Offering a seamless user experience is essential to set your company and its products and services apart in the competitive landscape and establish lasting customer relationships. However, offering an enhanced user experience to your target audience might not be as easy as it sounds.
The interests and preferences of the audience segments you intend to serve change over time, along with the market dynamics. Furthermore, every company competes with many players in their respective industries, who keep optimizing their processes. Therefore, it is of critical importance that you keep an eye on the user experience you offer and identify areas for improvement. But measuring the user experience can be tricky. You must identify the right metrics that reflect your actual performance. In this article, I’ll guide you on how to measure your user experience in the right way, helping you identify your desired level of user engagement.
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The Importance of Measuring the User Experience
Around 80% of people say that they prefer brands that offer them experiences that are personalized to their needs or interests. Offering such an enhanced user experience drives ongoing success. The goals of your customers might change over time. Plus, changing industry trends could have a significant impact on your processes.
Your audience’s expectations dictate their satisfaction level with the experiences you offer. There are diverse factors that could influence such expectations, causing them to change over time. Therefore, I highly recommend that you measure the user experience you offer your audience using your platform or other digital solutions so you can establish lasting relationships with your user base. As Figure 1 shows, the cost of a poor user experience can be high.
Figure 1—Business losses because of bad user experiences
Monitoring the user experience paves the way for you to ensure continuous improvement and growth. It enables you to identify the gaps in your UX strategy and come up with necessary improvements.
Key User-Experience Metrics You Should Monitor
Countless relevant metrics could reflect your UX performance. However, tracking all of them to assess the user experience that you offer could be overwhelming. Thus, the following metrics are just a few of the most noteworthy metrics that could help you evaluate the effectiveness of the UX strategy you’ve implemented.
1. Accessibility
Assessing the accessibility of your platform or the solutions that you offer is very important. It helps you find out how well you’re catering to the needs of people with disabilities. Considering the special needs of your intended audience makes your organization stand out as a reliable brand and, from an ethical or legal standpoint, complements your compliance status, as shown in Figure 2. This shows that, if you go the extra mile to offer an enhanced user experience to your audience, it helps you build a reputable brand.
Figure 2—How Web accessibility affects business performance
This performance metric is worth tracking if you want to assess the user experience that you offer through your platform or Web-based solutions. The goal here is to discover how easy it is for your audience to navigate useful information that could help them solve their problems. As Figure 3 demonstrates, you should optimize the load time of your pages to offer a hassle-free user experience.
Figure 3—Effects of page-load times on bounce rates
Also, check how swiftly your digital solutions respond to users’ actions and lead them to their desired outcomes.
3. Engagement
When assessing your user experience, engagement is another key metric that is worth monitoring. This can help you assess users’ level of interaction with your platform or the solutions you offer. Figure 4 shows customer engagement in Google Analytics.
If users frequently leverage your solutions or visit your platform, this shows that you’re offering value and providing a user experience that meets their expectations. High user engagement leads to your building a strong bond with your audience and can improve retention significantly.
4. Success Rates
Success rates indicate the percentage of users who have effectively completed their tasks using your platform or digital solutions. This metric represents the number of users who can successfully achieve their goals by leveraging the solutions you offer. Tracking users’ success rates helps you ensure that you consistently meet the expectations of your intended audience.
5. User Satisfaction
User satisfaction shows how well you’re meeting the expectations of your target audience. Generally, the feedback that you receive from your customers helps you assess their satisfaction. The problem is: not many users are vocal about their user experience. Many would be more likely to switch to another alternative in silence rather than share their concerns with you.
Therefore, you should reach out to your audience and inquire about their user experience. This sort of user research provides useful information that can help you assess the user experience that you offer across different stages of the customer’s journey.
