A client once proudly came to me to review his “Quora-like app but with live video chat”. He did all the right things: build a prototype, test with users, iterate… but his users weren’t sticking around. With just a quick look, I noticed that many design decisions were poorly made: a confusing navigation, non-standard icons, poor labeling, accessibility issues… the list went on. “Why didn’t you come to me earlier?” I asked. “We could have resolved these issues months ago.”

If an expert hasn’t reviewed an interface first, time and money may be wasted doing user testing. Apps and websites are likely to fail usability guidelines, accessibility guidelines, best practices, industry standards, and current trends; these are all issues that a User Experience Designer could catch before testing.

UX reviews help increase conversions, brand loyalty, user satisfaction, and reach more customer markets. In this post, you’ll learn 5 benefits of conducting a User Experience (UX) Review.

1. UX Reviews have a wide scope

UX reviews help teams detect major and minor problems, which allows user tests to focus on the more obscure problems. In a UX review, User Experience designers analyze the major aspects of a product: each important page and all the key elements. UX issues surface, and the expert ranks these issues based on severity and redesign priority, using the following scale:

Cosmetic problems: not necessary to fix unless extra project resources are available.

Minor problems: give low priority. However, note that numerous minor issues add up to one bad experience.

Major problems: fix right away. Major issues disrupt a seamless flow and user interaction.

Usability Catastrophes: fix immediately. Usability catastrophes prevent users from completing tasks.

This ranking system is widely used and well researched. You can find out more at Nielsen-Norman’s website.

Usability testing alone is not enough to cover the wide range of UX issues found in early prototypes or product redesigns. This limitation occurs because usability tests need to be specific in order to generate reliable results (i.e., you can’t have test users spend endless hours doing all of your tasks). You can read about what goes into each test plan at usability.gov. User testing is typically linked with specific user interactions such as sign up, purchase a product, upload and share your video, etc. In the end, resources are wasted if test users get stuck on problems that could’ve been solved beforehand.

2. There are 30+ years of established psychology, design & usability standards

UX Designers and Researchers pull knowledge from decades of scientific research, principles, best practices, and industry trends. Experts apply this knowledge to their work every day! These types of insights are very unlikely to surface from user testing alone. Below you will find a list of some of the most important UX principles today (come back later and check em’ all out!).