User experience, or UX, is critical to ensuring a positive customer experience. A positive customer experience generates business and contributes to business revenue. After all, without happy customers, there is no business. 

How can a business tell when UX works? Metrics. Using key metrics to evaluate UX, businesses can tell how effective their UX is. Like any other expense, UX needs to be measured. Without measuring the value of your UX efforts, you won’t know if it’s working or needs to be adjusted. Design is adjustable, and so is UX. 

This guide describes the critical metrics for evaluating UX effectiveness, techniques for analyzing UX, and tips for implementing UX metrics. 

Understanding User Experience (UX)

User experience is how a person feels when using a website, mobile app, or any form of human and device interaction. A positive user experience retains new customers by getting their attention and keeping it. More customers equals more significant business revenue. 

UX is a flexible, innovative, and creative design process that centers on how a user experiences a product. Like any creative process, there are many common misconceptions. 

Two of the most common misconceptions about UX are: 

• UX is optional. On the contrary, UX is critical to getting and keeping customers’ attention. User experience can make or break a webpage, app, or product.
• UX is expensive. Expensive is a relative term in product design. Does UX cost resources and time? Yes. But UX is an integral part of web and mobile app design. Modern businesses rely on UX to attract and retain customers through positive user experience.

Key Metrics for Measuring User Experience

If UX is critical to business success, then how does a business know its UX efforts are working? They measure UX efforts by analyzing metrics. 

Key UX metrics include: 

• Usability
  • Task success rate
    • Determines if a user accomplishes a task successfully
  • Error rate
    • Number of errors a user makes when attempting a task
  • Time on task
    • Amount of time a user spends on a task. 
• Engagement
  • Conversion rate
    • Determines how many desired actions a user takes
  • Bounce rate
    • Measures how many users leave a site after interacting with a single page
  • Average session duration
    • Amount of time a user spends navigating a site
• Satisfaction
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)
    • How likely a user is to recommend a product
  • Customer satisfaction surveys
    • A score indicating how satisfied a user is with the overall experience
  • Online reviews and ratings
    • Open-ended feedback for understanding user needs 

Tools & Techniques for User Experience Analytics

UX tools & techniques for effective analytics include:

• Heatmaps provide a graphical representation of different user activities
• A/B testing takes two or more design variants and presents them to users. The design that performs more positively with users wins
• Session recordings and user journey analysis watch and map what the user does and where users have issues 
• Customer feedback and sentiment analysis analyze a user’s emotions when using a product. User feedback can be taken directly 

Implementing a User Experience Analytics Strategy

The first step to implementing a user experience analytics strategy is setting measurable business goals. Make sure business goals are objective and quantifiable. Next, define the business’s KPIs (key performance indicators). Determine if tools are necessary for accurate metric measurement and analysis. Many tools offer built-in reporting and visualization for improved accuracy. 

The next step is collecting data. Determine how and what data for each metric you want to collect. Use data analysis to select where to focus future improvements. 

The value of UX is measurable. Key UX metrics can provide quantitative data points that allow businesses to understand how users experience products. Metrics are valuable for ensuring your UX design is working effectively. 

A positive user experience is vital to getting and retaining customers’ attention. Leverage UX and UX metrics to make the most of your business.