How do you audit your UX strategy?

1 Define the scope

Before you start your UX audit, you need to define the scope of your review. What are the specific goals and questions you want to answer with your audit? What are the key metrics and indicators you want to measure and compare? What are the boundaries and limitations of your audit, such as time, budget, resources, and stakeholders? Defining the scope will help you focus your audit on the most relevant and important aspects of your UX strategy, and avoid getting overwhelmed by too much data or feedback.

2 Collect data and feedback

The next step is to collect data and feedback from various sources that can inform your UX audit. Analytics tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, or Mixpanel can be used to track user interaction with your product, such as page views, bounce rates, conversions, retention, and satisfaction. Additionally, surveys, interviews, usability tests, or user feedback sessions can provide insight into user needs, preferences, pain points, and expectations. It is also important to review and benchmark how your competitors approach their UX strategy in order to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Lastly, established UX principles and standards such as Nielsen's heuristics or WCAG accessibility criteria can be consulted to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of your UX design.

3 Analyze data and feedback

Once you have collected enough data and feedback, you need to analyze them to find patterns, insights, and gaps in your UX strategy. To organize and visualize your data and feedback, you can use methods such as affinity diagrams to group and categorize them into themes and subthemes, SWOT analysis to summarize the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your UX strategy based on the data and feedback, journey maps to map out the steps and touchpoints that users go through when using your product, and scorecards to rate and rank your UX design elements or features according to criteria.

4 Report findings and recommendations

The next step is to report your findings and recommendations from your UX audit to your stakeholders, such as your team members, managers, clients, or investors. It is important to communicate your findings and recommendations clearly, concisely, and persuasively, using evidence and examples from your data and feedback. To present your report, you can use various formats and media such as slides to summarize the main points, dashboards to display the key metrics, stories to narrate the user's experience with your product, and prototypes to demonstrate how your UX design can be improved. Each of these formats should be used with relevant visuals, quotes, testimonials, scenarios, annotations, comments or feedback to illustrate the progress and status of your UX goals.

5 Implement changes and improvements

The final step is to implement the changes and improvements that you have recommended from your UX audit. You need to prioritize the changes and improvements based on their urgency, importance, and feasibility, and create a roadmap or action plan that outlines the steps, resources, and timelines for each change or improvement. You also need to collaborate and communicate with your stakeholders throughout the implementation process, and update them on the progress and outcomes of your changes and improvements.

6 Evaluate results and outcomes

The last step is to evaluate the results and outcomes of your changes and improvements, and measure how they have affected your UX performance and business value. You need to collect and analyze data and feedback again, using the same or similar methods and tools as before, and compare them with your baseline or previous data and feedback. You also need to report and share your results and outcomes with your stakeholders, and celebrate your achievements and learnings. Additionally, you need to identify the areas for further improvement or refinement, and plan for the next cycle of your UX audit.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?