Evaluation of ux audit

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The UX Audit I have performed provides a comprehensive evaluation of the website 'Free People'. 

The Audit highlighted several issues with the websites UI design as well as accessibility issues. From my research and data I found that the sign up and leads/links from social media websites were low, as well as accessibility issues with the colour contrast being too light/pale for visually impaired users and size of text being too small.  The recommendations include focusing on accessibility issues by creating an accessibility app to solve the UI design issues, ultimately keeping the website functional and on brand, through altering the colour contrast and the text size. creating a more stream lined process to be easier for the user.; through having large buttons to click on. This in turn will improve the user experience when navigating around the Free People website and in turn should raise conversion rates and accessibility to a wider audience.

The goals and objectives of the UX Audit is to have its mission statement at its core, through selling 'creative/individual' style 'quality' clothing that is 'affordable'. Linking with other accounts through signing up and creating an account and incorporating a social well being side that encourages female empowerment, as well highlighting diversity and inclusion. 

I have done accessibility testing for the website 'Free People', which also suggests ways to improve the issues. Having done a heuristic evaluation, I have found usability issues and areas for improvement. 

The methodologies I have used to conduct my research and testing are, User testing, user interviews, surveys, secondary research such as collecting data from similarweb.com to find out more in depth information and provide a competitor analysis. I also used A/B testing to compare the features on the accessibility app ( slider or on/off button) and digital card sorting activity online (catergorise the features under the most suitable headings)  and ultimately test the re-design prototype.

Key findings from my UX Audit were the size of the text, and the colour contrast as well as the style of font in the heading being unsuitable as a heading. The strengths of the website currently are that they have a high traffic of users linking with Pinterest from their website which highlights  a high level of users going to the website for inspiration for creating mood boards for style ideas etc. A high level of users also search for the website directly as apposed to going through social media. 

The strengths and weaknesses of the accessibility app I have produced is the colour of it is a deeper shade of pink to be more user friendly to visually impaired users, further to this it solves the issue by creating a colour contrast button with the added filter/feature which can alter the intensity of the colour of the website through either dragging a slider or with one click of a large button. It also solves the issue of text size being too small, again through the click of a button or an 'On/Off' slider. If I had more time I would've looked at the other areas of accessibility, however I wanted to keep my objectives clear and concise to provide the best user experience, for visually impaired users in particular.

To test which one would be most feasible and provide the most impact,  I have done an A/B test to compare the slider against the on/off button. I also have created an open card sorting activity on Maze to organise the architecture of the app through setting a task to organise the features and place them under the most suitable heading in the users opinion. I will then evaluate the results and implement this into the design as appropriate.

In conclusion, The accessibility app I have designed is simple, sleek as well as clear and concise in function. It meets the user goals and objectives that I set out to achieve, by improving accessibility through not only altering colour and size of text but also other accessibility issues such as reading and voice activation etc.. If I had more time on this project I would explore the social media links to Pinterest where a high level of traffic of the 'Free People' users navigate to. I think there is a gap in the market there to tap into and improve the social media conversion rate through linking Facebook and Instagram from Pinterest for example. The importance of User Experience design on websites, apps and digital products as a whole is fundamental in the success rates of the websites and increasing not only the traffic volume but the quality of time spent on the site to improve the user overall experience.