You know that you should be tracking UX metrics for your products and services. After all, if you don’t measure the UX, how do you know how its performing? How do you know if a design change is for the better, or for the worse? How can you justify investing in UX, if you can’t measure the benefits?
The thing is, there is an awful lot you could measure. The number of potential UX metrics is ever growing. CXPartners have listed a whopping 127 in their big list of UX KPIs and Metrics and as they quite rightly point out, it would be crazy to try to measure, let alone factor in all 127. So, which ones should you focus on? To help navigate this measurement maze, I’ve outlined 6 key UX metrics that I believe should be at the top of your list.
Customer satisfaction is probably the best barometer of the quality of the user experience provided by a product or service. After all, a bad experience is unlikely to lead to a satisfied customer. You can ask users how satisfied they are with particular features, with their experience today and of course overall. Since in the real-world people are more likely to talk about their frustrations, rather than how satisfied they are, a good approach can be to ask users to rate their experience on a 5-point or 7-point scale, from very dissatisfied to very satisfied.
Use a 5-point or 7-point scale for capturing levels of satisfaction
Surveys are a great way to capture satisfaction ratings, along with feedback provided within an app, or when using a website. As we’ll see with most of the metrics it’s important to not only capture ratings, but the reasons behind ratings. A good way to do this is to prompt for an explanation if a user selects a low, or a high satisfaction rating.
Capture not just the level of satisfaction, but the reasons behind it
Like satisfaction, recommendations are also a great barometer of UX. It goes without saying that a user that has had a great experience, is more likely to recommend that product or service to someone else. It’s therefore no surprise that measuring the likelihood to recommend has become all the rage within the business world. This is now primarily via the Net Promoter Score (NPS).
NPS is very simple. Arguably too simple in fact, as we’ll soon see. The idea is that by asking the following single question, you can calculate an NPS score, which will tell you how loyal your customers are.
The standard 10-point Net Promoter Score (NPS) question
The idea sounds very alluring, but as Jared Spool points out in his excellent article, Net promoter score considered harmful (and what UX professionals can do about it) NPS is not the silver bullet that many people think it is. In fact, it can be a very dangerous and misleading bullet.
A recommendation does not necessarily mean a customer had a good user experience, they might just be a brand devotee. On the flip side, a good experience does not always lead to a recommendation. Take Ryanair for example, the biggest budget airline in Europe. Ryanair have really improved the UX of their websites and mobile apps over the last few years, and almost made flying with them bearable. However, even though I had a good experience flying with them last year, I’d never recommend them to a friend or colleague. I can’t yet bring myself to forgive Ryanair for the crappy way they’ve treated me, and other customers over the years. I would never recommend them, no matter how much they improved.
Asking users to rate their likelihood to recommend a product or service on a 10-point scale is also asking a lot of them. What’s the different between a rating of 2 and a rating of 3? What about a rating of 5 and a rating of 6? What if I’d recommend to a friend, but not a colleague? What if I’d recommend for one situation, but not another?
Worse still, NPS simply lumps customers in to one of three groups based on their response. Detractors (0-6), Passives (7-8) or Promoters (9-10).