What are the top 30 UX improvements for your Digital Subscriptions sales site? How does your UX performance compare to Slack, Adobe, Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, Norton, Netflix?
Based on the findings from Baymard Institute’s 71,000+ hours of User Experience (UX) research, Baymard will conduct a UX audit of the sales site for your SaaS or Digital Subscription service.
The in-depth digital subscription sales site UX audit will be based on 250 weighted UX parameters uncovered during our large-scale UX testing of both SaaS and Digital Subscriptions sites. The UX audit will provide you with:
Learn more about our SaaS & Digital Subscriptions UX audit analysis, deliverables, and costs in the 5 sections below:
“We have recently tested some of your recommendations for the Avast checkout and got some great wins!”
A ‘Full-Site SaaS & Digital Subscriptions UX audit’ includes:
A full UX analysis and assessment of your desktop and mobile sales website; including the homepage, navigation, feature pages, industry & case-study pages, plan matrix, signup & payment flow — conducted by lead researchers at Baymard Institute, utilizing our 71,000+ hours of large-scale UX research.
6 detailed UX scorecards with a total of 250 UX performance scoring parameters, used for direct UX performance comparison against 20 SaaS & Digital Subscriptions websites. In addition, you will also get a UX comparison to 93 general top-grossing US and European e-commerce sites, to benchmark how your site stacks up to general user expectations.
The auditors will write a detailed 120+ page report with 30 suggestions for UX improvement. Each suggestion includes a description of the identified user experience issue along with a proposed solution and 2–4 best practice examples from other B2B and B2C SaaS & Digital Subscriptions sales sites.
A 2-hour video conference where we go over the audit results with you and your team, to discuss the findings and suggestions for improvements.
3 follow-up calls with your UX auditor within four months of delivering the audit findings. Useful for feedback on any redesigns you create, a light review of prototypes, follow-up questions from your teams, etc.
A full-site UX audit includes 4 months of complimentary access to a Baymard Premium ‘Medium’ plan with full access to Baymard’s 71,000+ hours of UX research findings.
“I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for the amazing work on this audit. You should know that this has been very well received internally and there’s a lot of excitement around adopting the ideas you have shared.”
The audit will cover the following areas of your online user experience:
Homepage — The homepage structure, design, carousels, personalization, and promotions.
Category Taxonomy — The overall site structure and taxonomy, includes the common issue of “over-categorization”, information architecture, overly deep or shallow categories, industry-specific naming, etc.
Main Navigation — The main e-commerce navigation design, mega drop-down menus, product navigation and its visual hierarchy, courtesy non-product navigation, etc.
Site-Wide Layout — Site-wide layouts, footers, newsletter dialogs, ad positioning, etc.
“Features”-pages — The layout and structure of “feature” pages, how feature sub-pages are interlinked, how they collectively “sell” the service, etc.
Feature Descriptions — The language and jargon used to describe the features, etc.
Visuals and Video - What visuals are present, where they are present, how visuals and descriptions intersect, along with a series of usability pitfalls when if using videos on sales pages.
“Case Study/Customers”-pages — When to use “case study” pages on the sales site (sometimes also referred to as “Customers” pages), how to structure them, when to sub-section the case study collections into sub-pages, and how to interlink the rest of the sales sites with the case study pages. (Audited if applicable)
“Industry”-pages — When and how to use “industry” pages to describe the use cases from a particulars industry’s viewpoint. (Audited if applicable)
“App Integrations”-pages — When and how to “App Integrations” pages, when to create a directory of integrations pages, making it searchable, how to interlink the rest of the sales site with the app integrations pages. (Audited if applicable)
Plan Matrix layout — the length of the matrix (amount of features included, incl. feature truncation), the width of the matrix (how 5+ different plans are displayed), the overall layout and structure of the matrix, etc.
Feature’s in the matrix — feature descriptions and explanations, how the plan matrix is interlinked with the rest of the sales site, increasing feature scannability, etc.
Page interactions — how pages are interlinked, integrated FAQs and live chat on the plan matrix page, pricing and CTAs, collapsible sections, etc.
Overall layout and flow — The overall process and layout for the account signup flow.
Customer Information fields — design, flow, and usability of fields such as email, customer name, address, billing address, phone, international addresses, address auto-detection techniques, privacy concerns, etc.
