UX Audit Services for Software Products
A UX audit that separates observed friction from design opinion.
Diagnose one live product journey through heuristic review, analytics, support evidence, session recordings where consent permits, accessibility checks, and representative usability research. RaftLabs delivers traceable findings, severity, confidence, recommendations, and a validation plan. An audit identifies and prioritises risk; it does not guarantee conversion, retention, accessibility conformance, or implementation results.
Bring the problem, the current workflow, or the existing code. We reply with a practical next step within one business day.
The brief
Start with what is not working.
Good software decisions begin with the constraint, not a list of features or a preferred technology.
Do analytics show where users leave while the team still cannot explain the behaviour or agree what to fix first?
Is a redesign being proposed from visual preference without task evidence, affected users, severity, technical context, or a validation plan?
Plain answer
A UX audit combines expert review with available product evidence to identify and prioritise usability problems in a live journey. RaftLabs reviews heuristics, analytics, support themes, recordings where permitted, accessibility, and representative usability sessions, then links each finding to evidence, severity, confidence, recommendation, and validation. Focused audits start around $3,000 and take two to three weeks.
The funnel shows the drop. It does not explain the hesitation.
Forty percent of users leave one step. A recording shows repeated taps near an inactive control. Support tickets mention verification, while engineering suspects latency. Any one signal can be misleading. The audit connects the task, interface, behaviour, content, system response, and user context before recommending a fix.
The finding should be inspectable by someone who did not attend the research session.
Engagement facts
- starting point for one focused journey
- $3K
- Indicative scope, fixed after a scoping call
- typical focused audit window
- 2-3 weeks
- Access and participant readiness affect timing
- from evidence to recommended validation
- 1 record
- Every finding carries confidence and limits
RaftLabs has direct product-design and delivery cases, including a booking-platform redesign associated with sevenfold growth in self check-ins. That result followed a broader product and operational change, so an audit cannot claim sole causation or promise the same outcome. Audit value is first measured by decision quality, prioritisation, and whether subsequent changes are tested credibly.
An audit helps when evidence can change the plan
A live journey has measurable friction, repeated support themes, usability concern, or accessibility risk and the team needs priorities.
Product, design, engineering, support, analytics, and subject-matter owners can provide access and act on findings.
The team accepts that the audit may recommend instrumentation, content, product, operational, or technical work rather than a visual redesign.
The product has not been built and the need is product discovery, prototype testing, or new-product design.
The team already knows the specific problem and needs design or engineering implementation rather than diagnosis.
The expectation is a compliance certificate or guaranteed improvement in conversion, retention, satisfaction, support volume, or accessibility.
Audit versus redesign or experimentation
An audit identifies likely causes, evidence, consequence, and priority. A redesign creates and tests the interface response. An experiment estimates the effect of a defined change under controlled conditions. Analytics implementation improves the data available to all three. Combining them without clear boundaries can make an attractive redesign look like a validated diagnosis.
Decision guide
Choose the next step the evidence supports
| Engagement | Best when | Primary output |
|---|---|---|
| UX audit | A live product shows friction but causes and priority are uncertain | Traceable findings, severity, recommendations, and validation plan |
| Targeted redesign | Evidence identifies the journey and problem that needs resolution | Tested flow, UI, components, states, and implementation support |
| Product experiment | A specific change and measurable causal question are ready | Test design, guardrails, result, and decision |
| Product discovery | The audience, problem, value, or first release remains uncertain | Evidence-backed build, buy, test, defer, or stop decision |
Scope one task and its surrounding system
The audit follows one critical task from entry to completion or recovery, including the content, permissions, data, latency, handoffs, support, and next steps around it. It samples adjacent navigation and consistency where those affect the task. A whole-product claim requires whole-product coverage, which is a different scope.
Scope
A focused UX audit
- 01
Journey, baseline, and evidence inventory
User groups, task, entry points, expected outcome, funnel or task measures, support themes, previous research, releases, devices, known constraints, missing instrumentation, and assumptions needing confirmation.
- 02
Heuristic and state review
Information architecture, terminology, hierarchy, feedback, consistency, error prevention, recovery, permissions, loading, empty and failure states, responsive behaviour, content clarity, trust, and fit between interface and operation.
- 03
Behavioural and qualitative evidence
Analytics segments, event quality, funnels, paths, recordings where lawful and consented, search terms, feedback, tickets, interviews, usability tasks, observations, counter-evidence, and source limitations.
- 04
Accessibility sampling
Keyboard, focus, structure, labels, forms, errors, contrast, zoom, motion, touch targets, content, and assistive-technology checks for the scoped journey. This is not a certification or complete conformance audit unless explicitly agreed.
