UX Audit in Kyiv, Ukraine

UX Audit in Kyiv — full usability diagnosis for product teams, e-commerce, fintech and SaaS

A UX audit is a systemic check of your digital product against usability, accessibility and behavioural-analytics standards. In Kyiv, where the concentration of Tier-1 products is the highest in Ukraine (PrivatBank, monobank, Rozetka, EVA, Kyivstar, Genesis, Reface, Grammarly, hundreds of smaller SaaS teams), a quality UX audit isn't "checking if it looks pretty" — it's finding the hidden thousands of dollars leaking from your funnel every month. I'm Alex Filiuk, Senior UI/UX designer with 15 years of experience, running UX audits for Kyiv product teams and clients across the USA and EU. My portfolio at filyuk.top features 130+ projects, many of which included or were preceded by a full usability audit.

This page is a detailed reference on what a UX audit in Kyiv is, what blocks it consists of, how much it costs, how long it takes, and how findings convert into business growth. Whether you're a product team preparing for a funding round, an e-commerce site seeing high checkout drop-off, a fintech launching a mobile app, or a corporation rebuilding its internal portal — there are answers tailored to your case.

What a UX audit is — and how it differs from a "design review"

A UX audit is a methodological procedure with fixed tools, artefacts and checklists. It's not "a designer opened the site and wrote what they didn't like". It's structured work that consists of five core methods:

• Heuristic evaluation — interface review against Jakob Nielsen's 10 heuristics (visibility of system status, match between system and real world, user control and freedom, consistency and standards, error prevention, recognition rather than recall, flexibility and efficiency, aesthetic and minimalist design, help users recognise/diagnose/recover from errors, help and documentation). I add 8 extended heuristics: gestalt principles, F-pattern reading, Fitts's law, Hick's law, Miller's 7±2 rule, error-states checklist, mobile touch targets, dark patterns audit.
• Accessibility audit (WCAG 2.2 AA) — conformance to the international accessibility standard. For Kyiv products serving the EU, AA isn't optional — it's a legal requirement (European Accessibility Act, 2025–26).
• Behavioural analytics — analysis of data from Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, FullStory or Smartlook: heatmaps, session recordings, rage clicks, dead clicks, scroll depth.
• Quantitative analytics — funnel analysis in GA4 (or Mixpanel, Amplitude), drop-off points, segmentation by platform, traffic source, geography, new vs returning.
• End-to-end user scenarios — walking key product flows from the perspective of various personas (new user, returning, B2B admin, mobile user). I record each step and capture friction.

A typical "design review" produces 5–10 cosmetic recommendations. A full UX audit produces 50–150 findings with prioritisation, where the top-20 are real conversion drivers. The difference for a Kyiv business is measured in percentage points of annual revenue.

Why a UX audit is especially relevant for the Kyiv market

Kyiv is a Tier-1 market with the highest CPC in Ukraine. If you're driving traffic via Google Ads, SEO, or SMM — every user lost in the funnel is expensive. In Kyiv, the cost of an acquired B2B lead is often 2–3x that in the regions. Losing it to an unfixed UX bug isn't "less convenient" — it's a financial hole.

The second specific is product complexity. Kyiv SaaS teams sell into the USA and EU, integrate Stripe, implement GDPR-compliant onboarding, run multi-role models, multi-language interfaces (UA/EN/EU). A UX audit for such a product can't be "general" — it must account for role-based scenarios, EU accessibility requirements, international benchmarks.

The third specific is team maturity. In Kyiv your in-house designers and product managers already know Figma, Hotjar, A/B testing, NPS. An auditor can't show up with "a UX 101 lecture" — they need expert-level depth that adds new arguments and methods, not repeats fundamentals. That's the level I work at.

Nielsen's 10 heuristics — with concrete examples

Here's how each of the 10 classic heuristics works in a real Kyiv-product audit:

1. Visibility of system status. When the user clicks "Pay" — do they see a processing indicator? Or just a blank page that feels frozen?
2. Match between system and real world. Does the interface language match the audience? If your SaaS is for Kyiv-company accountants, are you using IT jargon ("deploy", "sync") instead of accounting language?
3. User control and freedom. Is there a "Back" / "Cancel" button at every step of critical flows (checkout, onboarding, KYC)? Can the user undo an accidental click?
4. Consistency and standards. Does the "Submit" button look the same across 12 different forms? Are admin and public-facing patterns consistent?
5. Error prevention. Better to prevent the error than display it. If the ZIP field accepts only 5 digits — the input mask should show that, not let the user type 6 and then yell at them.
6. Recognition rather than recall. Don't make the user remember details from previous steps. Show "Your order: product X for $50", not "Confirm order".
7. Flexibility and efficiency. For new users — simple flow. For experienced — shortcuts, bulk actions, keyboard navigation. Especially in admin panels.
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design. Is every element on the page justified by a business goal? Can it be removed without loss?
9. Help users recognise, diagnose, recover from errors. A "404" error — what is it? Where to click to fix it? Better: "Page not found. You may have been looking for [top-3 sections]".
10. Help and documentation. Is there contextual help in complex forms? Is FAQ or support easy to find?