Payment Flow & Methods (includes Third-Party) — The payment methods interface, how to integrate and display third-party payment options, international currencies, coupon codes, etc.
Credit Card Form — The credit card field design and its validation logic and formatting, along with the expiration date, security code, and cardholder name inputs, field sequence, card icons, and card type selection.
Order Review — Review step design, “Place Order” button placement, and necessary review data, along with its editing flow.
Order Confirmation & E-Mail (to the extent it’s possible to access this) — The information and actions needed on the order confirmation page, along with the order confirmation e-mail.
User Attention & Interactions — Load indicators, feedback on user actions, the use of overlays, feedback requests, introduction of site-specific features, and embedded content from third-parties.
Validation Errors & Data Persistence — How to design and position error messages, how to word them, and persisting data in non-secure and secure form fields, along with inline validation.
Field Labels & Microcopy — Marking optional and required fields, field label position, tooltips, and optimizing microcopy and descriptions.
Field Design & Input Optimization — How to match the type of interface with the input type, drop-downs and radio button implementations, input masks and character restrictions, custom designed input fields, etc. Incl. intelligent form features, including inferred selections, pre-fills, auto-fills, and personalization of the checkout flow.
Mobile Basics — Content and structure of mobile site vs. desktop site, size and spacing of hit areas, multiple hit-areas within the same visual element, font-sizes, landscape mode, bugs and quirks vulnerable to the mobile platform, auto-zoom, etc.
Mobile Site Homepage & Main Navigation — Main navigation design and logic, double-hit area issues, homepage structure and design, auto-rotating carousels, etc.
Mobile “Features” Pages - The design and content of the mobile “Features”-, “Case Study”-, “Integrations”-, and “Industry”- pages,
Mobile Sign-Up & Checkout UX — Minimizing number of fields, form field label placement in smartphone portrait and landscape modes, inline labels, floating labels, grouping checkout info for mobile overview, field context, location detection, touch keyboard auto-correct, touched optimized keyboards, auto-capitalization, etc.
In addition to auditing your site UX and comparing it to 20 large B2C and B2B SaaS and subscription sites in our benchmark database (Zoom, Slack, Basecamp, Firebase, Xero, ZenDesk, Box, Shopify, Adobe, Microsoft Teams, Netflix, HBO Max, Apple Music, Dropbox, Norton, McAfee, Avast, Grammarly, Evernote, and Code Academy), we can also expand the project scope to include a custom competitive UX audit against any local or direct competitor(s) you’d like. This is available for sites in most countries and languages.
“I’m reviewing the report this morning and I am delighted. The recommendations are detailed and our resulting actions are clear. I’m excited to share this with the rest of the team!”
Most commonly, UX audit services are used by:
“Baymard has been a great resource in helping us improve the customer experience. We are continually applying these best practices to our sites.”
A SaaS & Digital Subscriptions UX audit (desktop and mobile web) across all 6 audit focus areas cost $12,700 (USD).
A ‘SaaS & Digital Subscriptions UX audit’ includes:
A full UX review and analysis by Baymard’s team of UX researchers of both your desktop web and mobile web sales site.
A 120+ page audit report with 30 prioritized suggestions for UX improvements. Each explain the identified UX issue, the suggested change, and show 2–4 best practice implementation examples from other SaaS & Digital Subscriptions sites.
6 detailed UX performance scorecards with a total of 250 review parameters, and with performance comparison against 20 leading B2B and B2C SaaS & Digital Subscriptions sites.
A 2-hour video conference with you and your team to discuss the audit results.
3 follow-up calls with your UX auditor. Useful for follow-up questions or feedback on your redesigns or prototypes.
Reach out below to discuss your needs or request a UX audit of your SaaS & Digital Subscriptions sales site. (PS client audits are strictly confidential and will not be included in Baymard’s public UX benchmark database).
Talk to UX auditor Laura about your goals and discuss Baymard’s UX research methodology.
Subscriptions Audit Price
$12,700
17-25 workdays
Refund Policy: In the event that we’re unable to provide 30 suggestions for improvements we’ll still complete the audit and leave it up to you if you want a refund.
