Ever clicked on a website and felt lost? Maybe the buttons made no sense, or the content felt outdated. That’s bad UX content. And it’s costing businesses real money.
Take this: When Google changed a simple button from "Add Card" to "Get Started," Android Pay saw a 12% increase in clicks. A tiny tweak, a massive difference.
A UX content audit helps you find and fix these issues before they frustrate users. It’s about clarity, consistency, and ensuring every piece of content serves a purpose.
At Eleken product design agency, we've spent years conducting UX audits, testing different approaches, and learning what works and doesn’t. Now, we’re sharing those insights with you.
In this guide, you’ll get a step-by-step breakdown of how to conduct a UX content audit, plus a free checklist to make the process smoother. If you want to learn more about what makes UX audits unique and why they need a specialist’s touch, check out our video below.
What is a UX content audit?
A UX content audit is a structured process where you review, catalog, and analyze everything, from button text to help docs. The goal is to improve clarity, usability, and alignment with user needs.
Not all audits are the same. Some teams do a deep dive, evaluating every single piece of content. Others focus on specific problem areas, like onboarding flows, FAQs, or checkout pages. If time is tight, even a quick sample audit can reveal patterns and insights without getting lost in the details. Now, let’s explore the key types of audits and how they fit different needs.
Key types of audits
Different situations call for different types of audits. Here’s how they break down:
- Full audit: The all-you-can-eat buffet. Every page, button, tooltip, and microcopy gets reviewed. This is ideal for major redesigns or when content is out of control.
- Partial audit: A focused review of a specific area, like your help center, landing pages, or product onboarding. Think of it as a “quality check” for high-impact sections.
- Content sample audit: Instead of analyzing everything, you take a small, representative sample to spot trends. If you find recurring issues, chances are they exist elsewhere, too. It’s like taste-testing a dish before serving the whole meal.
At its core, a UX content audit is a reality check. Is your content guiding users or confusing them? Is your messaging consistent, accessible, and effective? If not, conducting a UX audit will help you find weak spots and fix them before they frustrate users or worse, drive them away.
When and why should you conduct a UX content audit?
Confusing microcopy, buried information, and inconsistent messaging can frustrate even the most patient user. A UX content audit helps you spot gaps, fix inconsistencies, and ensure your content aligns with psychological needs in design, making interactions clearer, smoother, and more intuitive.
But when should you actually do one? Here are a few telltale signs:
- You’re redesigning a website or app. A fresh look means fresh content decisions. What stays? What gets cut? A website content audit helps you figure it out before you end up with a Frankenstein-like mix of old and new.
- Your information architecture is a maze. If users keep clicking around aimlessly, struggling to find what they need, your content structure probably needs a rethink. An audit reveals weak spots and helps simplify navigation.
- Your content has aged. If your FAQs mention a feature discontinued three years ago or your CTAs still say, "Download our iOS 9 app," it’s time to clean house.
- Accessibility and mobile users are an afterthought. If your content doesn’t work well on small screens or fails basic accessibility checks, an audit can help you streamline for clarity, usability, and inclusivity.
Why it’s worth the effort
A well-done content audit is about making content work harder for both users and your business. It helps:
✔ Improve user experience to make content clearer and easier to navigate.
✔ Maintain brand consistency to ensure tone, UI/UX terminology, and messaging align.
✔ Uncover content gaps and outdated information before they confuse.
✔ Guide future content strategy with data-driven insights.
Whether doing a full redesign or just suspecting your content is causing friction, an audit is a powerful tool to bring back clarity, usability, and UX strategy. And the best part? Once you do it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.
To make the process easier, let’s examine the best tools and templates for streamlining your UX content audit.
Tools and templates for UX content audits
A good UX content audit starts with the right tools. Sure, you could wing it, but having the right tools (and maybe a step-by-step guide) saves time and frustration.
Must-have tools for a UX content audit
A content audit has two sides: tracking information and understanding the user experience. Some tools for UX audits help you organize data, while others give you a visual way to analyze how content appears on a screen. Here’s what to use and when:
- Spreadsheets (Google Sheets, Airtable). It's best for structured tracking. Use them to log content, word counts, URLs, metadata, and key issues. Bonus: conditional formatting can highlight problem areas at a glance. Use this to create a structured content inventory.
- Figma. Your go-to for visual documentation. Need to flag messy layouts or cluttered microcopy? Drop a comment directly on the design. Screenshots in a spreadsheet just don’t cut it sometimes. When tracking content isn’t enough, Figma helps you see how it looks in context. It is great for teams who need to collaborate visually. Here is an example of an audit the Eleken team did in Figma:
- Screaming Frog. If you’re auditing a large website, don’t waste hours clicking through hundreds of pages (unless you enjoy unnecessary suffering). For a comprehensive web content audit, Screaming Frog is a game-changer. It automatically crawls your site, pulls metadata, and gathers content details. When you need a fast, data-driven snapshot of your entire site’s content structure, this tool does the heavy lifting.
