What makes a business successful? Is it tasteful marketing? Top-notch-quality product/service? Seamless interactions? Or exceptional customer support?
It’s everything and more, i.e., user experience.
How would you know where you lack and what you need to improve to offer an unparalleled user experience?
It’s simple – you have to measure the user experience (UX).
Quantifying UX at different points along the customer journey has a three-pronged effect:
- Gives a bird-eye view of transactional and overall customer experience.
- Lets you compare customer satisfaction at various similar touchpoints.
- Highlights the points of friction and customer issues.
But how to do it?
That’s where we come in. In this blog, we’ll discuss the top UX metrics and KPIs and how to measure them to get a complete view of customers’ sentiments toward your business at any point.
Let’s explore what goes into user experience measurement and how you can ace it.
Why do we need to measure UX?
As a marketer, you’re already creating content and pushing it out across all your social media channels. You’ve got products to sell and campaigns to spread the word about.
But if you don’t know how well your user experience is performing, then what’s the point of putting so much work in? By measuring and analyzing user experience, you can see what’s working and what isn’t.
You also get the opportunity to tweak your digital marketing approach accordingly to get better results.
Measuring The Items That Are Tough To Measure
Metrics that were originally considered to be tough to measure have been made easier to track with the introduction of new technology. This means that just about anything can now be measured.
However, with new technology comes new metrics and a lot of them. This can be a little bit overwhelming when it comes to figuring out where to start.
With that said, understanding how user experience metrics and KPIs are defined is key to understanding which ones you should be measuring.
How User Experience (UX) Metrics & KPIs Are Defined
UX metrics are simply measurements of how people engage with the products and services businesses provide.
In other words, it’s the emotional and cognitive effect of using a particular product. This can include elements like intuitive design, ease of use, brand recognition, and loyalty to your company. Understanding the user experience on your website allows you to input this information into your CRM software and make educated decisions when it comes to your digital marketing efforts.
The key to remember is that as long as you understand how these metrics are defined, you’ll know how to measure them.
Taking things a step further, these metrics can be broken down into two different categories: Behavioral and Attitudinal.
Behavioral refers to the actions users take while interacting with a product or service.
Attitudinal measures how a person feels about a company, product, or service. This includes things like brand association and loyalty.
Key Differences Between UX Metrics and KPIs
Understanding the difference between KPIs and UX metrics is critical. They’re often confused with each other, but they’re two separate things.
| KPI | UX Metrics |
| A KPI is a measurement of success for your business. | UX metrics help you determine how well users are interacting with your brand and products. |
| These include metrics like revenue per user (RPU), average order value (AOV), cost per install (CPI), and others. | These include measurements like user satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty. |
| A key element of a KPI is that it has to be measurable. This means that there’s a number involved. | UX metrics aren’t as easy to measure due to their subjective nature. |
| KPIs can be used to monitor progress over time and allow you to adjust your approach if necessary. | UX metrics are usually tracked throughout an entire campaign. |
Read Also: Top 19 UX Blogs you should follow
5 Essential UX Metrics You Need to Measure in 2023
1. Monitoring Real User Metrics As Your Site Is being Used
Real User Monitoring Metrics is crucial in determining how effective a digital product is. This involves analyzing user pain points and then addressing them to improve the overall online customer experience.
Tracking real user monitoring metrics involves tracking data like how many users have installed and opened your app, sessions per day, session duration (minutes), and customer retention rate (here are the key customer retention rates you should know about).
The goal of using real user monitoring metrics is to get a clear understanding of your users for you to make the best modifications to the products and services that you offer.
2. Metrics Related to User Engagement
This metric looks at how engaged people are with the products and services that you’re providing. Gathering this data gives you insight into whether or not your customers are getting what they want out of their experience with your brand.
Engagement metrics include things like clicks, taps, screen views, page views, video views, time spent on site, comments left on blog posts, shares via social media channels, etc.
3. Metrics to the Usability Of Your Website
Another important group of UX metrics is usability metrics. These look at how easy it is for users to access the features and functions of an application or website.
4. Metrics Concerning User Adoption
Adoption analytics is another important UX metric that looks at how quickly users are adopting your solution or product into their lifestyle. To determine whether or not you have a successful product you need to know whether or not people are using it and adopting it successfully.