A typical full site audit takes around 17-25 work days - depending on time of year, project scope and auditor availability.
All client-specific audits and UX scorecards are strictly confidential; they are not included in Baymard’s public benchmark databases or shared with anyone else (NDA is possible).
As Baymard does not offer any kind of web design or programming services or sell e-commerce technology, the UX audit will always be a completely unbiased analysis of your site, and not an indirect “sales pitch” for other services. At Baymard our specialization is the UX audit.
“I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for the amazing work on this audit. You should know that this has been very well received internally and there’s a lot of excitement around adopting the ideas you have shared.”
“We have recently tested some of your recommendations for the Avast checkout and got some great wins!”
“Thank you for the UX audit presentation, it was FANTASTIC. People here are quite pleased and amazed by the amount of work that was put into this.”
“Excellent tool – looking forward to using it with our other sites and prototypes as they’re developed.”
“I’m an avid user of your reports and recommendations. I have leveraged your articles and findings for my previous B2B work at Grainger, B2C work at Ulta, and now I’m at Hyatt. Thanks”
“We’ve received some awesome feedback from our Merchant Success team as well as our merchants about all of the UX Audits we’ve had thus far with Baymard. Thank you so much to you and your team for all of your hard work. The pilot with Baymard has been going fantastic and I’m really excited with all that we’re learning! You have an amazing platform, team and super helpful data base for us to work with.”
“Some time ago we purchased the Ecommerce Homepage & Category report - the research and insights are extremely useful to us and help us a lot in our work!”
“Baymard’s training provides the proper language and sound evidence to understand what it mean to create a truly usable interface in the ecommerce business.”
“Baymard has helped so much: UX was a brand new role at my company when I was hired. I was researching, planning, and designing UX & UI for 5 different products, all by myself. After showing real-world, bottom-line results from a UX centered approach to our products, we have expanded our UX team and greatly improved our UX-to-product process. Baymard’s research database was a critical component to my (and my company’s) success. Thank you!”
“I’m reviewing the report this morning and I am delighted. The recommendations are detailed and our resulting actions are clear. I’m excited to share this with the rest of the team!”
“Thank you very much for the 7 usability audits of our country-specific sites. The audits have provided us with specific and actionable advice, allowed us to prioritize development resources , and enabled us to compare UX performance between the 7 different country-specific sites, and against State of the Art implementations. The audit itself is done really professionally and the recommendations contain actionable and insightful information.”
“Intelligent, consumer-focused insights that are clear and actionable. The team in the room really loved the way the Baymard Institute highlighted the optimizations in the various user experience elements (copy, layout, design, calls-to-action…), from the perspective of consumer struggles. Baymard’s Usability research really complements our other existing research tools.”
“It is immensely valuable having a thorough, independent study to help validate my work and in particular, help facilitate buy-off from stakeholders. Baymard has quickly become one of my most trusted resources for the UX/UI field.”
“I wanted to begin by saying how incredibly impressed I have been all this week with both the degree/depth of content shared on UX/UI best practices for eCommerce experiences as well as specifically your presentation skills. This has by far been one of the most valuable conferences/workshops I have ever attended in my professional career.”
“My team loves Baymard Premium and it has become a valuable tool for us. We consult with a number of large brands and manage their eComm (both DTC and eRetail) and your data is amazing, it gives us all the testing data without having to run the tests ourselves. Our clients appreciate us having the depth of knowledge Baymard provides, we’ve used Baymard data multiple times to defend our recommendations and to inform our designs.”
“First off, thank you. This was the most engrossed I’ve ever been in a 2-hour meeting. This [audit presentation] was incredibly insightful and very helpful. Many, many thanks.”
“We found the audits extremely helpful and validated a number of changes we have been wanting to make or are in the process of making, so thank again for all the great insights.”
“This was indeed very helpful guidance and a very well-documented roadmap for us to fix, validate, organize, collectively understand and continually improve our ecommerce foundation.”
“Every day of the training was accompanied by a list of discoveries that I could directly design solutions for into my site. I was able to bring these designed solutions home with me and kickoff multiple optimization projects that I am confident will affect the site in a positive way, both in usability and conversion. Being able to have Christian and Lauryn from Baymard Institute look over my shoulder and give me feedback and direction based on the 28,000 hours of independent research that their organization has done was incredibly helpful.”