- 05
Prioritised decision record
Finding, affected user and task, evidence, consequence, frequency where known, severity, confidence, recommendation, example, dependency, effort context, instrumentation, validation, owner, and accepted deferral reason.
Trace every recommendation back to observable evidence
From suspected friction to testable recommendation
- Phase 101
Define journey and evidence
Set users, tasks, product context, suspected friction, baseline, available analytics, recordings, support data, accessibility needs, technical constraints, decisions, owners, and acceptance.
- Phase 202
Inspect behaviour and interface
Review heuristics, task flows, content, states, analytics, recordings where approved, support themes, accessibility, device behaviour, errors, permissions, and implementation reality.
- Phase 303
Test the highest-risk findings
Run appropriately scoped representative usability sessions or evidence checks, distinguish observed problems from hypotheses, and record affected users, consequence, frequency, confidence, and limitations.
- Phase 404
Prioritise and hand over
Deliver traceable findings, severity rationale, recommendations, examples, effort and dependency context, quick corrections, validation plan, instrumentation gaps, and an implementation review path.
Risk
What can turn an audit into confident guesswork
- Heuristics are treated as user evidence
- Expert principles identify plausible risk. Behavioural data and representative research test whether, where, and for whom that risk affects the task.
- Session recordings are watched without purpose
- Define segments and questions first, minimise sensitive capture, confirm consent and lawful use, restrict access, and record sample bias and technical limitations.
- Severity mixes user harm with implementation preference
- State affected task, consequence, frequency where known, reach, recoverability, evidence, confidence, and business or accessibility risk before assigning priority.
- A recommendation is treated as a proven fix
- Describe the mechanism and evidence, then define prototype, usability, release, or experiment validation. An expert proposal remains a hypothesis until tested.
Scope and price
A focused UX audit starts at $3,000.
Start with one live journey, baseline, heuristic review, available behavioural evidence, selected accessibility checks, scoped usability research, prioritised findings, and validation.
This is an indicative starting point, not a quote or a guarantee of conversion, retention, satisfaction, support reduction, accessibility conformance, compliance, or implementation outcome. Findings carry evidence and limits.
Starting investment
Starts at $3,000
A focused audit usually takes 2 to 3 weeks. Several roles, platforms, languages, external recruitment, broad accessibility coverage, or full-product review add work.
Findings remain traceable
The audit stands alone
Related product design and measurement services
- 01
UX and UI Design
Design and support implementation of the journeys selected after diagnosis.
- 02
Product Discovery
Resolve broader product, user, workflow, and first-release uncertainty.
- 03
Prototype Development
Test one proposed design or workflow direction before production.
- 04
Data Analytics
Improve event, funnel, product, and operational measurement when evidence quality is the constraint.
Work with us
Bring the live journey everyone agrees feels wrong.
We will define the task, inspect the evidence, test the riskiest explanation, and hand over priorities your team can verify.
- Scope and cost agreed before work starts. No surprises. No obligation.
- Working prototype within 3 weeks of kickoff.
- Pay by milestone. You see progress before each invoice.
- 60-day post-launch warranty. Bug fixes, UI tweaks, and deployment support. No retainer.
- All conversations are NDA-protected.
Common questions
A focused audit covers one critical journey, user and task definition, heuristic review, available analytics and support evidence, recordings where appropriate and permitted, accessibility checks, representative usability research where useful, prioritised findings, severity and confidence, recommendations, examples, instrumentation gaps, and a validation plan. Scope follows the decision, not a fixed checklist.
A design review may provide expert feedback on interface quality. A UX audit connects expert review to available behavioural, qualitative, accessibility, technical, and operational evidence, then records confidence and limitations. It diagnoses and prioritises. A redesign resolves selected findings in screens and components and is scoped separately after the evidence is understood.
There is no universal number. It depends on the decision, user groups, task variability, risk, recruitment quality, study method, and how much evidence already exists. A focused qualitative round may use a small representative sample to expose patterns, but it cannot estimate population rates. We state the sample, method, limitations, and next test.
A focused audit starts around $3,000 for one journey, heuristic review, available analytics and support evidence, selected accessibility checks, a small agreed research component, prioritised findings, and handover. Several roles, platforms, languages, external recruitment, broad accessibility coverage, complex analytics, or full-product review add scope.
A focused audit usually takes 2 to 3 weeks after access, baseline data, product context, participants, and owner availability are ready. The team can implement findings internally or scope design support separately. Changes should be released with instrumentation and guardrails so usability, conversion, support, retention, and accessibility hypotheses are tested rather than assumed.