In UX design, there's this concept of a UX audit. The idea is this -- in an ideal situation, you would actually do user testing, have people go through the product, and figure out what actual users think about it. But that takes a long time. It can be expensive. It turns out you can get a lot of the same findings by having an evaluator go through the product using a set of heuristics to analyze the experience.

Best case scenario, you're actually testing with users. Second best is you have an expert that's not familiar with the product evaluate it. If you can't do that, then you can use someone internal and just try and be as objective as possible. But it's definitely hard to take the emotion out of the evaluation. You can do this checklist as somebody who's working on the product, but it's not ideal because you're so close to it. It's better to have somebody looking at it with fresh eyes.

In terms of order of attack, I'll usually approach this process pretty linearly. If I know the the client I'm working with has a particular concern around onboarding or a specific area, I might focus on that a little bit more. And I'll typically pair this with like a analytics review, so if I see there's some drop off points in the funnel that are really problematic, I might focus on those parts a little bit more. But typically, I do go through this from top to bottom in the marketing site, sign up, onboarding, and then upgrade.

Ideally I'm pairing this with analytics data, with user testing, with customer surveys. Usually it's best if you can kind of supplement this with other sources of of data. I'll typically do this as a quick first pass, just to get initial impressions and understand what the overall flow looks like. And then it's easier to make sense of the related analytics and research.

First up is evaluating the marketing site. Usually I'll focus on the homepage or the top one or two landing pages where people are actually arriving. And, and then I'll typically include the pricing page in there just because it's usually pretty important as part of the first experience people have on the website.

I think all of the rows are fairly important, but some are more important than others.

So, in the marketing site section, having a really clear value proposition is one of the most important things. So you may not need to necessarily show all the specific benefits on the homepage if you do a really good job of kind of summarizing the value proposition there instead. So that's the most important one.

I think the other really important one is having a a clean and well designed site. That's super important because you may have all this other content on there, but if it's hard to scan and it's a distracting design, it doesn't really matter if you have all that other stuff, because people aren't going to really see it or connect with it.

 - Issues likely preventing task completion



 - Issues likely causing user frustration



 - Outstanding UX

So if it's a one or two, those are usually usability problems. So if the page design is really distracting, it's not easily scannable, it's pretty obvious that's going cause conversion problems. So that would probably result in a one or a two.

Whereas if it's maybe a situation where the copy could be improved, it's more of a cosmetic, surface level thing, I would probably score that a three. Okay, it could probably be better. You could probably frame it in a more convincing or persuasive way.

That's how I think about the difference between a UX problem that needs to be fixed immediately and something that's more of a surface level issue. For those surface issues, there may be different ways to do it and different experiments to run, but not the same level of obvious things to fix.

If something is not a problem at all -- like let's say the value prop is super clear and that gets a high rating -- then I typically won't even put any notes or, if I do, I may just point out the positive things.

As part of a walkthrough or an evaluation, I think it's nice to include the positives and the negatives. Sometimes if you only show the negatives, it's a little bit demotivating. Maybe I'll just jot down like what worked really well. But typically the notes are more for capturing the more specific findings. Let's say, you know, the design is not super minimalist and aesthetically pleasing. You can call out what specific problems there are.

-Does it have minimal distractions?
-Is the content easy to scan?

Visitors can quickly understand who it's for, what it is, and why they should use it.

-Do the CTAs stand out visually?
-Do they reinforce value?
-Does the microcopy help reduce anxiety? (e.g., free trial, no credit card required, etc.)

-Is it clear what specific benefits the product delivers?
-Are the benefits credible (e.g., paired with features, stats, testimonials)?
-Are the benefits segmented by use case/persona?

Are there customer logos, quotes, and/or ratings/reviews?

-Is there a clear demonstration of how the product works?
-Does it include screenshots and illustrations showing the product in action?
-Does it include a video, animations, or interactive demo?

This next step is pretty specific to a SaaS product but you could modify it for different types of products. Once people do their research on the marketing side, they'll then go to the signup page. You want to make sure you're delivering a frictionless experience and reinforcing the value proposition there as well.

-No unnecessary fields
-Does the signup page offer oAuth/SSO?
-Good form UX

-Are there minimal distractions?
-Signup page hides main nav?

-Signup page showcases benefits?
-Signup page includes social proof?
-Is there a persuasive CTA?
-Is it clear how data will be used?
-Are users encouraged to signup with work email?

I'll follow whatever critical path has to happen for people to get value in the product -- that's often going step-by-step from the marketing site and then through the signup and then the onboarding experiences.

So, for example, for a product like Asana, it would be something like creating a project and sharing it for the first time. So I'll evaluate that experience as well.

Is onboarding tailored in one of these ways:
-Experienced vs. novice users?
-Persona?
-Use case?

-Can users find help if they get stuck?
-Are there useful error messages?
-Is help is offered contextually?

-Are users guided to clear aha moments?
-Does the system provide helpful defaults?
-Does the product show useful empty states?

And then I'll typically have the upgrade experience in here as well.

-Any trust signals (security badges, guarantees)?
-Does upgrade page reinforces benefits?
-Any social proof?
-Does upgrade page answer FAQs?

-Is pricing easy to understand?
-Are plans easy to compare?
-Are plan features clearly explained?

Can users experience meaningful value before being asked to pay?

-Are there clear and persuasive in-product CTAs?
-Any triggered CTAs when trials expire?

Mike Fiorillo

At flightdeck.studio, I use this checklist when evaluating clients' onboarding flows.

Onboarding evaluation checklist

Audit areas

Marketing site

Signup flow

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