User Experience Metrics

What are User Experience (UX) Metrics?

User Experience (UX) Metrics are quantitative and qualitative data points collected to track, measure, and compare the user experience of websites, applications, products, and services. They reflect the attitudes and behaviors of real people, providing valuable insights into how users interact with a product or service. Measuring and improving the user experience of your product or service requires a plan and an understanding of who your users are. Whether your goal is to introduce guidance and processes for measuring user experience or trying to scale UX in your organization, a well-devised plan will improve your chances of success. In addition, it can play a critical role in convincing stakeholders to invest in UX and make it an essential part of your product development process. 

Why use UX Metrics?

By analyzing UX metrics, companies can align customer satisfaction with their business goals, making informed decisions to enhance the user experience. Whether it’s understanding how users navigate a site or gauging their satisfaction with a product or service, UX metrics are essential for identifying areas for improvement and ensuring that the user experience is as seamless and enjoyable as possible.

How to Use and Implement UX Metrics:

Key areas to consider with User Experience (UX) Metrics

Create a Communication Process

Schedule regular meetings with leadership across all teams involved in a product’s development to align the team around the outcomes of the measurements. Additionally, the UX research lead or manager and the product management team should meet regularly to discuss goals and outcomes for research projects as they relate to the overall business goals.

These regular meetings will have the following impact:

• Allow ongoing tracking and benchmarking of UX activities
• Improve communication between research and product teams, keeping them focused on the business goals
• Foster a human-centered culture

UX Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company achieves key business objectives. Organizations use KPIs at multiple levels to track performance measures. KPIs should tell the story of an organization’s impact in relation to its mission.​

One of the absolute best uses of data is when it tells an engaging story that motivates people to act. If you can do this through meaningful metrics, then you can define your impact, make the case for resources or projects needed, and ultimately come together in a more unified way.​

​But if we only focus on business-focused KPIs, we might be missing some really important data points that help us know if we are ultimately meeting the needs and goals of our customers.​

​Look at the first column in the table below. This reflects some common measures that may matter to a business. We may measure customer behaviors against whatever the goal of a company. In the commercial world, this would be profit. But what should be the KPIs for a government agency’s information system? This may point us to the next two columns, where it may be important to ensure we meet the needs of our consumers.​

​In column two, we see some behaviors that may be measured with site analytics. How long is the person on the site? While there are some measurable analytics, this large volume of data might point us to conduct some further qualitative research to find out where there may be challenges in completing tasks.​

​Then, as we move to the third column, we may still uncover some measurable data points that might happen through qualitative research methods, including usability testing, interviews, surveys, or field studies. We might learn things like where users have the most difficulty completing intended tasks or how many mistakes they make before completing a desired task. They may also provide feedback about their experience with self-reported measures like the System Usability Scale (SUS) or the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

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Benchmarking Results

Benchmarking provides key metrics to track and measure product performance over time, and is an integral part of the overall UX process. The steps for implementing this phase of UX measurement are as follows:

• Establish who on the team is responsible for tracking and communicating results
• Determine frequency of measurement
• Once you establish a timeline, track the results, making sure to note what UX research was conducted and what product changes were introduced between measuring each metrics.
• Incorporate sample user videos or insights before and after changes have been made to demonstrate the improvements

Once you have set up the process of benchmarking and tracking goals with your research, you can begin calculating your team's ROI.

Continuous Improvement

Using the Agile principle of continuous improvement, along with the demonstrated value of user research, will help improve your organization's UX maturity by infusing user research into your regular development cycles.

Each team’s measurement plan may not be the same; the goal of this tip sheet is to get you started or to evaluate your current plan. Developing and improving your measurement plan will help you stay focused on improvement and promote the value of user research at the same time.