“Thanks for everything. The audit was extremely useful, I think we have gained valuable insight.”
“Thanks for this audit and your good work. This was exactly what I was aiming for. Also thanks for the very, very professional presentation, and answering all our countless questions. Very good work.”
“I just wanted to thank you guys for all of the time that you’ve put into this, and for a great presentation. We don’t have anyone at the company that has formal UX/UI experience, so being able to tap into Baymard’s resources/expertise is an immediate win for us. Some of the things you pointed out, we’ve already identified as areas for improvement (which was validating), but a lot of the recommendations are things that we hadn’t identified and are for the most part immediately actionable.”
“I have found the M-Commerce and E-Commerce reports very useful, thank you!”
“Wanted to thank you again for the checkout audit and walking us through the process. It was super helpful and we can’t wait to apply the changes to our checkout for a better user experience.”
“Baymard produces some of the most relevant and actionable user experience research available. They really understand the needs of UX and Product Management professionals, and their deep experience in the eCommerce field allows them to offer sophisticated, nuanced insights.”
“I really like the work Baymard Institute does around usability. Their articles often get my Ecom gears turning.”
“Thank you very much for your time and the presentation. It was super useful, comprehensive and most importantly very concrete, so that we know exactly what to do next. We will definitely recommend you to other divisions within Bosch.”
“[Wanted to] say thanks, because we had a meeting yesterday everyone’s really excited about this. It’s really got everyone motivated and interested in what we’re going to tackle next so it’s been really invaluable, I think.”
“The recommendations in our Checkout Usability Audit were awesome - well prioritized, actionable and helped us focus on what to optimize. This audit, along with the e-Commerce Usability Reports & Benchmark Databases, are my go-to resources for thorough, insightful information. Thank you!”
“Baymard’s UX for ecommerce workshop is an intense week of data-driven, applied research which will give you the tools and insight to vastly improve your ecommerce user experience and sales performance. Having attended this course with the intent to make informed designs and decisions when revising the core areas of our website this year, my confidence has increased threefold. Christian demonstrated a deep understanding of the subject areas covered and great expertise while conducting this training which allowed for personalised guidance towards real world projects which is invaluable.”
“Here at Boxed we’re a small team who are BIG fans of your research. Your services have been immensely helpful to us as a small UX/UI team, and we are so excited to have a new version of our own product page going into development later this month.”
“These reports are fabulous. The content is exactly what our team has been looking for, and so much more! Extremely helpful, thank you!”
“Wow, this is great! Just reviewed it with the team. It’s a huge help and we’re excited to fix these issues.”
“Baymard recently did a UX audit of our new e-commerce Website. We were very pleased with the results. The report and live review of the findings validated our approach to user experience, and also, we learned a lot about best practices for e-commerce UX. We believe Baymard’s work will help us increase revenue and user satisfaction.”
“The Baymard team has been a delight to work with on the JohnLewis digital platform audit for 2020. They responded to the brief very well, have been very accessible for ongoing clarification and queries and Rebecca was excellent in the recent team share, articulately presenting findings in an engaging walk through with the wider team which will really support driving engagement and a robust response. Many thanks for all the effort and focus folks.”
“Baymard has been a great resource in helping us improve the customer experience. We are continually applying these best practices to our sites.”
“A great presentation, and the results were very eye-opening. It’s really helpful.”
“The Baymard E-commerce Usability reports have proven to be a valuable resource for UX teams within our organisation both at group and operating company level. The reports contain precise, actionable insights and recommendations which are backed up by extensive research and data. The severity and frequency ratings have helped our development teams to prioritise which areas to improve first. The most recent improvements we’ve recommended from the Ecommerce Search report have been extremely well received by senior stakeholders and have already been fed into the backlog.”
“Thanks again for the great work on our checkout project. Our whole group found it incredibly insightful. We’re applying the suggestions you provided to our new checkout design which launches at the end of the month! One of my colleagues was also interested in your group’s competitive expertise with regard to responsive web and native apps.”
“I can confirm that the list was fully implemented. Every time we put up a change we either A/B test or we watch it very closely to determine that it’s doing better and not the opposite. So I can confirm that these fixes have improved our checkout. Thanks for everything.”