- CMS Integrations (WordPress, Contentful, etc.). Pulling content inventory directly from your CMS can speed things up. If your CMS supports it, pull content data directly instead of copying and pasting. This can streamline audits for blogs, documentation sites, or any platform with much-structured content.
Free templates to save you time
We know audits can feel overwhelming. You don‘t have to go through an SEO or content audit process without a compass. There are plenty of free content audit templates to guide you if you’re unsure of where to start:
- Spreadsheets to track content, flag issues, and prioritize fixes. If you’re working with structured data (like a list of landing pages or blog posts), this will keep everything organized. For example, you can use this free downloadable template from HubSpot.
- Figma templates to mark up UI screens and note UX issues in context. If you need to show how confusing microcopy impacts the user flow, this is the way to do it.
Content audit templates take the guesswork out of organizing and evaluating your content. Use them to spot gaps, clean up outdated info, and structure everything. But if you prefer a hands-on approach, you can conduct an audit independently.
Step-by-step guide to conducting a UX content audit
A UX content audit can seem daunting, but breaking it into steps makes it manageable. Here’s how to do a content audit effectively.
Step 1: Preparation
Before you dive into a UX content audit, take a step back. What are you trying to fix? Are you cleaning up a chaotic website, improving accessibility, or ensuring your microcopy sounds human? A clear goal will keep you from getting lost in the weeds.
- Define your goals and scope
Not every audit needs to dissect every word on your site. Sometimes, it’s about focusing on what matters most, like onboarding flows or vague error messages (because "Something went wrong" helps no one).
Start with a UX research plan. Define what you’re measuring and, more importantly, why it matters.
For example, in a recent UX audit for our client, BookPeep, we mapped out our product’s flows in Figma, keeping usability heuristics in mind. We flagged issues, added quick notes, and outlined key fixes, a simple approach that made a huge impact.
Here’s a look at part of an audit we did:
Such a quick audit is a lifesaver when you're up against a deadline and need to jumpstart your app’s redesign fast. It’s a great starting point for a larger redesign, especially if it’s primarily for your reference.
However, it’s not the best for team-wide discussions. The fast format and brief explanations might leave others more confused than convinced. If you need stakeholder buy-in, consider a clearer, more structured report.
- Identify the team and assign roles
UX designer responsibilities can encompass a range of tasks, from conducting research and usability testing to actively participating in every step of the UI/UX design process. But audits are easier (and less overwhelming) when you share the workload. Who’s doing what?
Content strategists, UX designers, and researchers all bring valuable perspectives. If you’re solo, no worries. Just pace yourself.
Tip: If you’re working with a team, assign someone to track content inventory, another to analyze UX and tone, and someone else to document recommendations.
- Choose the right tools and content audit template
Your audit setup should make life easier, not harder. Here’s what works best:
- Spreadsheets (Google Sheets, Airtable) for cataloging content.
- Figma is used to annotate screens and highlight UX issues.
- Screaming Frog for dealing with a massive site and an automated content crawl.
Preparation might not be the most exciting step, but trust me, it smoother the rest of the audit.
Step 2: Content inventory
Alright, it's time to roll up your sleeves and catalog everything, yes, everything. Think of this step as taking an inventory of your digital house. You wouldn’t organize your kitchen without knowing what’s in the fridge, right? The same logic applies here.
Creating compelling content is only half the challenge in capturing and retaining users' attention. It must also be readable and legible. Readability tips can help you enhance user engagement. Start by gathering every piece of content users interact with. That means:
- Text: Headings, body copy, CTAs, form labels. If words are involved, they’re on the list.
- Visuals: Images, icons, infographics. Anything that communicates meaning.
- Metadata: Tags, categories, descriptions. It's essential for search and navigation.
- UX-specific elements: Tooltips, error messages, placeholders. The small stuff that can make or break a user’s experience.
Pro tip: If your content is scattered across different platforms (website, product UI, email templates), create separate tabs in your spreadsheet for each type. Below, you’ll find a great content inventory example:
Step 3: Content analysis
Now comes the fun (and sometimes brutal) part: figuring out what’s working and what’s not. This is where psychology in UX comes into play. Some content guides users effortlessly, while other pieces create confusion and frustration.
At this stage, you’re evaluating content against four key areas:
- Clarity and UX heuristics. Does your content guide users seamlessly, or does it leave them wandering in a maze of confusion? If a button says "Submit," but users don’t know what they’re submitting, that’s a problem. Apply basic UX principles, like visibility of system status, consistency, and user control.
