Measuring User Experience with UX KPIs
Are you interested in measuring the success of your UX measures quantitatively? There are numerous key performance indicators in the area of UX (UX KPIs) that you can choose from. However, it is crucial to find the right KPI for your company or project rather than replacing user-centricity by solely focusing on one KPI!
What are UX KPIs?
UX KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are metrics that are collected and evaluated to measure the success of UX activities. They indicate how close a company has come to achieving its UX goals. UX KPIs enable the UX management to report quantitative progress in the area of UX.
UX KPIs are mainly used in organizations with an advanced level of UX maturity where UX is managed systematically and complex UX activities are established.
As UX goals depend on the individual organization and project, there are numerous UX KPIs with different focuses.
Which UX KPIs do exist?
User-centered UX KPIs
User-centered KPIs refer to how users interact with your product and what they say about it. These metrics can be assessed in a usability test, or an online survey, for example.
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Task Success Rate
Proportion of users who successfully complete a task.
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Time on Task
Time needed to complete a task successfully.
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Ease of Use
Standardized survey to assess the perceived difficulty in completing a task.
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System Usability Scale (SUS)
Standardized survey of ten questions to assess the perceived usability.
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User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ)
Standardized survey to assess the user experience using 26 opposite pairs of adjectives.
Marketing-centered UX KPIs
Marketing-centered UX KPIs often evaluate how successful promotional activities are and whether users would recommend the product or service to others. For example:
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Conversion Rate
Percentage of website's visitors who end up making a purchase. Conversion optimization can be enhanced on the basis of this key figure, e.g. by improving the usability of a website.
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Net Promoter Score
Probability of recommending a product/service to others on a standardized scale from 0 to 10.
Business-centered UX KPIs
Business-centered UX KPIs examine how an improved UX or UX activities in general can help to save time and money. Increased sales due to UX can also be quantified by a KPI. A popular metric for the cost-benefit ratio, which can also be applied to UX measures, is the return on investment (ROI).
Practical example: The usability test of a rental car company's website reveals that the FAQs do not cover the most relevent questions and several answers are hard to understand from the users' perspective. A survey among users subsequently helped to identify the questions that are particularly important to car renters. These topics were included in the FAQs and the comprehensibility of the answers was improved. As a result, the car rental company's customer service recorded significantly fewer calls and emails from customers.
The ROI is then calculated based on the ratio between the savings in customer service and the costs of user research and redesign.
Organizational UX KPIs
Organizational UX KPIs show how advanced a company and its structures are in the field of UX.
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UX Budget
How much budget does the organization allocate to UX activities?
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Number of UX professionals
How many people work in the company as UX managers, UX researchers, UX designers, etc.?
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Number of UX activities
How frequently are users involved, e.g. in usability testing?
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UX maturity
A organization's UX maturity results from the summary of several indicators such as UX budget, number of UX professionals, number of UX activities, variety of UX methods, support from management, etc.
You can determine the current UX maturity level of your company with our UX maturity check.
We would be glad to support you in defining the right UX KPIs for your project or company. Let's talk about it without obligation.
Which UX KPIs should we use?
UX goal
How does our users' lifes improve through our product?
Searching for an adequate UX KPI should be driven by a clear UX goal of a company or a specific project. One such goal could be, for example: Customers of a health insurance company should be able to submit sick notes easily and quickly with the help of an app.
indicators
How do we recognize that we are getting closer to this state?
The next step is to think about which indicators will show that the goal is achieved. Referring to the concrete example, one indicator could be that customers like to use the app regularly to submit sick notes.
a KPI
Which numbers qualify for measurement?
Finally, it is possible to select a key performance indicator that can be used to measure the achievement of goals. Regarding the case of the health insurance company, the ratio of sickness notifications submitted by app and by mail can be analyzed. A customer satisfaction survey integrated into the app (e.g., by means of using the NPS) can also be a useful indicator here.
UX KPIs and corporate goals
UX KPIs are based on the specific UX goals of a company. The UX goals should in turn be drafted in a way that they support the general corporate goals. UX KPIs thus enable the UX management to make all contributions of UX to the company's success traceable and visible.
Since various corporate goals from the areas of business, market, and customer are usually pursued in parallel, the selection of UX KPIs should include business-centered as well as marketing-centered and user-centered metrics.
UX KPIs in practice: opportunities, benefits, and challenges
What are opportunities and advantages?
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Deciding consciously
UX KPIs can help to monitor the success of UX activities and to make conscious decisions or test hypotheses.
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Making success visible
UX KPIs convey a sense of achievement because it becomes visible that the set UX goals are gradually being achieved.
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Supporting reasoning
UX KPIs that show the success of UX can be a useful argument when the management is resistant to allocate budgets to UX activities.
What are challenges?
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Keeping influential factors in mind
UX KPIs cannot be viewed isolated from the overall situation. A selected KPI may be influenced by several factors.
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Focussing on users' needs
Collecting UX KPIs can result in shifting the purpose of UX activities to exclusively improve the metric. However, the focus should remain on improving the users' lives.
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Continuous monitoring needed
In contrast to other key performance indicators such as revenue or cash flow, UX KPIs need to be continuously reviewed to ensure that they still reflect the current UX goal. If new insights are gained from user research, KPIs may need to be adjusted.
What do I get out of good UX KPIs?
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Satisfied customers and users
Higher customer loyalty, reduced bounce rates
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Better product quality
Easy to use products, reduced errors
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Increased revenue and profit
Conversion rate optimization
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Increased productivity
Employees, working efficiency, less operation errors
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Decreased development time and costs
More agile processes, avoidance of failing products
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Decreased support & training costs
Intuitive-to-use products that do not require any training
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Win new customers by reducing exit rates
Reduced bounce rate through landing page optimization
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User Experience as a positive product feature
Competitive differentiation
UX Management
User Research
UX Trainings
UX Design