· 6 min read
UX audit checklist: 10 things to check before you redesign
Before a redesign, find out where your website or app actually loses people. The ten checks we start every UX audit with, and how to turn the findings into a list your team can act on.
When conversion is low, support tickets keep growing or people drop out of a flow, the first idea is often a redesign. But a redesign made without knowing where the problem is can repeat the same problems with a new look. That is why a UX audit comes first: it finds the problem with evidence, not guesswork.
The 10 checks we start every audit with
- Key flows: can people complete the most used and most valuable paths, such as sign-up, checkout or requesting a quote, from start to finish?
- First impression: does a new visitor understand within seconds what you do and what to do next?
- Navigation: do the menu and page structure get people where they want to go by the shortest route?
- Forms: are there unnecessary fields, unclear error messages or fields that are hard to fill on mobile?
- Empty, error and loading states: when something goes wrong, do people know what to do?
- Consistency: do buttons, copy and components that do the same job look and behave the same on every screen?
- Mobile: most visitors arrive on a phone; does every screen work fully on mobile?
- Accessibility: are contrast, text size, keyboard use and screen reader support good enough?
- Speed: do pages and critical interactions keep people waiting?
- Data: does your analytics show the step where most people leave?
How to prioritise the findings
An audit's value is not in the number of findings but in their order. We rate each finding on two questions: how big is the impact on users and the business, and how much effort does the fix take? High-impact, low-effort fixes go to the top, so the team sees results in the first week.
Each finding comes with a screenshot, why it is a problem and a suggested fix. That keeps the report from becoming a list of advice: it can go straight into your team's backlog.
Audit or redesign?
Usually they complement each other. The audit decides what to fix; the redesign decides how. Improving step by step, starting with the flows that matter most, is possible without rebuilding the product.
If you want to find where your product loses people, see our UX audit page, or our UI/UX design page for redesigning the interface as a whole. We work with UK teams remotely, within the same business day.
Want to talk about your project? Let's find the right path together.
