Your product is live. Users are signing up. But something’s off.

Conversion rates are lower than expected. Support tickets keep piling up with the same complaints. Users drop off at weird points in the flow. You’re not sure why.

Maybe you think it’s a marketing problem. Or the wrong audience. Or just “early-stage growing pains.”

But here’s what we see when founders come to us with these symptoms: it’s usually a UX problem. And most of the time, it’s been hiding in plain sight.

What a UX audit actually is

“The question of an audit always comes up during redesign. It all depends on the project’s key goals. If a client only needs a reskin, then sure, a full audit is a waste of money. Why analyze UX and overall flows if nothing’s going to change? But when the goal of redesign is improving the existing product, you can’t do it without an audit,” Ruslan Vashchenko, our Head of Design, explains.

Here’s the logic behind his assertion: If you want improvements, you already know something isn’t working. If something isn’t working, you might be losing revenue. You want to fix that chain.

But to repair something, you need to know what exactly you’re repairing: what problems exist and how to solve them. That’s what a UX audit is for – a systematic analysis of how your product actually works for users, not how you think it works (and sometimes, there’s a world of difference between the two).

During a UX audit, we examine every flow, every interaction, every decision point. We compare it against industry standards, Nielsen’s heuristics, and accessibility guidelines. If you have analytics, we analyze user behaviour patterns. If you don’t, we run usability testing ourselves – small sessions with actual users to see where they struggle.

Why? Because we want our recommendations grounded in real user pain points, not just general best practices. This way, we identify what’s not working, what’s confusing, and what’s holding your product back.

Simply put: if you want to improve your product, we need to know what’s broken first.

The problems you can’t see (until a UX audit reveals them)

Most UX issues don’t announce themselves. They accumulate slowly, almost invisibly, until they’ve cost you thousands of users.

Ruslan describes the pattern we see constantly: “In most cases, it’s navigation through the platform and the location of various features. Usually, most products develop without a clear roadmap, and features get layered on top of each other situationally. After a few years, it becomes very difficult to navigate the product. The main danger is that this happens very gradually and almost unnoticeably: here they added a switch, there a button, there they stuffed another modal window inside a modal window, and so on.”

Think about it: you launched with a clean, simple product. Then you added a feature. Then another. Then a settings panel. Then integrations. Each addition made sense at the time. But nobody stepped back to look at the whole picture.

Now your users are lost. And they’re leaving.

The good news? This is fixable – and you’re not alone in facing it. Here’s what we found in real products thanks to a thorough UX audit before we redesigned them:

KlickEx: When complexity kills conversion

KlickEx serves Pacific Island communities sending money home – a critical service for families separated by thousands of miles. The product worked. People used it. But conversion rates were painfully low.

The UX audit revealed why:

• Money transfer flows had critical usability barriers. What should have been a 3-step process felt like navigating a maze. Design inconsistencies confused users at different stages – one screen looked nothing like the next.
• Mobile performance was a disaster in regions with limited connectivity. Slow load times. Broken interactions. For users in remote Pacific areas with spotty internet, the experience was frustrating enough to abandon mid-transaction.
• Compliance requirements made everything clunky. KYC verification, regulatory checks – all necessary, but implemented in ways that killed the user experience instead of blending into it.

Summary: Users needed the service but struggled to complete basic tasks. Money that should have been transferred sat stuck in incomplete flows.

Isora: When developers build the interface

Isora is a governance and compliance platform trusted by over 20% of major U.S. research universities. Mission-critical work. Serious users. A product that genuinely mattered.

It also started as a developer-built interface. And it showed. But…

• The design was cluttered and unintuitive. Basic UX principles? Missing. The interface overwhelmed non-technical users – compliance officers, administrators, auditors – who needed to navigate complex processes but had no patience for bad design.
• Navigation patterns were outdated. Getting from Point A to Point B required too many clicks, too many nested menus, too much guesswork.
• Visual and functional shortcomings were everywhere. Inconsistent buttons. Confusing labels. Workflows that made sense to the developer who built them but baffled everyone else.

Summary: A powerful platform that users dreaded opening. Efficiency tanked because the interface fought them at every turn.

CreatorLand: When your users can’t find what they came for

CreatorLand built a networking platform for Gen Z creators – portfolio showcases, brand collaborations, the works. On the surface, it looked fine. Clean design. Modern aesthetic. All the features a creator could want.

But when we ran the UX audit, we found the real story:

• The navigation was broken. Creators struggled to build portfolios because features were scattered. The pathway between creators and brands? Fragmented and confusing – collaboration was harder than it should be.
• The interface didn’t match how Gen Z actually works. Multi-hyphenate creators couldn’t easily showcase their diverse talents. Opportunity discovery was buried. The platform assumed a workflow that didn’t exist in reality.

Summary: Users had the tools but couldn’t use them effectively. Engagement suffered because the product got in its own way.

All three products were live. All three had users. But none of them were reaching their potential – because their UX was silently sabotaging growth.

And as you can see, a simple cosmetic reskin wouldn’t have helped here. That’s the smart conclusion that was made thanks to a well-executed UX audit.

Does a UX audit save you money? Spoiler: No. It does way more valuable things

You might expect us to sell the UX audit as a money-saving tool. We won’t. Because that’s not quite how it works.

