Traffic without conversions is an expensive problem. Before adding more ad budget or publishing more blog posts, the most impactful work is usually fixing what's already broken in the user experience. A UX audit systematically examines your website through a user's eyes, uncovering friction points that analytics alone can't explain — analytics tells you where users left, not why. These 27 questions are organised into 6 categories and can be completed in a structured review session of 3–5 hours.
Navigation and Information Architecture
Navigation problems are invisible to website owners who know the product, and glaring to every new visitor. These five questions expose the gaps.
1. Can a first-time visitor find your main service or product within 5 seconds without scrolling? Test this with the "5-second test" — show your homepage to someone unfamiliar with your business, hide it after 5 seconds, then ask what the site does and what they'd do next. The answers reveal whether your positioning is clear or just clear to you.
2. Is your navigation menu under 7 items? More than 7 choices at the top level creates decision paralysis. This is observable in bounce rate: sites with 8+ nav items typically show higher immediate bounces than those with 5–6, because users can't quickly identify where to go and leave instead of choosing.
3. Do you have a clear "back to top" or persistent navigation on long-scroll pages? Users who scroll 80% down a 2,000-word page shouldn't need to manually scroll back to reach the navigation. A sticky nav bar or a floating "back to top" button removes this friction.
4. On mobile, does the hamburger menu open immediately and show all critical links? A delayed open (over 300ms), links that require a second tap to expand, or a menu that doesn't include the CTA all leak conversions from mobile visitors.
5. Is your search function prominent if your site has 20 or more pages? For content-rich sites or e-commerce, a buried or absent search function forces users to navigate manually — many won't bother.
Value Proposition and Messaging
The most technically perfect website fails if the messaging doesn't immediately communicate why a visitor should stay. These five questions examine the words, not the visuals.
6. Does your above-the-fold section answer three questions in one sentence: what you offer, who it's for, and why it's different? If your headline is your company name and tagline only, it's answering none of these questions for a cold visitor.
7. Is your headline about the customer's outcome rather than your process? "Grow your Kerala business online" addresses what the customer gets. "Full-service digital marketing agency" addresses what you do. The outcome-oriented headline typically outperforms the process headline in A/B tests because it connects to the visitor's goal, not yours.
8. Are testimonials and case studies specific or generic? "Great service, highly recommend!" communicates nothing measurable. "Organic traffic increased 340% in 6 months — from 800 to 3,100 monthly visitors" is verifiable and persuasive. Check every testimonial on your site and count how many include a specific result.
9. Does your content address the specific objections your sales team hears most often? If prospects regularly ask "How long does it take?" or "Do you work with businesses in our city?" and those questions aren't answered on your key landing pages, you're creating unnecessary friction for every visitor who has the same question.
10. Is pricing visible or reachable within 2 clicks? Hidden pricing increases bounce rate substantially among Indian SMB audiences who compare multiple vendors before making contact. Even a "starting from ₹15,000" figure filters unqualified leads and pre-qualifies serious ones — eliminating both is not a neutral choice.
Form and CTA Design
Forms are where conversions happen or die. These five questions cover the most common form-related failures.
11. Is every form field necessary? Each additional field reduces form completion by roughly 10% based on collected A/B test data across multiple studies. Audit every field: if the information isn't used in the first follow-up action, remove the field.
12. Are form error messages specific or generic? "Invalid input" tells the user nothing. "Enter a 10-digit mobile number without spaces or dashes" tells them exactly what to fix. Specific error messages reduce form abandonment on the error step by 20–40%.
13. Does your primary CTA repeat at the bottom of long pages? A visitor who reads your entire service page and reaches the bottom is a highly qualified lead. If there's no CTA at the bottom, you're sending them back to the top or to the exit.
14. Is your CTA button visually distinct from every other element on the page? The CTA button should be the single most visually prominent interactive element. If it uses the same color as a secondary button, a border, or a background block, it loses its signal function. Test by squinting at your page — the CTA should still be identifiable at reduced visual clarity.
15. Is WhatsApp contact available alongside your email forms? For Indian SME audiences, WhatsApp conversion rates on contact CTAs are 3–5 times higher than email form submissions. This is not a minor improvement — for many Kerala service businesses, WhatsApp is the primary conversion channel.
Mobile Experience
With over 53% of Indian web traffic coming from mobile devices, mobile experience failures are conversion failures at scale.
16. Do all tap targets meet the 44×44px minimum size? Tap targets smaller than 44px cause mis-taps, especially on older screens. Google's mobile usability report in Search Console flags this — check it if you haven't recently.
17. Does the site load within 3 seconds on a 4G connection? Test this with Chrome DevTools throttled to "Fast 4G" — this simulates the median Indian mobile user's connection quality. Loading beyond 3 seconds results in measurable drop-off.
18. Are form inputs using the correct input types? Using type="tel" for phone number fields triggers the numeric keypad on mobile. Using type="email" adds the @ symbol to the keyboard. These small details reduce friction enough to lift form completion rates, and they take minutes to fix.
19. Is all body text readable without zooming? Minimum 16px font size on mobile. Anything smaller forces users to pinch-zoom — many won't. They'll leave.
20. Do modal popups have a clearly visible and functional close button on small screens? A 14×14px X in the corner of a 375px screen is not accessible. If your popups don't close easily on mobile, they're conversion killers for your highest-intent mobile visitors.
Trust Signals and Social Proof
Indian users, particularly B2B decision-makers, validate legitimacy through signals that differ from Western markets. These four questions target the specific trust signals that move Indian audiences.
