If you are looking to unleash the full potential of your digital product, conducting a comprehensive UX review should be at the top of your list. UX reviews can revolutionize your design approach as they include practical evaluation methods that can lead to the creation of more user-centered design and ultimately boost your product’s usability.
Learn everything you need to know about UX reviews to start making data-driven decisions about the future of your digital product in this article!
Key Insights
➡️ UX reviews are the ultimate tool for optimizing user experiences and driving success of your product
✅ You can use UX reviews to uncover usability issues of your digital product and iterate quickly
🧠 They should be conducted throughout the product development lifecycle, ensuring that the user is always at the heart of the design
💡 You can conduct comprehensive UX reviews using all-in-one tools like UXtweak
What is a UX review?
A UX review (or UX expert review) is the evaluation of a digital product by a UX professional against a set of established usability heuristics and principles, testing different aspects of the product, including but not limited to the design, user interactions with the interface, and the overall usability.
It encompasses one or more experts evaluating the product against those principles as well as conducting user testing to pinpoint areas of improvement and any other friction points.
The ultimate goal of the UX review is to collate a list of usability problems and offer actionable recommendations on how those can be tackled. In most cases, the deliverable will consist of a comprehensive UX report including the main findings around the different assessed areas, like for instance information architecture, visual design, and navigation as well as a list of recommendations.
What are the benefits of a UX review?
A UX review provides a host of advantages when it comes to ameliorating the overall user experience and health of your digital product.
From improved user experience to cost savings, here are the main benefits of conducting a UX review:
- Enhanced Usability
A UX review can play a pivotal role in identifying usability issues as well as areas for improvement. This in-depth approach to assessing the usability of a digital product allows for the quick turnaround of design changes that can promote the ease of use of a digital product. This ultimately leads to higher user satisfaction and user engagement.
- User-Centered Design
When conducting comprehensive UX reviews, you can laser focus on the user and their ever-changing needs. UX reviews help you ensure that the design always meets the users’ needs while exceeding their expectations, leading to more pleasurable experiences and thus higher product adoption and user retention.
- Elimination of issues
By conducting rigorous UX reviews throughout the development process, you have the unique opportunity to identify any issues and bottlenecks early on. This enables you to iterate in the right direction by addressing those issues and improving overall user satisfaction.
- Actionable Insights
One of the main advantages of a comprehensive and well-executed expert UX review is that it provides you with actionable recommendations about how you can improve the user experience of your product. These insights are based on user feedback and are in line with the best industry practices, allowing for successful design decisions that can boost the overall usability and desirability of your product.
- Better Conversion
It goes without saying that a product that well-targets the needs of its intended users is always a step closer to success. By conducting and acting on UX reviews you have a unique opportunity to enhance your conversion rates while building customer loyalty and retention.
- Competitive Advantage
UX reviews can help you create more intuitive and enjoyable products that stand out in the market. By conducting a UX review and creating a well-designed and user-friendly product you will be able to gain a competitive edge in today’s highly competitive landscape. UX reviews can help you create more intuitive and enjoyable products that stand out in the market.
- Cost Savings
UX reviews can help you catch and resolve usability issues early in the development process. This can prevent costly redesigns and can save you a ton of money, time, and resources.
When to do a UX review?
As a rule of thumb, the earlier in the development process, you introduce a UX review, the better. However, UX reviews can and should be conducted throughout the product development lifecycle, ensuring that the user is always at the heart of the design.
Here are some common phases in the development process where we highly recommend conducting one:
- Pre-development: Doing a comprehensive UX review before going into full development mode can help you create a healthy basis for user-centered design. By testing concepts and prototypes early on you can guide the development process based on user feedback and in line with tried and tested industry practices.
- During the development: Conducting UX expert reviews mid-development is another great way to make sure that the product development is on track and adheres to widely accepted UX principles. This can help you quickly iterate and minimize the need for major redesigns later down the line.
- Post-launch: Reviewing your product sometime after its initial launch is often skipped but it can really help delve into the real-world usage of your product and turn those insights into product improvements. It can also help you stay on top of the ever-changing user needs.
- Before a redesign: If you are planning to redesign your digital product, conducting a UX review should be your top priority. It can help you pinpoint which areas work and which don’t, providing actionable insights on which elements you would need to focus on during the product redesign.
How to do a UX review?
Conducting a UX expert review is about systematically assessing the user experience of a digital product against established UX principles. Here’s what you need to have in mind to conduct a successful UX review:
1. Define objectives
Step one is to clearly define the goals of your UX review. In this step, you will need to determine which areas of your product you need to evaluate or any specific issues that you want to address.
It is really important to also familiarize yourself with the product and make sure you review any relevant documentation to get a deep understanding of the goals of the product and the needs of its main user.
