E-Commerce Accessibility Audit Service
Are your e-commerce sites accessibility compliant? How can accessibility be improved?
Baymard dedicated accessibility auditors will conduct an in-depth 150 hour accessibility audit of your e-commerce website testing your core e-commerce site experience and pages for accessibility incompliance — according to the WCAG 2.1 AA standard.
When Baymard Institute’s auditors tested 33 of the world’s leading e-commerce sites against 4 core accessibility guidelines we found that 94% of e-commerce sites are accessibility incompliant with WCAG 2.1 AA, for example:
- 82% of e-commerce sites have accessibility-compliance issues with images
- 73% of e-commerce sites have accessibility-compliance issues with links
- 58% of e-commerce sites have accessibility-compliance issues with form field markup
- 64% of e-commerce sites have accessibility-compliance issues with keyboard navigation
Learn more about our e-commerce accessibility audit, deliverables, and costs in the 5 sections below:
“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.”
What’s Included in an E-Commerce Accessibility Audit?
In this project, Baymard Institute’s dedicated accessibility auditors will test your core e-commerce site experience and pages for accessibility incompliance — according to the WCAG 2.1 AA standard.
The audit deliverables are:
A thorough 150 hour accessibility assessment and test of all cores pages of your e-commerce site — according to WCAG 2.1, level AA. See complete list in the section “Page Areas Covered”. The 150 hours of testing will almost exclusively be manual/human accessibility testing.
All instances of accessibility noncompliance discovered during the audit will be documented, with clear examples where on the site there’s noncompliance, why it’s noncompliant, and examples of how to resolve the issue. This will be documented in a 40-120 page PDF report (depending on the amount of issues discovered).
The audit report will also include an Accessibility Conformance Report based on VPAT.
The results are presented and discussed with your team in a 2-hour video conference call.
The project also includes 5 followup implementation calls with your Baymard auditor, to assist your team while implementing the accessibility audit findings.
12 months of complimentary access to a Baymard Premium “Specialty” plan with full access to Baymard’s 150,000+ hours of UX research findings (normally $2,600/year).
“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.”
Page Areas Covered in the Accessibility Audit
The following areas and page types, of both the desktop web and mobile web e-commerce site, experience will be tested for noncompliance according to the WCAG 2.1 AA standard:
Homepage & Category Navigation: homepage, the main navigation, drop-down menus, category pages, custom and subcategory pages, the overall site taxonomy, general site-wide navigation, etc.
Search Experience: search engine logic, submitting search queries, autocomplete suggestions, “No results” pages, layout and features of the search results page, etc.
Product Lists & Filtering: category and search product listing pages,most filtering and sorting tools, the product list item design and content, product thumbnails, cross-navigation, comparison features, etc.
Product Details Pages: product page layouts, descriptions, images and image galleries, videos, “add to cart button”, product variation selectors, customer reviews, cross-sells, cross-navigation, etc.
Checkout Process: the entire guest checkout flow, including the shopping cart, account selection, guest checkout, fields and descriptions, field labels, shipping methods, payment methods and fields, error messages, order reviews, etc.
“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.”
Accessibility Audit Costs
The total project cost for an accessibility audit as described is USD $21,900, including all the descibed testing, analysis, deliverables, and meetings.
The accessibility audit deliverables includes:
A 150 hour accessibility test of all cores pages of your e-commerce site - according to WCAG 2.1, level AA. See complete list in the section “Page Areas Covered”. The 150 hours of testing will almost exclusively be manual/human accessibility testing.
A 50-100+ page audit report documenting all instances of observed non-compliance - with both clear examples where on the site there’s noncompliance, why it’s noncompliant, along with examples of how to resolve the issue.
The audit report will also include an Accessibility Conformance Report based on VPAT.
A 2-hour video conference with you and your team to discuss the audit results.
5 follow-up calls with your auditor, to assist your team while implementing the accessibility audit findings..
- 12 months of complimentary access to a Baymard Premium ‘Specialty’ plan with full access to Baymard’s 150,000+ hours of UX research findings (normally $2600/year).
Reach out below to discuss your needs or request an e-commerce accessibility audit of your 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.
Audit Price
$21,900
per audit
A typical accessibility audit takes around 20-25 work days - depending on time of year, project scope and auditor availability.
