UX measurement

Great digital experiences are invisible to the user. They’re so seamless and intuitive that people forget they’re even progressing through an “experience” at all. However, getting a user experience to that point isn’t always easy for research and design teams. One of the biggest keys to progress is consistent, effective UX measurement. 

There are two important facets to successfully measuring your user experience: First, you must define success. Next, you need to be able to measure progress based on that definition effectively.

How to define UX success

Data supports that good user experiences positively impact an organization’s bottom line. But still, UX teams often struggle to quantify the performance of their designs. Traditionally, UX researchers and designers separate their KPIs into behavioral and attitudinal. 

Behavioral

This type of data expresses a user’s behavior. In general, these items typically take the form of quantitative data. Examples include:

• Abandonment rates
• Pageviews
• Task success
• Task time

Attitudinal 

This type of data expresses how the user feels about a given experience. Examples might include metrics like Loyalty, Credibility, and appearance. Usually, this kind of insight comes from qualitative testing. 

UX measurement advancements

For years, metrics and insights like the ones above have been the standard. But getting those insights hasn’t always been easy. Teams are looking for ways to get deeper insights more quickly, and there have been important advancements in UX measurement to help them do this. 

One example is our QXscore, which automatically integrates measurements of usability, task success, customer satisfaction, reliability, and more to produce a UX scorecard. The scorecard helps teams get a high-level understanding of different areas they can improve upon to increase their overall score. This new measurement aims to effectively combine the power of behavioral and attitudinal data in a way that’s immediately actionable for UX teams.

How to measure UX progress

Now that you’ve established which metrics matter to your organization, you can use that baseline to measure your progress. When it comes to demonstrating the progress of your organization’s UX, there are a few different ways to look at it.  

UX progress over time

With consistent measurements, you can plot your progress over time to see how things are improving or degrading. This helps the team maintain momentum and inspiration to keep honing the product or experience. 

UX progress across products 

If your organization has multiple products or experiences, you can use standardized measurements—like QXscore— to ensure there are no blind spots in your offering. If customers respond positively to one aspect of your product but negatively to another, it can help your team prioritize improvements in specific areas and create new strategies.

UX progress relative to competitors 

Tools like UserTesting allow UX teams to see how their experience stacks up against direct competitors. By running tests to see how users interact with their experience and similar experiences, teams can know exactly what they’re doing well and where they could improve.  

Why you should measure UX progress

Ultimately, the goal of all UX measurements is to help the user. When the user’s experience is optimized, every aspect of an organization—from brand perception to revenue—can improve. 

Beyond that, UX measurement helps teams get on the same page, stay focused on proper priorities, and achieve greater stakeholder buy-in across an organization. All of this leads to an accurate UX roadmap of improvements that leaders can confidently invest in.