“Damn. The reports that the @Baymard folks do cost money, but they’re worth it.”
“I can not tell you how much help your benchmark studies have been for our company, e-commerce and UX teams. We have used and continue to use these reports for baseline benchmarks as we build test protocols or eye tracking scripts etc. in lab.”
“Thank you. This was an excellent piece of work: professional, thorough, and actionable for the team. We’re very happy with the work Baymard has done for us so far, and I hope we’ll have the chance to work together again on future projects.”
“This is very, very useful! Let me check what we can do to improve the usability in the Smashing Shop.”
“We implemented “E-Commerce Checkout Usability” guide for all our stores and saw doubling of checkout conversion rates. We will soon work on implementation of other usability guidelines. Thank you Christian and Jamie for your excellent work!”
“The walkthrough today was great. The report was very, very well done and loaded with great opportunities for us to improve our business. I wanted to again express my appreciation for working with us on such a condensed time frame last month. You and your team have been amazing partners to us and we very much appreciate the work, expertise and partnership.”
“We like what we are reviewing from the audit - great analysis and feedback.”
“We have worked with a number of third party companies before on various projects/audits, and I can certainly say that working with Baymard was not only a pleasure; but you delivered on time; to the level of depth we wanted; addressing important issues; and answering all our questions; and you did all this for a great price. A big THANK YOU on behalf of N11.”
“Baymard’s real-user research is invaluable for ecommerce marketers. It leaves no stone unturned, and with the guideline checklists provided, you’ll be well equipped to optimize your mobile presence.”
“The Baymard reports have proven to be an invaluable resource for us. Comprehensive, pragmatic and actionable. We have redesigned our checkout process and made changes to our category pages based on usability guidelines in the reports.”
“The Baymard Institute have some seriously good reports on ecommerce usability, design, and best practices: http://t.co/cuxO3VwiVe”
“Worth every dollar. It’s well done, good looking and simply very useful.”
“I love the information that you guys provide and have bought a couple of reports. Love them.”
“Really good rundown on all these thing. I definitely think we got a lot of value out of it, and we’re excited to get it all in and do some A/B testing on this.”
“We implemented the majority of your checkout recommendations and a/b tested most of them, in every instance your recommendation provided the catalyst for us to make an improvement. Your approach and methodology has proven itself to be valuable. Now, when a new report comes out from your office we just buy it right away.”
“This is without a doubt the most important eCommerce training I’ve ever done. Knowing the right approach for converting the average user puts us massively ahead of the competition.”
“We implemented this [1 of the 15 audit suggestions] and since then we’ve had a 20% increase in warranties added and a pretty healthy average order increase because of that. That was a great suggestion, it hit our bottom line immediately.”
“after benchmarking checkouts for a couple of hours last week… this resource is magical http://t.co/ISKOfyGE”
“Truly a great learning experience about almost every aspect of eCommerce and the steps you need to take to improve the shopping experience for your users. Everyone working with eCommerce should attend this course. Absolutely worth the investment!”
“Absolutely superb training! I’m genuinely impressed with how much I learned in 5 days. I would highly recommend this training to anyone who wants to learn how to create state of art e-commerce user experiences.”
“We implemented these guidelines on a client’s website and our e-commerce conversion rate increased 18.7% across the board. Most importantly our mobile conversions increased from 0.89% to 1.9% – we doubled our mobile revenue.”
“We’ve been consuming the Baymard Institute reports for a while but the in-house workshop was really the thing that connected all the dots around ecommerce UX together for us. Now our entire team has a common base of understanding, a language, and clear quantified evidence of the importance of common UX guidelines and pitfalls. Reading a report is one thing but actually forcing yourself to apply findings on a real world case was the greatest takeaway from the workshop. UX is often an tricky science subject to a lot of emotional bias and gut feeling. Not so much anymore.”
“A big thanks to you and the Baymard team for such an informative and valuable session. The Ace Hardware team truly appreciated the Baymard teams feedback, diligence and the overall presentation. We are looking forward to using the excellent information provided to improve the acehardware.com user journey.”
“I just wanted to let you know that I think your site is the best thousand bucks I’ve ever spent. I wish I found you years ago.”
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