu labels make sense to the business, not to customers.
• Sign-up comes too early. Apps ask people to create an account before showing any value.
• Errors aren’t explained. People don’t know what went wrong or how to fix it.
• Text is too small or low contrast to read comfortably on a phone outdoors.

Most of these are quick to fix once they’re identified, which is why an audit often pays for itself.

You’ll get more from an audit if you share a little context first:

• What you want people to do on the site or app, and what “success” looks like.
• Who your customers or users are.
• Any analytics, Search Console or app store data you have.
• Common questions or complaints from customers and support.
• Anything you’ve already tried.

Access to analytics isn’t essential, but even a few weeks of data helps focus the review on the journeys that matter most.

Before booking a full audit, spend 20 minutes on this yourself. Open your website or app on your phone, ideally on mobile data, and try your most important task as if you were a new customer:

1. Five-second test. Within five seconds of landing, is it clear what you offer and who it’s for? 2. Find the price. How many taps does it take? 3. Complete the main action: book, order, call, buy or sign up. Note every moment you hesitate. 4. Make a mistake on purpose. Leave a form field empty or enter a wrong email. Is the error message clear? 5. Read a page in sunlight or with the screen dimmed. Is the text still readable? 6. Ask a friend who doesn’t know the business to do the same while you watch without helping.

Write down every problem you notice. If the list is long, or you’re not sure which problems matter most, that’s the point where a professional audit helps.

Repeat the same test on a desktop computer and, if you have one, on an older phone. Problems that only appear on smaller or slower devices are easy to miss when you always check your site on your own laptop.

An audit is much cheaper and faster than a redesign, and it often shows that you don’t need to start again: fixing a handful of key problems can make a real difference. When a redesign is the right answer, the audit becomes its brief, so the new design solves the real problems rather than just looking newer.

My UX audit starts from £295 for a website or app, with a prioritised report and a call to walk you through it. If you then want the fixes designed, my UX/UI design service picks up from the findings.

I’m a UX designer with an MSc in User Experience Design. I use the same methods I use on my own products: mapping user flows, checking against usability heuristics and testing with real people. You can see that process in case studies such as OJO, where usability testing changed key interaction details, and OpenCircle, where testing simplified how people start using the app.

Every audit is written in plain language, so you and your team know exactly what to change and why.