On a real Kyiv SaaS project, the average number of violations across the 10 heuristics is 30–80 findings. Each is either an immediate drop-off or a long-term churn factor.

WCAG 2.2 AA — accessibility as a legal and market requirement

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 is the international accessibility standard adopted by W3C. Level AA is the most common for business, and it's becoming mandatory in the EU starting 2025–26 under the European Accessibility Act. For Kyiv companies selling in Poland, Germany, the UK — or planning to within 1–2 years — AA isn't optional.

The accessibility block in my audit covers:

• Contrast — text on background must be at least 4.5:1 (regular) or 3:1 (large). Tools: axe DevTools, Stark, Contrast.
• Keyboard navigation — all functionality available without a mouse. Tab indices, focus visibility, focus order, skip links, focus trap in modals.
• Screen reader testing — verification via NVDA (Windows) and VoiceOver (macOS/iOS). Semantics, ARIA attributes, alt tags, label associations.
• Color independence — information isn't conveyed by colour alone (e.g. "red fields are required" — not enough).
• Motion safety — animations respect prefers-reduced-motion.
• Form accessibility — every field with a label, error states with aria-live, autocomplete attributes.

The audit produces a violations table by WCAG criteria (e.g. 1.4.3 Contrast Minimum, 2.4.7 Focus Visible, 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value), severity, screenshots, fix recommendations. For a complete view of the standard — see the official WCAG 2.2 quick reference.

Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity — why they're must-have in 2025

A classical audit without behavioural analytics is an audit with a blindfold. You see the interface but not how real users interact with it. Hotjar (paid) and Microsoft Clarity (free) are the tools that give you that picture.

What I analyse over 1–2 weeks of working with your Clarity/Hotjar:

• Click heatmaps. Where users click on key pages. Often it turns out 30% of clicks land on elements that aren't buttons ("that's a logo, I thought it was a link to home").
• Scroll heatmaps. How far down the page the median user scrolls. If your CTA is at 80% page depth and the median scroll is 45% — you're losing most users.
• Session recordings. The most valuable. I review 50–100 sessions across key pages. I see how the user looks for a button, can't find it, goes back, tries something else, and leaves the site.
• Rage clicks. Multiple clicks at the same point — frustration indicator. Often on elements the user thought were interactive but weren't.
• Dead clicks. Clicks on non-interactive elements. Another UX-problem indicator.
• Frustration signals in Clarity. Microsoft auto-detects frustration markers — quick backs, excessive scrolling, error clicks.

If you haven't installed Clarity yet — it's free and takes 15–20 minutes. I do this for free before audit kick-off so that 2 weeks later there's enough data to analyse.

GA4 funnel analysis — exactly where the money is being lost

Google Analytics 4 isn't a "page view counter". It's an event-driven analytics tool that lets you build any custom funnel with segment filters. The GA4 block of my audit includes:

• Event audit — verifying that events are configured correctly (page_view, view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, add_payment_info, purchase for e-commerce; sign_up, login, first_action, feature_use for SaaS). On Kyiv projects I very often find that half of the events don't fire or fire twice.
• Funnel exploration — building custom funnels in Explorations. Standard examples: e-commerce checkout, SaaS onboarding, lead gen, account upgrade.
• Segmentation — drop-off by platform (mobile vs desktop), browser (Chrome vs Safari vs Firefox), traffic source (organic vs paid vs direct), geo (Kyiv vs regions vs international), recency (new vs returning).
• Cross-funnel insights — comparing flows across user types. E.g. "mobile users from Instagram drop at step 2 3x more often than desktop users from organic".

The output is a table with every drop-off point and hypotheses about causes. Hypotheses are then verified via Hotjar (why exactly there's a drop-off) and converted into actions in the roadmap.

ICE and RICE — turning 100 findings into a roadmap

The biggest failure of most UX audits is to hand the client an 80-page PDF list of problems and walk away. What's the team supposed to do with it? In what order? How much time on each? Without prioritisation an audit doesn't produce business value.

I always close the audit with a prioritised backlog in ICE or RICE format:

• ICE = Impact (1–10) × Confidence (1–10) × Ease (1–10). Score 1 to 1000. Simple, fast, works well for small/medium products. Top findings — high impact, high confidence, low effort.
• RICE = Reach × Impact × Confidence / Effort. Reach = how many users a finding will affect (homepage 100k/mo — Reach 100, settings 5k — Reach 5). More precise for scaled products.