21. Is there visible proof of legitimacy on every service page? A physical address, GST number, MSME registration number, and a landline or mobile number that people can call. Indian users specifically look for these before contacting a business they haven't worked with before. A website with no physical address signals unverifiability.
22. Are testimonials attributed to real people with photos, roles, and company names? "A happy customer from Kochi" is not a testimonial — it's a placeholder. Attributed testimonials (name, photo, job title, company) carry substantially more persuasive weight, especially for B2B services where the buyer needs to justify the decision to someone else.
23. Is your SSL certificate active and visible? The padlock is especially important on any page containing a form. Users who notice a missing SSL indicator on a contact page will frequently abandon rather than submit their phone number. Check your certificate expiry date — expired SSL certificates show browser warnings that destroy conversion immediately.
24. Are case studies and portfolio items linked directly from relevant service pages? A portfolio section buried under an "About" menu item is accessed by very few visitors. Case studies placed inline in service pages — where the visitor is actively evaluating whether to hire you — are read by people in buying mode.
Page Speed and Performance
Speed is a conversion variable, not just an SEO variable. These four questions address the performance factors most commonly degrading conversion rates for Kerala business websites.
25. What is your Google PageSpeed Insights mobile score? A score below 50 on mobile is urgent — it directly affects both conversion rate and Google ranking. The Core Web Vitals — Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, Interaction to Next Paint — are the specific metrics Google uses for ranking decisions.
26. Are images served in WebP format at the correct display dimensions? A 2,000px wide image displayed at 400px wastes bandwidth on a ratio of 5:1. Tools like Squoosh convert images to WebP in the browser for free. For a WordPress site, the Imagify or ShortPixel plugin handles this automatically.
27. Is there a Content Delivery Network serving your assets? For Indian users, Cloudflare's free plan routes traffic through a Mumbai point of presence. The latency difference between a Cloudflare-fronted site and a single-server host for a visitor in Kerala is 200–500ms on mobile. At 3G speeds, that's the difference between a page that loads and one that times out.
How to Prioritise UX Fixes After the Audit
Not every fix deserves equal urgency. After answering the 27 questions, rate each identified problem on two axes: severity (how much does this hurt conversion on a 1–5 scale) and effort (how difficult is it to fix, also 1–5). Plot them mentally in a 2×2 grid.
Low effort and high severity: fix this week. These are the wins that pay for the audit time immediately. High effort and high severity: plan a dedicated sprint. Low effort and low severity: batch into your next routine update cycle. High effort and low severity: deprioritise indefinitely — other work will generate more return.
For Kerala businesses specifically, three fixes consistently land in the "fix this week" quadrant regardless of industry: making mobile tap targets meet the 44px minimum, adding a WhatsApp CTA to every service page, and making pricing (or a pricing signal) visible within 2 clicks. These three address the most common conversion blockers in the Indian SME context — and none of them requires a design overhaul.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should I run a UX audit?
A full 27-question audit every 6–12 months, plus a focused review after any significant change: new service pages, a redesigned homepage, an added product category, or a sudden drop in conversion rate that analytics can't explain. The 27-question review takes 3–5 hours to work through carefully.
For ongoing monitoring between full audits: Hotjar's free plan (up to 35 daily sessions) provides heatmaps and session recordings. Check it monthly and look specifically for rage clicks (rapid repeated clicking on an element, indicating frustration) and dead clicks (clicking on something that isn't interactive). Google Analytics 4's Funnel Exploration report identifies the exact page where users drop out of a conversion funnel — review it weekly for any high-traffic landing page running paid traffic.
What is the cheapest way to get genuine user feedback on my website?
UserTesting.com charges approximately $49 per session (roughly ₹4,100 at current rates) and delivers a video recording of a real user navigating your site while thinking aloud. Five sessions expose approximately 80% of your usability issues — this is Nielsen's "magic number of 5" finding, documented across dozens of usability studies. For most websites, five sessions are enough to identify the highest-priority problems.
A cheaper alternative that works well: recruit 5 existing customers or willing colleagues with a ₹500 Amazon voucher as incentive. Ask them to screen-record their session using Loom (free) or OBS (free) while navigating to a specific goal — "find the contact page and submit an enquiry" or "find the price of the SEO service." Watch the recordings without interrupting or guiding them. Every moment of hesitation, backtracking, or re-reading reveals a friction point your team is blind to from familiarity.
Our website gets traffic but almost zero enquiries. What's the most likely culprit?
For Indian business websites, this pattern points to one of three causes in the vast majority of cases. First: no visible call to action on mobile. The CTA may be perfectly placed on desktop but below the fold or too small to tap on a 375px screen. Open your site on an actual phone — not browser DevTools — and check whether a first-time visitor can see and tap your primary CTA without scrolling or zooming.
Second: no WhatsApp contact option. Indian users, particularly in the ₹5,000–50,000 B2B service range, strongly prefer WhatsApp for initial contact over email forms. An email-only contact page loses a significant portion of otherwise qualified leads who won't fill a form but would send a WhatsApp message in 20 seconds.
Third: no pricing visibility. Indian SME decision-makers typically compare 3–5 vendors before making contact. Without a price anchor — even "projects start from ₹20,000" — they can't quickly evaluate fit and often move to a competitor whose pricing is visible. Fix all three before running any other audit work. If traffic is predominantly from informational keywords (people reading a blog post, not searching for a service), no amount of UX improvement will generate service enquiries — that's a content and SEO strategy issue, and it sits outside what a UX audit can fix.