Website Design Audit Checklist: Key Elements to Enhance Your User Experience

Your website is the most crucial asset of your eCommerce business.

It creates your brand’s perception and credibility. But when talking of assets, you must know the importance of maintaining them to deliver the outcomes efficiently and effectively.

The same goes for your website — and that’s why the website design audit is critical for any eCommerce business. It can not only help lift up your website’s performance but also conversions.

In this blog post, we’ll cover a detailed guide on how to perform a website design audit, the complete web design audit checklist, and the best website design audit services or agencies.

What is a Website Design Audit?

A website design audit is the process of evaluating a website’s overall design with various aspects including branding, design aesthetics, performance, user experience, and so on.

The key purpose of this audit is to ensure that the website is up to the mark with the latest trends — not just in terms of design aesthetics but also performance.

A comprehensive website design may include the following parameters:

• Branding elements
• Multimedia elements
• Interactive elements
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
• User experience (UX) & accessibility
• Responsiveness & mobile optimization
• Search engine optimization (SEO)

Checklist: Key Elements of Website Design Audit

Now, let’s look at all these key elements a bit more briefly:

1. Analyze the Branding Elements

• Ensure the color palette is aligned with your brand.
• Check if typography is aligned with your brand style and messaging.
• Review the overall design style to see if it’s aligned with your brand and the ideal customer’s preference.

2. Test the Interactive Elements

• Check if pop-ups are working fine, e.g., exit intent pop-up is loaded when needed.
• Ensure the newsletter signup form is placed and designed properly.
• Review the design and functionality of call-to-action (CTA) buttons.
• Check if the booking calendar widget is designed to match with branding and placed properly (if required for your business).

3. Review the Multimedia Elements 

• Check if images and graphics are used appropriately and as needed — not too many nor less, just as needed.
• Check if animations are used properly. If not used at all, check if it can be added to enhance the design.
• Check the usage of videos based on content requirements.
• Make sure all the multimedia elements are optimized without losing significant quality.

4. Assess the User Experience (UX) & Accessibility

• Check the navigation menu to see if it’s easy to use.
• Review the overall design layout to check if it covers all the sections with proper spacing.
• Assess the content readability, i.e., make sure the color contrast and font size are good for readability.
• Test page load time to ensure it’s fast enough for a smooth experience.
• Check accessibility for all users and make sure it meets the standards.

5. Analyze the Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

• Check if conversion-focused elements are used as needed, e.g., countdown timer, stock counter, comparison images, etc. — and if other elements are optimized for conversion, e.g., enticing CTA buttons.
• Check if social proof is in the right place(s).
• Make sure the key information leading to conversions is placed appropriately, e.g., FAQs, return or refund policy, etc.

Learn more: 7 Principles of Conversion Design: The Ultimate Guide

6. Assess the Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Check if there’s a usage of JavaScript and Flash in custom code, and if yes, make sure it’s optimized.
• Review the site architecture.
• Evaluate the structured data to enhance it for search engines.
• Side note: Accessibility, responsiveness, UX, and site speed also impact SEO but those aspects are covered in separate parameters.

7. Check Responsiveness & Mobile Optimization

• Test the design to see if it’s responsive and functioning properly on all devices.
• Evaluate for mobile optimization.

How to Perform a Website Design Audit

Step 1: Define the objectives & KPIs

Setting clear goals and objectives will give you direction and help emphasize what’s more critical for your business. But how do you set these goals or objectives? Ask yourself these questions:

• Why do you want to perform the audit? 
• What are the challenges in your current website performance?
• What are the goals you wish to accomplish?

For example, let’s say your website conversion rate is down. Your primary goal behind the audit is “conversion rate optimization (CRO)”, and your branding is all set. In that case, you may give more weight to the CRO parameters/elements than branding elements.

Once you’ve finalized the goals or objectives, define the KPIs to compare and measure the results before and after implementing the changes. You can cover KPIs such as:

• Bounce rate
• Average engagement time per session
• Conversion rate
• Site speed
• User feedback

Step 2: Understand your ideal customers and their journey

Ultimately, it’s the customers whom you want to deliver the best experience, right?

So, it’s important to understand your customers closely, what they expect from your brand, and how they interact with your website in an ideal scenario.

Research your buyer persona so that you can understand your ideal customers better and know their preferences and expectations from your brand. These insights could be greatly helpful in evaluating the branding and UX parameters.

Visualize the buyer's journey on your website and identify the key touchpoints. This will help emphasize the critical area. You can use a tool like Heatmap or Hotjar to analyze user behavior and make a data-driven decision.

Step 3: Evaluate the website on all the defined parameters

You must define the parameters based on your goals, objectives, customer journey, and touchpoints. We have already shared the audit checklist with you that covers the parameters to audit your website.