The top-10 roadmap findings are concrete sprint tasks with hour estimates and expected impact on CR/retention. Not "make UX better", but "set autofocus on the email field in the onboarding form — 4 hours of front-end work, +2.3% conversion uplift based on session evidence".

Remediation roadmap — what you do after the audit

After report delivery you get a 1–3 sprint roadmap (2–6 weeks of your work). Structure:

• Sprint 1 — quick wins. 5–10 findings with low effort (1–4 hours), high impact. Cosmetic fixes that yield instant gains: autofocus, copy improvements, loading states.
• Sprint 2 — structural fixes. Reworking 1–3 key screens based on findings. Could be checkout flow, onboarding, dashboard.
• Sprint 3 — strategic changes. May include role-model redesign, accessibility rebuild, new pattern integration. Often flows into a separate UI/UX redesign project.

Each item with hour estimates, expected metric impact, link back to the finding in the report. The dev team sees tasks practically in Jira format — no further translation needed.

Competitors in Kyiv — what the market offers

Kyiv is Ukraine's largest UX-services market, with various executor types:

• Large product studios (Banda, Fedoriv, others) — offer audits as part of larger projects. Strong in branding, weaker in pure UX methodology. High cost.
• Specialised UX agencies (rare in Ukraine — 5–10 across all of Kyiv) — have expertise but are often overloaded and only work with enterprise.
• Independent UX consultants — rare on the market. Senior level, personal approach, but few publicly position themselves.
• In-house UX teams at Kyiv product companies — Genesis, Reface, Grammarly have strong internal teams, but they only serve their own products.
• Marketplace freelancers — usually no methodology, more "designers with opinions" than auditors. Not recommended for serious products.

My position in this market — a senior consultant with 15 years of experience, fixed pricing, transparent process and personal access. No handover to junior executors, no overloaded studio calendar, no "ideological" consulting overhead of large agencies.

Cases: UX audits for product teams

My portfolio includes projects where the UX audit was a key stage — from cyty-app (mobile-first product with complex scenarios) and bmw-service-crm-system (B2B CRM for auto service with role models) to best365care (medical service with regulation and compliance), fundly-hub (fintech platform), alt-mobile-crm (mobile CRM for distribution), cyty-app-2 (high-level remodeling B2C app), michelle-bell and imprint (e-commerce and brand platforms).

Each of these went through an audit stage — heuristic, accessibility, analytics, prioritisation. If your product resembles any of them by niche or complexity — drop a line via the contact form, and I'll pick the 3–5 closest cases with concrete findings and metric impact.

What you receive in the final package

• Notion audit page — structured report with all findings, screenshots, severity, recommendations. Live, can be extended and commented on.
• Annotated Figma file — your screens with UX annotations directly on the design. Convenient for the design team.
• Excel/Google Sheets backlog — findings table with ICE/RICE scores for the product manager.
• Roadmap document — fix plan across 1–3 sprints with hour estimates.
• Stakeholder presentation — 15–25 slides with key findings for CEO/VP Product/investors.
• Final-presentation recording — Loom video or Zoom call recording.
• 30 days of consultation — Slack/Telegram access for clarifications during implementation.

My other services for the Kyiv product market

A UX audit is often the first step in a larger product transformation. After it, Kyiv businesses typically order:

• UI/UX redesign — full or partial interface rebuild based on audit findings.
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO) — A/B testing audit hypotheses to drive conversion growth.
• Product strategy — positioning, feature roadmap, monetisation.
• Web development — production rollout of the redesign.
• Mobile app design — for product teams with mobile-first strategy.
• CRM/ERP/SaaS — complex B2B interfaces with role models.
• Business consulting — strategic questions beyond UX.

UX audits in other Ukrainian cities

I work not only with Kyiv product teams. If your business is split across cities or you're planning to engage executors from various regions:

• Lviv — IT cluster, creative studios, product teams
• Odesa — e-commerce, tourism, maritime logistics
• Dnipro — manufacturing, B2B, technology companies
• Kharkiv — IT, education, engineering

Full list of locations on the "Service Areas" page.

Ready to discuss a UX audit for your product in Kyiv?

If you have a specific request — fill in the contact form or write to email/Telegram (contacts in the footer). The first consultation is free, up to 60 minutes. We'll discuss your product, key metrics, current UX problems, expected audit scope and timeline. After that I'll send a detailed proposal with a fixed price — no surprises and no hidden fees.

I'm ready to run a UX audit for your product in Kyiv that won't sit in a Drive folder — it'll convert into concrete interface changes and into percentage points of conversion, retention, NPS. Not "another report", but a working tool for product transformation.