Ruslan is direct about this: “I wouldn’t say an audit directly saves money. A general audit helps you understand what’s not working and shows potential ways to solve the problems you’ve found. After the audit and implementing those solutions, you get clarity on whether your hypotheses worked. You can also run targeted audits on specific product modules, like onboarding, for example. But that’s really about testing hypotheses: We’re doing it this way now. Based on metrics, feedback, or user behaviour, we see a problem here. If we change A, B, and C, we expect to see growth in metrics X, Y, and Z.”

Translation: an audit doesn’t make development cheaper. It makes it focused.

Without a UX audit, you’re guessing. You might redesign the homepage when the real problem is in onboarding. You might add features when the issue is navigation. You’re spending money, but not on the right things.

With a UX audit, you know exactly what to fix and why. You prioritize based on impact, not hunches. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

KlickEx: Turning complexity into conversions

The audit showed users were struggling with complex money transfer flows and an inconsistent design. We didn’t just make it prettier, we made it work.

What we did:

• Simplified workflows with clear step-by-step guidance
• Mobile-first design – critical for Pacific Island workers who only have their phones to send earnings home
• Transparent pricing calculator showing exact fees upfront

Result:

• 30%+ conversion increase in key flows (35.3% in “Add Money,” 30.7% in “Money Transfer”)
• 54.8% completion rate on mobile
• 3,000 new users monthly, reaching 53,000 active users

Isora: Turning user frustration into industry recognition

We came in for what the client thought was a reskin. The audit revealed they needed a full redesign. We showed them the data – and then fixed the UX.

What we did:

• Modern, user-centered design replacing the developer-built interface
• Simplified workflows for non-technical users
• Redesigned information architecture addressing all identified pain points

Result:

• 2x increase in user efficiency
• 50% reduced time-to-market
• Nominated for the UX Design Award
• The partnership is still ongoing

CreatorLand: Turning insights into engagement

After our UX audit revealed navigation and collaboration issues, we didn’t redesign everything – we focused on what mattered.

What we did:

• Streamlined information architecture emphasizing intuitive “creator journeys”
• Clear access to primary features without overwhelming users
• Integrated analytics (competitors lacked this entirely)
• Built-in messaging instead of forcing users to external tools

Result:

• Increased creator engagement
• 2x faster selection process for brands finding creators
• Mobile experience that actually worked

None of these outcomes happens without the audit. You can’t fix what you can’t see.

When to do a UX audit (and when to skip it)

Timing matters. Run an audit too early, and you’re analyzing assumptions instead of real user behaviour. Run it too late, and you’ve already lost users you could have kept.

So when’s the right moment?

Ruslan is direct about timing: “Post-launch and beyond. When the product is already working, and there’s data: user feedback, support requests, metrics. Based on this data, we can understand what to do next. There’s no point doing an audit if even the target audience hasn’t seen the product.”

Makes sense. You can’t audit user behaviour if there are no users yet.

For most founders reading this, you’re in the first category. Your product is live. You have users. And something isn’t working the way you hoped.

That’s exactly when an audit delivers the highest ROI.

What Phenomenon’s UX audit includes

Here’s what you get when we audit your product:

1. Metrics analysis (if data is available)

We analyze:

• User activation rates
• Retention
• Conversion of key flows
• Time spent on key flows
• Payment conversion

Ruslan notes: “Not all products that come to us have a complete set of this data. If you have some metrics, we’ll rely on them alongside the product’s information architecture, accessibility standards, and Nielsen’s heuristics. If data is sparse, we run our own usability study to see how real users navigate and interact with your product.“

2. Information architecture analysis

Is your product’s structure logical? Can users find what they need? Or are features buried three levels deep because nobody planned the hierarchy?rt5bv

3. Overall UI analysis

We examine visual consistency, accessibility compliance, and whether the interface actually helps users accomplish their goals.

4. User interviews (if possible)

If you have access to users, we talk to them. Real feedback beats assumptions every time.

5. Flow analysis (the big one)

We map every user flow and evaluate it against:

• Nielsen’s heuristics
• Industry best practices
• User feedback that’s been collected

This is where we find the problems. The friction points. The places users get stuck or give up.

6. Final report

We categorize all problems, write hypotheses for each one, and explain what we think will fix it and why.

7. Prioritization

Using a High Impact / Low Effort matrix, we prioritize which hypotheses to tackle first. You don’t have to fix everything at once. You start with what moves the needle.

At the end, you have a clear roadmap, an evidence-based plan for what to fix and in what order.

Why spend 4–8% now to protect the other 92%?

If users are dropping off, if conversion is low, if support is overwhelmed – your product is sending you a message. Something’s broken.

You have two choices: ignore it and keep iterating blindly, or run a UX audit, see exactly what’s wrong, and fix it strategically.

We’ve done this for platforms serving creators, communities sending money home, universities managing compliance, and many more. Every time, the audit revealed problems the client didn’t see coming – and fixing them transformed the product.

Ruslan puts it plainly: “Spending money on redesign without clear goals is a waste. If you have goals for your redesign, you can’t hit them without a UX audit. The audit uncovers the problems that need solving – the hypotheses that’ll get you to your goals. And look, it’s only 40–80 hours. That’s nothing next to a 1,000+ hour redesign. Put in this small amount upfront, and you’re building a solid foundation for everything that follows.”

Here’s what that actually means:

• UX audit: 40–80 hours
• Full redesign: 1,000+ hours

You’re spending 4–8% of your budget to make sure the other 92–96% gets spent on the right things.

That’s not an expense. That’s the smartest investment you can make.

Because your success is our success. If your product doesn’t convert because we missed the real problems, we failed you. And we don’t do failure.

Let’s find out what’s holding your product back – start here.