Start the audit evaluation of your website on those parameters. If there’s anything in the checklist that’s not applicable to your business, you can mark that parameter “NA”. 

You can also add detailed observations along with the specific numbers and other remarks explaining the issue and possible solutions.

Step 4: Derive the action items from the audit results

This is an important step in the entire process. After all, you’re performing the audit because you want to identify the areas of improvement and fix them, right?

Based on the audit observations, create a list of action items — all the things that you need to improve, change, remove, or add to your website. For example, the action items could be to install a pop-up app and create a new pop-up design.

Set a timeline and complete all the action items. You might need to hire someone who can help you with all the technical aspects if you don’t have an in-house team. For example, you can check out the top CRO experts if you need help with CRO elements.

Step 5: Measure the post-audit performance

Once all the changes or improvements are done and published on your website, monitor your website’s performance for a certain time. You may also collect feedback from users.

Go back to the objectives, goals, and KPIs and see if any improvement is observed, and if yes, to what extent. For example, if your website’s average engagement time was 1 minute 30 seconds, did it increase or decrease? And how much?

The performance metrics will give you a more robust analysis of the success of your website design audit.

Top Website Design Audit Services

1. Halo Lab

Halo Lab offers a website design audit service that not only considers your website design aesthetics but also the user experience.

Rating & Reviews: 4.9 out of 5 stars from 83 reviews on Clutch

Halo Lab’s website design audit service covers the following major aspects:

• Performance
• UI/UX
• Content
• Steps optimization

What’s amazing is that you can also book a “Free website audit” before going for a “Detailed website audit”.

2. Arounda Agency

Arounda is a digital product design agency that offers UX audit services along with a bunch of other services for web and mobile development.

Ratings & Reviews: 5 out of 5 stars from 44 reviews on Clutch

The UX audit service by Arounda includes the following aspects:

• Market research
• Competitive analysis
• Comprehensive evaluation
• User flows, interface design, usability, and accessibility.
• Defined technical error

3. EWR Digital

EWR Digital offers website design audit services along with other services such as SEO and digital marketing.

Ratings & Reviews: 5 out of 5 stars from 10 reviews on Clutch

EWR Digital’s website design audit service covers various aspects including:

• Conversion Rate Optimization
• User Experience Design
• Website Messaging
• Page Speed

4. Brucira

Brucira is a full-service design agency taking care of strategy, branding, and UX UI product design. Brucira offers a design audit service to elevate the usability and visual design of your website, mobile app, or web app.

Reviews & Ratings: 5 out of 5 stars from 3 reviews on Clutch

Brucira’s comprehensive design audit covers serval aspects including:

• Visual direction
• User experience
• Layout
• Responsiveness
• Call-to-actions (CTAs)
• Typography
• Animations
• Iconography
• Content

5. Octet Design Studio

Octet Design Studio is a UI UX design agency that helps you with usability insights to enhance your site performance.

Reviews & Ratings: 5 out of 5 stars from 28 reviews on Clutch

Here are the factors that Oclet Design Studio considers during its website design audit:

• Visual Design
• User Interface
• Interaction Design
• Content Strategy
• Accessibility
• Performance
• User Feedback

6. Tentackles

Tentackles is a UI UX design and development agency that also offers marketing services.

Reviews & Ratings: 5 out of 5 stars from 11 reviews on Clutch

Tentackles emphasizes the following areas during its website design audit:

• Usability Issues
• User Experience
• Visual Design
• Functionality

7. TheFinch Design

TheFinch Design offers a website design audit service that evaluates various aspects of your website including consistency, usability, and UX effectiveness.

Reviews & Ratings: 4.9 out of 5 stars from 7 reviews on Clutch

Here are the major steps involved in TheFinch Design’s design audit process:

• Visual Elements
• UI & User Experience (UX)
• Brand Alignment
• Device Adaptability (Responsiveness)

Note: Apart from these website design & development agencies, you can also hire freelance professionals from platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. These platforms can help you find freelancers with a wide range of pricing options.

Benefits of Website Design Audit

A website design audit can have various benefits depending on your focus and objective. Here are some of the key benefits:

• A website design audit helps enhance your website’s conversion rate.
• It smoothens the user experience for your website visitors.
• It can help you boost SEO by optimizing the key elements in the design, structure, and backend (code).
• The audit observations can provide you with areas to enhance your branding.

Final Thoughts on Website Design Audit

As an eCommerce entrepreneur, you must not take your website design lightly. Once the store is built and designed, it shouldn’t remain as it was in the beginning.

You need to implement changes and even make additions as required. Thus, you should audit your website design at regular intervals depending on your feasibility. Be proactive in finding the areas of improvement and fixing them.

To learn more about eCommerce marketing strategies and best practices, check out more resources on GemPages Blog. Join the GemPages Facebook community to network and learn from like-minded entrepreneurs and experts.

FAQs about Website Design Audit