All client-specific audits and 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 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 auditing.
What Our Clients Say
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The Baymard team has been a delight to work with on the JohnLewis digital platform audit. 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We have recently tested some of your recommendations for the Avast checkout and got some great wins!”
“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!”
“We are very excited to finally proceed with the UX improvements, and I truly believe your audit report will be super helpful to put us ahead of the wave. If you ever need a reference, please do not hesitate to share my contact.”
“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.”
“This was…mind-blowing. We’ve been having conversations on the side as you’ve been presenting the audit findings. There’s so much to do!”
“Thanks for everything. The audit was extremely useful, I think we have gained valuable insight.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Baymard has been a great resource in helping us improve the customer experience. We are continually applying these best practices to our sites.”
“Excellent tool – looking forward to using it with our other sites and prototypes as they’re developed.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We like what we are reviewing from the audit - great analysis and feedback.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Let me say that it was exceptionally well done, and we are super excited to implement every one of the recommendations there. Everything you said has usually been a case of discussion in the past, but having them recommended in a deck like this will allow us to move forward.”
“Within a very short time Baymard Institute provided 15 clear, useful improvement suggestions for our checkout process. We intend to implement all of them. It’s easy to find companies that offer website improvement suggestions. But, most companies don’t do their homework and don’t provide specific examples of how best to make the improvements. With Baymard Institute, the checkout process suggestions they made were intuitive, specific, and actionable. I highly recommend their audit service.”
“The recommendations in our audit were awesome - well prioritized, actionable and helped us focus on what to optimize. This audit, along with the e-Commerce Reports & Benchmark Databases, are my go-to resources for thorough, insightful information. 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“A great presentation, and the results were very eye-opening. It’s really helpful.”
“Given the tricky science of conversion rate optimization, it is great to know that you are dealing with professionals whose advice is based on solid research. It was a pleasure collaborating with the Baymard team.”
“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.”
“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’m very impressed! Not about our site’s performance, quite the opposite, but about your work. Very detailed and packed with great and tangible advice. This was exactly what I dreamt about, but sometimes you just have to be careful dreaming.”
“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.”
“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.”
“[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.”
“This has been fantastic: really good recommendations, really comprehensive.”
“Thank you, this was really insightful!”
“This is awesome so far. Everyone wants to know what's going on – you just got everyone's attention here. Everything that you've called out is definitely eye-opening for us over here.”
“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.”
“Very thorough and professional UX review of our website, based on an extensive amount of previous UX research insights within the industry, and specifically targeted to our needs. We received both critical and, most importantly, constructive feedback, along with actionable, prioritized suggestions and best-practice examples. This will allow us to address the areas of improvement and significantly help ameliorate the experience users have on our website, which in turn is expected to drive conversion rates and reduce the number of customer service requests. We can highly recommend Baymard's UX audit.”
“I found the UX audit a very comprehensive evaluation, with clear reports and actionable recommendations. Baymard's commitment to excellence in user experience shines through its thorough approach!”
“This UX audit has been very helpful, not just for our design and product teams, but even for the UX research team, because we can reference back to the audit, either in the design of a user research session or when we analyze findings. Thank you very much; this has been incredibly valuable.”
“I thought it was great. A lot of it is things that we've either known or called out to each other in the past, but the important part is putting a weight on it, or a score on it. To then actually have a true impact of how much each issue is hurting. It's nice to see some implementations that are good, too. Thank you so much.”
“Fantastic delivery and very clear breakdown of findings.”
“The Baymard UX audit has been a revelation for our organisation and will likely become a vital tool in our process moving forward.”
“Clear, concise, actionable, data-driven insights!”
“Working with Baymard for our UX audit was an exceptional experience from start to finish. Their attention to detail, depth of analysis, and clear communication throughout the process truly exceeded our expectations. The insights they provided were not only actionable but profoundly insightful. I highly recommend Baymard for their expertise, professionalism, and commitment to elevating user experiences.”
“Baymard's audit services give us a detailed view of usability improvements across our entire site. This is so much more comprehensive than running individual usability studies.”
“Having Baymard is like having access to a magical UX super power. I can't believe how helpful and easy to use it is, given the vast array of tools and information they provide!”
“The audit opened our eyes once again, as we are often blind to our own operations. The comparison with competitors' best practices was particularly helpful.”