Boost Your Mobile App's Success: 6 Steps to Conduct a Product & UX Audit
Building a successful mobile app is a challenging task and one that demands a significant investment of time, effort, and resources. Unfortunately, it doesn't end there. The mobile world is constantly evolving, with new features and restrictions imposed by Apple and Google, and ever-changing UX standards. Mobile product teams must stay up-to-date to keep their product engaging and useful for their customers. With so much going on, it's easy to get lost in building new features without evaluating how each development and bug will affect the most critical customer flows and overall app UX.
In my experience of over 10 years working on mobile apps, I have witnessed teams get trapped in a vicious cycle of fixing bugs and adding features without taking a step back and just learn about how their apps work. Over time, this can lead to significant problems, with legacy features and issues compounding into one another, and resources shifting without a clear roadmap. That's why I firmly believe that every mobile product team should conduct a mobile app audit every couple of years to ensure their app meets top customer needs and use cases.
First and foremost, mobile app audits are a vital tool for understanding how your app works. Most teams don't have the full context and knowledge of how their apps work and why they work the way they do. Furthermore, app audits help you gain insights into your app's usability, user experience, and overall effectiveness. A comprehensive audit can identify areas for improvement, show you where you're exceeding customer expectations, and, most importantly, where you're not meeting customer expectations and help you build a roadmap for future development and improvements. Here's how I conduct my mobile app audits.
Here are six steps for conducting a comprehensive mobile app audit:
Research the product: Determine the primary goals of the mobile app. Read user reviews, articles, release notes, etc. Write out ideal flows for the app without looking at how it works today.
Gather data on current usage: Collect qualitative and quantitative data on the app's usage. Figure out the primary acquisition and engagement channels and document top flows for both new and existing users.
Document the most important flows based on the data: Divide the flows by new user versus existing users and document them. We work with you to document all the most critical flows to ensure that we capture how your customers use your product.
Go through all the flows: Use both Android and iOS devices to go through all the flows. Take screenshots, make a user flow diagram, and a journey map. Use diagramming tools to help you communicate across various levels of altitude.
Identify strengths and weaknesses: Evaluate the app based on its user experience, user interface, features, and functionalities. From a product perspective, list out areas where the app works well and areas where it may not be meeting customer expectations. Don't focus on granular or nit-picky details.
Create a summary report: Review the results and write a summary with insights and issues discovered along with a ranked list of suggested improvements with their hypothesized impact.
At a high level, these steps will provide you with important insights to evaluate your app and to have a thoughtful discussion about its future. Because your app is always changing, it's important to conduct mobile app audits every couple of years. Remember, mobile app audits are like a health check-up or physical for your app. You have to keep doing them to learn about your rapidly evolving body and environment.
In conclusion, mobile app audits are an invaluable tool for improving the overall performance of your mobile app. By taking the time to evaluate your app, you can gain a better understanding of its usability, user experience, and effectiveness. With these insights, you can create a roadmap for improvement and ensure that your mobile app remains engaging and useful for your customers.