- Brand voice and tone. Your content should sound like it came from the same company. If one page is casual and friendly ("Oops! Something went wrong."), while another sounds like a robot ("ERROR 403: ACCESS DENIED"), it’s time to fix the tone inconsistencies.
- Accessibility and readability. If users have to squint, zoom, or guess, your content isn’t accessible. Check for contrast issues, overly complex sentences, and jargon that only makes sense to insiders. Tools like Hemingway Editor can help simplify your writing.
- Performance and user feedback. Sometimes, the numbers tell you everything. Are users bouncing off a page quickly? Are they rage-clicking a button? Analytics and heatmaps (like Hotjar) can reveal where content fails to engage.
How do we make sense of it all? Go through your content inventory and flag anything that needs improvement. A simple color code (🔴 Red = Critical issue, 🟡 Yellow = Needs improvement, 🟢 Green = Good to go) makes it easier to see patterns.
Without competitive analysis in UX, you’re just hoarding content instead of optimizing it. This step helps you separate the content that’s helping users from the stuff that’s frustrating them.
Step 4: Recommendations and prioritization
By now, you’ve uncovered a mix of minor and downright painful content issues. But let’s be real: not everything can (or should) be fixed simultaneously. The key here is prioritization, tackling what will have the biggest impact first, then moving on to long-term improvements.
Here’s how to break it down:
🔴 Critical updates (fix these ASAP)
These are the “stop everything and fix it now” issues: broken CTAs, misleading copy, and missing or outdated content. If users can’t complete a key action because of bad content (like a checkout button that says “Proceed” but leads nowhere), that’s a top priority.
Example: If an error message just says “Something went wrong” without explaining why, users will get frustrated. Clarity here is non-negotiable.
🟡 Strategic improvements (high impact, but not urgent)
Once the fires are out, focus on SEO, engagement, and conversion improvements. This includes rewriting content to be clearer, making CTAs more persuasive, or tweaking UX microcopy to reduce friction.
Example: If a pricing page has low conversions, adjusting the content to make pricing tiers clearer could make a huge difference.
🟢 Future-proofing (long-term wins)
This is where you think ahead. How can your content be more scalable, adaptable, and easy to maintain? Future-proofing might mean creating content guidelines, streamlining design systems, or setting up a workflow for regular audits.
Example: A simple UX writing style guide could prevent future headaches if different teams are writing inconsistent microcopy. Take Mailchimp as an example of how a well-defined guide keeps content clear and cohesive.
The takeaway? Focus on impact. Not every typo or awkward sentence is an emergency, but confusing, broken, or misleading content is.
Step 5: Reporting and next steps
You did the work. You uncovered issues and prioritized fixes. Finally, it’s time to turn all that effort into action. A UX content audit isn’t useful if the insights just sit in a spreadsheet collecting digital dust. The goal here? Make your findings clear, actionable, and impossible to ignore.
Visualizing your findings
People love visuals. A wall of text about content problems? Not so much. To get buy-in from stakeholders, your report should be easy to digest and impossible to overlook. Here’s how:
- Charts and dashboards: Highlight key design audit insights, such as readability scores, content gaps, or confusing UX elements. A glance should tell the story.
- Figma annotations: If content lives within UI designs, mark problem areas directly. A screenshot with a red flag next to a confusing CTA is way more effective than a long explanation in a document.
- Before-and-after UX audit report examples: Show the impact of better content. A side-by-side comparison of an unclear vs. improved error message can explain why this work matters.
Here’s a glimpse of the audit we conducted for Photobooth: a detailed Figma report featuring before- (Problem) and after- (Solution) comparisons and in-depth comments for clarity.
Getting your team on board
Even the best recommendations can be ignored if they feel overwhelming. Break your findings into manageable next steps.
✔ Quick wins first. Low-effort, high-impact fixes should be tackled immediately. For example, fix misleading CTAs, update outdated content, or remove broken links.
✔ Larger updates in phases. If your audit revealed deeper structural issues, create a roadmap for gradual improvements. Maybe UX writers start refining key flows, while designers work on accessibility fixes.
✔ Make audits a habit. Content problems don’t fix themselves. Schedule regular mini-audits (quarterly or biannually) to keep things fresh. A little maintenance now saves a massive cleanup later.
A well-executed content audit is a tool for continuous improvement. The more regularly you do it, the smoother your UX, the clearer your content, and the happier your users will be.
Best practices for a seamless UX content audit
A UX content audit can get messy fast. But with the right approach, you can stay organized, keep your sanity, and enjoy the process (well, almost). Here’s how to perform a content audit.
Start small and focused
You don’t need to audit everything at once. If reviewing your entire site feels overwhelming, start with a high-impact area like your onboarding flow, checkout process, or help center.
