Before you buy a UX audit: eight questions to ask

"UX audit" can mean an afternoon with a heuristics checklist or a month of research with real users. The price range is just as wide. Before you compare quotes, these eight questions tell you what you would actually be buying.

1. What exactly is in scope?

Ask for the list of journeys and platforms the audit covers, and what it leaves out. "The whole app" means little if it turns out to be the home screen and sign-up. A good proposal names the journeys, such as onboarding, search, checkout or support, and the platforms, such as iOS, Android or web.

2. Who does the review?

Automated tools are fast and consistent. They catch contrast failures, missing labels, broken links and slow pages. What they can't judge is whether a screen makes sense to the person using it. Ask who looks at the product by hand, how senior they are, and how much of their time the price includes.

3. Are real users involved?

An expert review finds problems an experienced designer can see. Testing with real users finds the ones they can't. Ask:

• whether people from your audience take part, and how they are recruited;
• which methods are used: five-second tests for first impressions, first-click tests for navigation, preference tests between options, live-product tests, interviews, card sorting and tree testing for structure;
• how many people take part in each.

Different questions need different methods. A proposal that uses the same method for everything is worth questioning.

4. Will they use your data?

If you have analytics, such as GA4, Hotjar, Clarity or Amplitude, an audit that reads them can tell you where people actually drop off, not only where they might. Ask whether your data is used and what access is needed. An audit can still be useful without it, but you should know which kind you're buying.

5. How are findings ranked?

A report with 150 findings in the order they were found is hard to act on. Ask how findings are prioritised. The useful answer weighs impact on users and the business against the effort to fix. The number of findings is not a measure of quality.

6. What does your team get to work from?

Screenshots with red circles explain the problem but not the fix. Ask whether the deliverable includes:

• recommended solutions;
• examples or redesigned screens for the most important fixes;
• a plan your designers and developers can put into a sprint.

Ask, too, whether someone walks the team through it.

7. Is accessibility included?

If you serve consumers in the EU, the European Accessibility Act applies to most digital products, and accessibility problems are usability problems too. Ask whether the audit checks against WCAG 2.1 AA, the current legal baseline, or already against WCAG 2.2 AA, which the updated standard moves to, and whether accessibility findings are ranked with the rest or delivered separately.

8. What happens after?

An audit is a snapshot. Ask whether there is:

• a score or baseline you can measure against next time;
• a re-test after fixes;
• a way to keep watching the product between audits.

Without one, it is hard to show that the fixes worked.

Signs to slow down

• No named journeys in the scope.
• Only automated output, presented as an expert review.
• No real users, but conclusions about what users want.
• A long report with no ranking and no fix plan.
• A price per finding, which rewards quantity over usefulness.

How we answer these questions

We built PX-RAY around this list:

• PX-RAY Scan (€990, three days): Corexi, our product experience platform, scans the product. A senior designer reviews the results and you get the ten fixes that matter most. It's a fast answer when you need one.
• PX-RAY (from €3,500, one to three weeks): every screen and flow, a PX Score, accessibility, a comparison with the competitors your users also use, and a fix plan ranked by impact. User tests grow with depth:
  • Essentials (one week): five-second and first-click tests.
  • Professional (two weeks): adds preference tests, live-product tests and a survey.
  • Enterprise (three weeks): adds moderated sessions and interviews, card sorting, tree testing and a prototype test of the fixes.

Full details are on the PX-RAY page.