2. Identify the methodology
After defining your objects, you will need to pinpoint the methods that you will use to evaluate the product during your UX review.
Although there are an array of research methods you can use to conduct your UX review, we would highly recommend including a heuristic evaluation which will help you evaluate your product against the 10 usability heuristics. In addition to that, consider running a couple of user testing sessions so that you can gather in-depth user insights when it comes to product-user interaction.
Other methodologies you can take into consideration are card sorting or tree testing, which can give you more in-depth insights into the information architecture of the digital product.
Check out examples of different UX review methodologies in these demos 😍
3. Set evaluation criteria & benchmarks
Another important step in your UX review is to define the criteria against which you will assess the user experience. At this stage, you should also set the metrics that will define if the product meets the desirable criteria. Setting metrics in advance will also help you quantify the success of your UX review.
Examples of such metrics could include:
- Usability:
- Time to complete a task
- Error rate
- Success rate
- Learnability (time taken for a new user to complete a task)
- User Satisfaction:
- User survey results (e.g., Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction Score)
- User interview feedback
- Number or percentage of customer support tickets related to UX issues
- Accessibility:
- Compliance with relevant standards (e.g., WCAG)
- Screen reader compatibility
- Keyboard navigation efficiency
- Content Quality:
- Readability scores (e.g., Flesch-Kincaid)
- Information accuracy (e.g., percentage of up-to-date content)
- Content completeness (e.g., % of pages with complete information)
- Performance:
- Load time (e.g., Time to First Byte, Time to Interactive)
- Responsiveness on different devices
- Server uptime percentage
💡Learn more about What Usability Metrics to Track
4. Conduct the review & analyze the results
The next step is to engage in conducting the UX review using the chosen methods and evaluation criteria. As you conduct your UX review make sure to take ample notes. Once the UX review is complete, you would then need to analyze the results against your predefined metrics.
Here, we would highly recommend prioritizing the issues that you identify based on their severity or impact.
5. Generate recommendations
After analyzing the results of the UX review, it is time to translate the findings into actionable recommendations for the design team. Again, here it is advisable to present those based on the impact and on how feasible they are to implement. Make sure to provide, realistic and details suggestions that solve the issues that you have identified.
6. Communicate the results
Don’t forget to document and communicate the results to all the stakeholders that are involved in the project. Doing so ensures a shared understanding of the improvements that need to be made. We would advise creating a workshop, UX presentation or a short UX report to effectively communicate the issues identified and their impact as well as proposed solutions.
UX Review checklist
If you want to have a successful UX review, don’t skip creating a UX review or UX audit checklist. To learn what should be definitely included in the UX review checklist, check out our video below ⬇️
Some of the other factors you can focus on during the UX review are:
- Pinpoint your target users and their needs & pain points.
- Thoroughly assess the interface layout and visuals.
- Make sure the content hierarchy follows a logical order.
- Ensure the design adheres to accessibility standards.
- Check for any friction points when it comes to performance.
- Ensure consistent tone and language.
- Check whether there are recovery options for errors.
- Test usability and responsiveness on multiple browsers and versions.
- Provide clear recommendations for improvements based on impact and severity.
UX review examples
If you are looking to get a more in-depth understanding of the different methodologies used to conduct an expert UX review, check out these case studies showcasing real-world examples of UX review methodologies:
SSQ Life Insurance UX review by Capian
Capian hits the nail on the head with a very comprehensive example of a UX audit that was conducted for SSQ Life Insurance’s website. Packed with clear examples and screenshots, you can get a feel for the criteria against which the evaluation was made. There is also a very comprehensive description added for each of the issues assessed!
UX review example by ZAYCEV.studio
Another great resource when it comes to real-life case studies of UX audits is the evaluation Ubersuggest by a team of UX experts at Zaycev Studio. This example is equally packed with screenshots and comprehensive descriptions revealing the thought process behind every step of the UX review.
👉Zaycev Studio UX Review example
The bottom line
To sum it all up, doing a UX review is critical for assessing and enhancing the overall user experience of a digital product. By using an array of methodologies such as user testing and heuristic evaluation you can conduct a robust assessment of the design and usability of the product.
The goal of the UX review is to pinpoint usability issues and areas for improvement with the ultimate purpose of leading to a more pleasurable and usable product for its intended users. A well-done UX review can provide you with in-depth actionable recommendations on how you can enhance the overall health and user experience of your digital product.
In turn, this can lead to enhanced user satisfaction, higher product adoption, and user retention ultimately leading to a competitive edge for your product. By leveraging UX reviews as a standard practice throughout the product lifecycle you can ensure that your products are continuously optimized to meet and exceed user needs and expectations.
If you are looking for a tool to delve into your first UX review, register for your UXtweak account and try our numerous user testing tools!
