A UX audit is a structured expert review of your product that finds where users struggle and why. Here is what it includes, what it costs in time, and when to run one.
A UX audit is a structured review of your product by an experienced designer, measured against usability principles, analytics and your business goals. The output is a prioritised list of the problems costing you users, with evidence for each one and a recommended fix. At Studio Yapa we run audits as a fixed scope engagement, usually completed within two weeks.
It is the highest leverage two weeks most product teams can buy, because it converts vague worry into a ranked plan.
What does a UX audit actually include?
A proper audit combines three kinds of evidence, not just opinion:
- Heuristic review. Every core flow walked by a senior designer against established usability principles, recorded screen by screen.
- Analytics review. Funnel data, drop off points and rage clicks, so findings are weighted by how many users each problem touches.
- Context review. Your goals, your support tickets and your onboarding emails, because many UX problems live outside the interface.
Each finding gets a severity, an effort estimate and a recommendation. The result reads like a repair manual, not an essay.
An opinion says the page feels confusing. An audit says step three loses 40% of new users and shows you why.
When should you get a UX audit?
The timing signals are reliable. Get an audit when:
- Signups are healthy but activation or retention is flat.
- Support keeps answering the same questions about the same screens.
- The team is planning a redesign and cannot agree what is actually broken.
- A new feature shipped and the metric it targeted did not move.
- You have inherited a product and need a map before you change anything.
The wrong time is right after a major release, before real usage data exists. Audits feed on evidence.
One finding at a time: evidence, severity, fix.
What happens after the audit?
The findings split into three lanes. Quick wins your own team can ship in days. Structural fixes that need design work. And strategic questions that deserve research before anyone touches the interface. We hand over the full board either way. Some clients fix everything internally; others ask us to design the fixes ourselves. Both are good outcomes, because the plan is the product.
Common questions
How long does a UX audit take? Ten working days for most products. Large multi platform products can take three weeks.
Do you need access to our analytics? It helps a lot. Findings backed by your own funnel data are harder to argue with internally.
Is an audit worth it before a full redesign? Especially then. It tells you which parts of the product are earning their keep, so the redesign does not throw away what already works.
A UX audit is one of the services we offer at Studio Yapa, a product design studio in London. If your metrics are telling you something is wrong but not where, book a discovery call.