6. Retention
It’s much easier and less costly for you to retain users by offering them an experience that exceeds their expectations than it is to acquire new users. There might be countless alternatives to your solutions in the competitive landscape. The only way you can outmaneuver other players in your industry is to keep the promises you make to your intended audience. Therefore, retention is a worthy goal and a good indicator to monitor when you’re striving to assess your UX performance.
7. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Another KPI that can help you assess your user experience is net promoter score (NPS). As shown in Figure 5, NPS classifies your customer base into three categories: promoters, passives, and detractors.
Your NPS showcases the likelihood of your customers’ recommending your company, products, or services to others in their social circle. You can collect this data from your intended audience by conducting a survey comprising a single question, asking your respondents to rate the likelihood of their recommending your brand on a scale of zero to ten.
If a majority of your customers are promoters, this means you’re doing an amazing job with the experience you’re offering to them. But you should reach out to detractors and ask them what makes your offerings unworthy of their recommending them to others.
How to Measure the User Experience
Now that we’ve considered the key UX metrics you should track, let’s look at the process of measuring your user experience.
1. Choose the Right Metrics
I’ve already recommended essential metrics that can help you assess your UX performance. However, one size doesn’t fit all. The relevance of UX metrics can vary from one use case to another. Therefore, the first thing you should do when striving to gauge the experience that you offer is to discover what metrics align with your goals.
Ask yourself what you intend to achieve by optimizing your UX strategy. Are you seeking higher engagement? Do you plan on reducing churn? Do you want to assess favorable audience sentiment? Answering such questions can help you determine the right performance indicators for your company and steer you in the right direction.
Of course, you can’t cover all potential problem areas simultaneously. You need to prioritize them and come up with an action plan that enables you to focus on high-value outcomes. Therefore, you must choose the most fitting UX metrics that resonate with your goals and help you drive the most value from your efforts.
2. Leverage Optimal Tools
Even if it were possible to measure user experience without using any tools, the process might be overwhelming. Tracking all fitting indicators and assessing their impacts on your UX performance can be a daunting activity. Furthermore, doing things manually increases the likelihood of human error.
Therefore, you should consider leveraging the right tools when assessing your UX performance. These tools can help you track your chosen indicators and identify areas for improvement.
There might be a variety of solutions that you may want to consider. The following are a few useful tools that facilitate diverse cases:
Google Analytics—An ideal tool for understanding user behaviors and tracking events
Google Forms—A handy solution for designing surveys and gathering user feedback
Mixpanel—A good tool for assessing the user journey using cross-platform analytics
Hotjar—A viable solution for visualizing user interactions
User Feedback—A decent tool for gathering feedback from visitors on your platform
Maze—The best choice for conducting usability tests
Userpilot—A well-thought-out solution for assessing in-app user experiences
Amplitude—A useful solution for tracking users’ interactions in real time
These are a just few choices that could be viable options for you when you’re tracking UX metrics. However, the ideal tools for you might vary from those on this list. Everything depends on your goals and the metrics you want to track to assess the user experience.
3. Assess and Optimize
Once you’ve found the best tools for your purposes, initiate the process of accessing valuable user insights. You should analyze the user experience that you offer at different stages of the user journey, with respect to the metrics that best align with the goals you’ve set. You should explore the painpoints that your audience encounters and make the necessary changes to optimize their user experience. Enhancing the user experience is an iterative process. You need to constantly make changes as the situation demands to ensure high user engagement.
It’s a Wrap
If you have been struggling to measure your product or service’s user experience, following the recommendations in this article will help. While I’ve highlighted the key metrics that could help you assess the performance of your user experience, the metrics that are relevant to your company might vary. Based on your goals, you should choose the KPIs that facilitate your accessing the most valuable insights. With the right set of tools, you might be able to identify the painpoints of your intended audience and make the necessary adjustments to your UX strategy and design. The goal is to engage users at each stage of their journey and facilitate their access to fitting solutions for their problems.
As the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site, Syed is one of the leading WordPress experts in the industry, with over ten years of experience,. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social-media networks. Read More