UX audit services for the product you already have.
People leave, give up half way, or call support for things the product should make obvious. AbharWorks finds where and why, and ranks what to fix, before you pay for a redesign.
A redesign is an expensive way to find out what was wrong.
The product works, and something in it is losing people. Sign-ups stop at the second step. Customers phone to do what the account page was built for. The mobile version is used by most visitors and was designed last.
The usual answer is a redesign. It changes everything at once, including the parts that worked, and nobody can say afterwards which change helped. An audit comes first: it finds the specific places where people struggle and ranks them, so the money goes where the problem is.
This is for you if
- you have a live website, portal or application, and people abandon it at points you can name or suspect;
- users or staff complain that it is confusing, and you cannot tell which complaints matter;
- a redesign has been proposed and you want to know whether it is justified;
- the experience on a phone is clearly worse than at a desk;
- you need an order of work for a team that can only fix a few things this quarter.
It is not for you if there is no product yet. A new product starts with a scope, not an audit: see web and mobile product development.
One product, up to three journeys.
An audit of everything finds a little about everything. This one is scoped to the journeys that carry the business: signing up, finding something, completing a form, paying, managing an account.
- 1
Agree the journeys. Up to three, chosen with you, and what each is meant to achieve for the business.
- 2
Walk each one. Step by step, on a phone and at a desk: where the next action is unclear, where the wording misleads, where the layout breaks, where the page makes people wait.
- 3
Read the evidence you already have. Analytics and recordings where they exist and you can give access. Where they do not, the gap is written down.
- 4
Rank the findings. Each by how serious it is, who it affects, how sure the evidence is, and roughly how much work a fix needs.
- 5
Walk you through it. A session with the people who will act on it, not a document sent and forgotten.
What you receive
- A summary tied to what the business wants from the product.
- A map of each journey with the points of friction marked and shown.
- A register of findings: what, where, how serious, who it affects, and how confident the evidence is.
- Quick fixes separated from structural ones.
- An ordered list of improvements with a rough size for each.
- What cannot be measured today, and what to start measuring.
- A plan in stages, with what depends on what.
The audit is yours to keep and use, with your own team or anyone else.
What it does not include: a formal accessibility conformance audit or certificate, recruiting and testing with users, a redesign, the fixes themselves, running experiments, or a promise of a specific rise in conversions.
A website UX audit, or an application
The method is the same for a public website and for a product people sign in to. On a website the journeys are usually finding a service, comparing, and getting in touch. In an application they are the tasks people come back to do. Accessibility and speed are noted where they get in a user's way; they are observations, not a full audit of either.
Sometimes the audit finds that the platform underneath is the obstacle and no change to the screens will fix it. Then the next step is a different one: website and web application modernization.
What we commit to, and what nobody can
Nobody can promise that a change will raise sales by a given figure, and an audit that says so is guessing. What we commit to is findings you can check: each one shown where it happens, with the evidence for it and how sure that evidence is, in an order you can act on.
Common questions
- Is this the same as usability testing?
- No. It is an expert review of the journeys, using the data you already hold. Testing with recruited users is a separate piece of work and can follow it.
- Do you need access to our analytics?
- It helps and it is not required. Without it the audit says what could not be measured.
- Will you tell us to redesign?
- Only if the findings say so. The audit looks first for fixes to what exists.
- Do you make the fixes as well?
- Yes, as a separate engagement scoped after the audit.
- How long does an audit take, and what does it cost?
- That depends on the product and the journeys. Both are confirmed on the fit call, before any commitment.
- Do you audit products in Arabic?
- Yes. Arabic and right-to-left layouts are reviewed as they are used, not as a translation of the English.