For example, if 100 out of 1 million people install your mobile app but only 10 open it daily then there’s a problem with its usability and/or ease of use.
5. Metrics That Tell The Story About User Retention
The final UX metric that we’re going to cover is user retention metrics. This measures how many users are returning to your product or service after their initial engagement with it. If you have a high number of users coming back after time then this is probably a good indication that you’re doing things right.
However, if your return rate isn’t as great then you should examine why this might be happening and find ways to correct it (if possible) such as: add more features, improving the UI/UX design, simplifying instructions for first-time users, etc.
Read Also: 16 Best UI/UX Design Tools for designers
Quantifying User Experience: 9 Top UX KPIs You Need to Measure
Behavioral UX KPIs
Behavioral UX KPIs deal with behavior that people exhibit when they’re interacting with a digital product. Behavioral metrics account for all the activities of users which can be seen, heard, or inferred through what they do on the site.
The following behavioral UX KPIs will allow a business to assess the efficacy of a product or service.
1. Task success rate
This metric looks at how successful users are with core tasks. It helps you figure out whether users can easily accomplish what they set out to do or not.
The task success rate metric is derived by simply looking at the number of people completing a task which you have defined.
2. Time-on-task
The length of time users spend on an activity can be crucial to measuring its success or failure. It’s often used as a proxy for understanding how engaging an experience was with a product, service, or brand.
3. Search vs navigation
Search and navigation patterns in web analytics give you insight into the type of information users are most interested in.
This gives you an idea of how easy it is for people to find what they’re looking for when using your product or service or even which features or functions are most important to them.
4. User Error Rate
The user error rate metric lets you know how many times users have tried but failed to complete a task, process, or activity.
So if 10 out 100 people fail task 1, then you’ll know that they either don’t understand instructions or aren’t able to grasp the key concepts behind it. This further implies that there’s room for improvement within certain parts of your product/service offering.
This could be anything from the UI/UX design, additional features, improved workflow, etc.
If you’re noticing that a large number of these user errors are coming from new users then that’s something you may want to take into account and find ways to change to attract and retain more long-term users.
5. Conversion Rate
The next behavioral metric we’re going to cover is the conversion rate. This measures how many people or new visitors complete a task such as signing up, completing an order, making a purchase, etc.
So if 100 new people visit your website but only 10 out of those 100 complete the signup process successfully then it goes without saying that there’s room for improvement within your product/service offering.
Read Also: Top 35 Best CRO Tools
6. Number of recommendations
A number of recommendations can be included to provide insight into what value is being generated by users’ interactions with a brand, service, or product.
It does this by showing how often external websites are recommending your site despite any faults that may exist within it (which can be an indication of how well your product/service is doing).
So if 40 out of the 100 people who visit your website recommend it (instead of an original number of 10) then it goes without saying that there’s something good going on with your brand/product/service offering despite any issues that may exist.
Attitudinal UX KPIs
Understanding the attitude of someone that is on your website or digital property is not always an easy task. The following KPIs were created to help with this. Let’s have a look at the most common Attitudinal UX KPIs in use today.
7. System Usability Scale (SUS)
SUS is an online questionnaire that enquires about perceptions of the usability of a website, software application, or product.
It was originally developed at the Department of Human-Computer Interaction of the University of Maryland in 1991 by John Brooke and his colleagues.
Since then it has become more of an industry-standard with many researchers using it to measure whether users like/dislike their systems (which can also be known as Perceived Usability ).
You shouldn’t however think about SUS as an alternative to having your user research team because you’ll need data-driven insights on why users are rating your system so poorly (e.g., questions that ask “How easy was it to use?”).
Related Read: Survey vs Questionnaire: Compare the Differences
8. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
The Net Promoter Score is considered by many as a simple way to gauge how satisfied someone was with their overall experience using one of your products or services. The beauty behind this metric is that many businesses already follow this standard way of reporting in their lifestyle business, and it’s something that works in combination with other metrics.
When it comes to the actual KPI itself, if you have a high NPS score for one of your products but low sessions or average time on page, you’ll know that users are likely coming to the site and leaving quickly – but overall liking what they see.
But the opposite could also be true: if people are pretty satisfied with the product but visit less than once a month, then something isn’t as effective as it could be at retaining customers or getting them to share their experience with others. In this case, focusing on retention might be important.
