UX Audit Checklist: The 20-Point Review You Can Run Today

How to use this checklist

Work through your homepage, your main product or service page, and your checkout or sign-up page. For each of the 20 questions below, answer honestly with a yes or no. Give yourself one point for every yes.

Don't rely on memory. Actually open the pages, actually test the form, actually check the site on your phone. Most of what this checklist catches only shows up when you look properly rather than assume you already know the answer.

Set aside about 30 minutes. Longer than that and you'll start rushing the later categories, which is exactly where problems tend to hide because nobody looks that closely at error messages or keyboard navigation. Shorter than that and you're probably skimming rather than actually testing.

A worked example, so you know what "properly" looks like

Take check 12: is your CTA copy specific rather than generic? A generic pass would be glancing at the button and deciding "Submit" is probably fine because it's on every form everywhere. A proper pass means asking what the visitor actually gets by clicking it, then checking whether the button says that. "Submit" tells a visitor nothing. "Start My Free Trial" or "Get My Quote" tells them exactly what happens next and what they get out of it.

Apply that same level of scrutiny to all 20 checks and the list stops being a tick-box exercise and starts being a genuine review.

The 20 checks

Navigation

Homepage clarity

Mobile

Page speed

Form UX

CTA placement

Trust signals

Error states

Accessibility basics

Checkout and conversion path

Why these ten categories

These ten categories aren't arbitrary. They're the areas where I most consistently find issues that are both easy to spot and directly connected to whether a visitor converts, across every audit I've run for ecommerce stores and SaaS marketing sites alike.

Navigation and homepage clarity catch whether a first-time visitor understands where they are within the first few seconds. Mobile and page speed catch whether the experience actually holds up on the device most of your traffic is using. Form UX, CTA placement and checkout flow catch friction right at the point someone is trying to give you money or their details. Trust signals and error states catch the moments where hesitation turns into abandonment. Accessibility basics catch problems that affect a real proportion of your visitors and often overlap with usability for everyone else too.

None of these categories require design training to assess. That's deliberate -- this is meant to be genuinely runnable by a founder with no UX background, not a checklist that only makes sense once you already know the answer.

What your score actually means

15 to 20: You've got a solid foundation. Focus on whichever items you missed -- they're your best fixes to make first, because everything around them is already working.

Sub-total or below sits differently depending on where you are, so read the next two bands with your specific score in mind.

10 to 14: This is where I see most early-stage ecommerce stores and SaaS sites land. Nothing is catastrophically broken, but there's enough friction stacked up that it's very likely costing you a meaningful share of conversions. Worth working through methodically rather than picking fixes at random.

Under 10: There's enough going on here that a structured, prioritised approach will get you further than trying to fix everything at once off the back of a checklist. That's exactly what the DIY Toolkit or a professional audit are built to give you.

"This checklist finds the same fundamentals I check first on every paid audit. It won't catch everything -- conversion psychology and revenue-impact prioritisation take more than a checklist -- but it will tell you, honestly, whether the basics are in place."

Alice, No-Friction Lab

What this checklist won't catch

Worth being straight about the limits, because a 20-point yes/no list can only take you so far.

It won't tell you which of your failing items is actually costing you the most revenue -- that needs impact scoring, which is what the Toolkit's prioritisation matrix and a full audit's revenue-impact ranking are for. It won't catch conversion psychology issues like weak price framing or missing urgency, which are subtler than a pass/fail check. And it relies on you being objective about your own site, which is hard when you've seen it every day for months. Design blindness is real, and a checklist doesn't fix it on its own.

It also won't adapt to your specific business model. A ten-item form might be perfectly reasonable for a B2B service enquiry and completely unreasonable for an ecommerce checkout. Use judgement alongside the checklist, not instead of it.

Used honestly, though, this is exactly the same starting point I use on every paid engagement. It's a genuinely useful diagnostic, not a watered-down version of one.