Example: If users drop off during sign-up, content auditing that flows first can uncover clarity issues, confusing CTAs, or missing reassurance messaging. Fixing just that can make a measurable difference.
Use a hybrid approach
Tracking content in spreadsheets is great for metadata, structure, and categorization. But for visual issues, like weird UI spacing or cluttered microcopy, you need Figma or another design tool. Combining both methods gives you the clearest picture.
Pro tip: Use a spreadsheet to log content issues (missing info, outdated copy) and Figma to annotate UI screens with suggested improvements. This makes working together easier for designers, writers, and devs.
Bring your team into the process
A content marketing audit isn’t just a UX writer’s job. Loop in designers, developers, and product managers early. They’ll help you:
- Spot technical constraints that impact content updates.
- Understand where content lives (because not everything is easy to edit).
- Ensure that fixes are realistic and actionable instead of just sitting in a document forever.
Example: If an error message is vague ("Something went wrong") but developers tell you it’s pulling directly from a system log, you’ll need a workaround, like adding user-friendly explanations based on common failure points.
Customize templates for your needs
Every project is different, so don’t be afraid to adapt templates. Maybe you need a UX-focused audit (clarity, tone, and usability) or a marketing-driven one (SEO content audit, engagement, and conversion). Adjust your checklist to match your goals.
Pro tip: If you’re auditing for accessibility, add extra columns for contrast issues, alt text, and readability. If SEO is a priority, track meta descriptions, keyword usage, and search rankings.
Turn audits into a regular habit
Content ages fast. What made sense six months ago might be outdated now. Regular check-ins help you catch problems before they frustrate users (or, worse, cost conversions). Schedule audits quarterly or biannually to stay ahead.
A seamless content audit UX isn’t about perfection but progress. Start small, collaborate, and keep refining your approach.
Common challenges and how to overcome them
Even the best-planned content audits hit roadblocks. Frustrating? Yes. Avoidable? Also yes. Here’s how to handle the most common challenges.
1. Too much content, too little time
Feeling overwhelmed? You’re not alone. When an audit seems too big to handle, break it into manageable phases:
- Prioritize high-impact areas, like sign-up flows, checkout pages, or FAQs, before tackling lower-priority content.
- Batch your work. Instead of jumping between different types of content, audit all CTAs one day, error messages the next, and landing pages later. You’ll move faster with focused sprints.
2. Your tools are slowing you down
Spreadsheets are great, but they become laggy, soul-crushing nightmares once they become bloated. If managing content manually feels unbearable, let automation do the heavy lifting.
- For large sites. Use Screaming Frog to crawl pages and pull content data automatically. There is no need to list every page manually.
- For scattered content. Pull data directly from your CMS (like WordPress or Contentful) instead of copying and pasting.
- For UX-heavy audits. Use Figma to annotate UI elements visually. A well-placed sticky note in Figma is more effective than a 500-row spreadsheet.
Let’s take another look at Photobooth. The Eleken team organized screens into user flows, each with a clear cover and title.
Every issue gets its slide explained in plain language so non-designers can easily understand. A suggested solution follows each problem. The product team can review and discuss findings directly in Figma, making collaboration seamless.
3. Stakeholders don’t see the value
Have you ever tried convincing someone that content needs fixing only to hear, “But users will figure it out, right?” The answer is no. It is better to:
- Show the numbers. Highlight how UX content impacts conversion rates, accessibility, and SEO. A small content tweak can mean thousands in revenue. People listen when money is involved.
- Frame it as risk reduction. Poor content can confuse users, increase drop-off rates, or lead to costly support tickets. A well-structured audit prevents all of that.
Every messy, confusing, or outdated piece of content is a potential roadblock for your users. A well-done audit removes those barriers, making your content clearer, your UX smoother, and your business more successful.
UX Content Audit Checklist
Want to streamline the process and ensure no detail gets overlooked? We’ve got you covered.
Our free UX Content Audit Checklist includes everything you need for a successful audit, from the preparation phase (defining goals and gathering tools) to the content inventory, UX heuristics, readability, and accessibility checks. It also helps you establish a maintenance plan so your content stays clear, consistent, and user-friendly long after the audit is complete.
Your next steps for a better UX
A UX content audit ensures your content works for users, not against them. Whether you're fixing confusing CTAs, improving readability, or streamlining navigation, even small changes can make a big impact.
Start with a clear goal, the right tools, and a structured approach. Use our free checklist to stay on track, and don’t wait for a major redesign. Regular audits keep UX smooth and frustration low.
Ready to get started? Download the checklist and bring clarity to your content.
Need expert guidance? At Eleken, we conduct UX audits to help you uncover your product’s full potential. Contact us, and let’s make your content work better for your users.