Related Read: 10+ Best NPS Survey Tools
9. Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
Customer Satisfaction is a measurement of how well a product or service fulfills customers’ expectations. CSAT scores are typically calculated by asking users (through various survey methods) what they thought about their overall experience before asking them if they’d recommend the brand/product/service offering to friends, family members, or other contacts.
CSAT can be reported as an average score (e.g., 4 out of 5 people were very happy with our WooCommerce plugin) or via reporting individual responses (e.g., 80% of people would recommend our WooCommerce plugin to others).
Read Also: Customer Satisfaction Metrics to Monitor
9 Best Practices to Improve and Optimize User Experience(UX)
Now that you know how to measure user experience, it’s time to move on to the next step – Optimizing your user experience. Let’s uncover some tried-and-tested best practices to turn your bland UX into an eye-popping one.
1. Act on Collected Feedback
Ask yourself this – did you just collect customer feedback for the sake of it?
We’re sure the answer is no.
The efficacy of incorporating feedback into your business for user experience optimization is a proven norm.
Whether you collect qualitative or quantitative feedback, it’ll just be data and never valuable insights if you don’t analyze and act upon it.
So, for example, if you collect NPS data, follow up with your detractors to understand the issues they face and stop the problems from affecting other customers.
Resolving customer pain points can help impart a flawless user experience, yielding higher retention and low churn in the long run.
Read More: Best Tools to Collect Customer Feedback in 2023
2. Identify Crucial Customer Touchpoints
A significant part of delivering exemplary user experience is creating impactful touchpoints with attractive CTAs, guaranteeing a smooth customer journey.
You must identify the high-impact touchpoints and ensure you offer the optimal experience at each point.
Think of it this way: Your product page is a high-impact touchpoint. So, to deliver a seamless UX at that point that’ll later add up to the holistic UX, you must ensure that all page’s components are clear and relevant.
For example, make sure that you have the following:
- Relevant content, such as product descriptions
- Engaging media to communicate the features well
- Clear CTAs to match the prospects’ needs, such as product demos, trials, etc.
It’s just one example of a crucial touchpoint. Other contact points include the checkout page, pricing page, onboarding process, service interactions, etc.
Remember, the more positive your website experience will be, the better your overall UX.
3. Build Navigation That Makes Sense
If you want to create a website that’s fun to look at and easy to use, you’ll have to balance aesthetics and functionality. This is essential to optimize the user experience.
On the aesthetics front, a few things you should consider are:
- Color contrasts that work together
- Use typography that matches your brand aesthetic
- Leverage animations (wisely)
On the functionality front, ensure that you don’t follow the three-click rule blindly, lest you may end with a website like this:
Make sure you carefully design menus that are compact and segregated properly.
For example, this website has categorized its menu so customers can easily navigate and browse its vast selection of products.
4. Create a Flawless Onboarding Experience
Irrespective of your product type, new users always appreciate little help from companies when getting started.
The level of the onboarding process will depend on whether your product is simple or has complex features. For example, a tool with simple functionality like recording screen or taking screenshots can have an onboarding process like this:
Whereas a complex tool like Duolingo needs an elaborate onboarding process that introduces users to different features and how they work.
Integrate a small feedback form at the end of the onboarding process to collect feedback from new users and improve the process further.
5. Introduce Self-Help Options in Your Customer Service
Nothing screams ‘Bad UX’ for customers more than when they have to wait helplessly to receive customer support.
In fact, a survey by Statista shows that for 12% of customers, lack of speed is the biggest turn-off and cause of frustration with a company.
Customers who contact your support have already encountered obstacles in their user journey, and long waiting time adds to the frustration.
So, how can you avoid queuing multiple customers and significantly reduce your wait time?
You can leverage self-help tools that reduce users’ dependency on your support service.
Tools such as ProProfs Knowledge Base and ProProfs Chat let your customers independently resolve simple or common queries in real time. This way, your support personnel can look after customers with complex concerns.
6. Constantly Evaluate Your UX
You’ll have to stick to the iterative process to ace UX optimization. It is not a one-and-done deal; you must constantly test your strategies and website/mobile app experience to discover users’ challenges. Doing so is a critical part of measuring UX.
Once you can pinpoint what’s working and what’s not through continuous testing such as A/B testing (for website and mobile app), you’ll be able to improve your UX as per customers’ expectations consistently.
Also read: 25 Best A/B Testing Tools to Help You Convert in 2023
7. Premium Branding Integrations
If you have a SaaS business, it’s best to offer seamless integrations with other tools. This makes it easy for your tool to integrate into the business ecosystem and ensures it syncs and performs well without posing any limitations for users.
8. Seamless Experience Across Platforms
User experience is a holistic concept and not just based on a website or mobile experience. So, to offer a kickass UX, you need to consider the experience across all platforms, from offline to digital (social media, websites, and mobile apps).
For example, the design and elements of your website should match the experience of other digital platforms to send a consistent brand message and create a wholesome brand experience.
9. Offer Single Sign-On
Many companies are opting for the single sign-on feature where their users can access their tool or a suite of tools with a single email account.
But why is this such a big deal?
Because this makes it easy for big corporations to assimilate your products into their processes since they have many employees.
Did you know Qualaroo offers Single Sign-On functionality with Azure?
Top 5 Tools To Measure User Experience (UX) in 2023
With the above in mind, let’s consider the various tools available and what they can measure.
A survey tool can measure NPS, CSAT, and SUS. Using the right type of survey is important because there is no point in asking a customer to rate their experience if they never used the product or service. This will not provide any useful data and you will not learn anything new.
Usability tools can measure time on task & success rate.
These tools are great for measuring how easy the product is to use. The usability of your website or product is critical because people often have a bad experience and then leave your website never returning. Usability testing can also become a cost-effective way of validating design concepts before you go into full production.
Usability testing can also become a cost-effective way of validating design concepts before you go into full production.
Recording tools can measure the success rate, search vs navigation, etc. Using these recording tools you get a great insight into how customers actually navigate your product or website. Using this data you can easily identify opportunities to improve the user experience and increase customer satisfaction.
User experience visualization is helpful because it helps identify opportunities to improve the user experience. Also, the visualization part of the tool allows you to create reports that help visualize your data.
1. Qualaroo (surveys)
Qualaroo is a tool to run surveys and collect customer feedback (e.g., NPS, CSAT, etc.) with minimal effort on your end. You can use it to create visualizations based upon user actions/habits (e.g., what type of marketing is bringing in the most revenue) without having to do any manual analysis.
2. Google Analytics (quantifiable user and website data)
Google Analytics is one of the best-known free tools for reporting on users’ behavior – but there are various ways you can configure its setup depending on your needs.
For example, if you’d like to view reports around sessions, average time on page, goal conversions, or eCommerce transactions then these metrics could be configured accordingly.
Above, you can see the bounce rate percentage for a specific webpage. When reviewing such numbers, it’s important to compare these to standards in your industry to understand how your business is doing.
3.SessionCam (user experience visualization via session recording)
SessionCam is a user experience analytics platform that provides fast insights from visitors, allowing you to understand exactly what they did when using your website. By taking in this feedback, you’ll be able to build on what works and fix what doesn’t.
4. SurveyMonkey (Surveys)
Survey Monkey allows you to create simple web-based polls, forms, and questionnaires that can be embedded within other applications/websites – making the survey creation process much easier for everyone involved.
With various templates already in place, creating surveys and understanding your website visitors has never been easier.
Read Also: Best 15 Survey Monkey Alternatives
5.UserZoom (usability testing and other UX tools)
UserZoom is a usability testing tool that allows you to record in-depth video sessions of real people using your product or service. As people use your product, you’re able to see what they do right and wrong – making iterative improvements easy.
When doing A/B testing like this, you can compare the user experience recorded in videos with data from Google Analytics to understand how different approaches are impacting key metrics.
Read More – 15 Best Usability Testing Tools For An Effective User Experience Strategy
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you’re looking to measure the effectiveness of your website, product, or application, there are various tools out there to help you – but the main thing is that the right metrics and KPIs need to be selected in the first place.
Author Bio
Hanson Cheng is the founder of Freedom to Ascend. He empowers online entrepreneurs and business owners to 10x their business and become financially independent. You can connect with him here.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How do you measure UX success?
There are several metrics you can track to keep tabs on UX success, like:
- Customer satisfaction
- Customer effort score
- Net promoter score
- System usability scale
- Customer churn
- Customer retention
- Cart abandonment
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