The UX (User Experience) refers to a person’s experience of your business’ website. The user experience is of vital importance, especially today when an almost unlimited number of similar businesses are gearing their marketing efforts towards providing their visitors with a satisfying UX. If you can’t provide that for your visitors, it won’t take long for them to go back to Google’s results pages and find another website. So, how can you tell if your website offers a satisfying UX, good enough to encourage visitors to convert and prevent them from seeking out other businesses in your industry?
Many believe that UX is best measured through customer surveys and questionnaires. These can be useful, but they are not your only option. There are many other ways in which you can gain measured insight into how visitors experience your website. These can be broadly generalised into two categories: behavioural metrics, and attitudinal metrics.
Behavioural UX Metrics
Task Success Rate
Task Success Rate, or TSR, refers to how well users perform on tasks on your website, such as completing forms. For any task with a clear goal, such as filling in a form to order a product or service, or to provide contact information in order to subscribe to an email newsletter list, the rate of success can be measured.
When measuring the task success rate, you may notice that users are repeatedly attempting the task and failing to complete it, or are fully able to complete the task with no issues, or somewhere in between. The higher your task success rate (the easier it is for users to complete tasks on your website) the better your UX.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate refers to the percentage of users that leave your site almost immediately after they enter it. This metric lets you know if your home page or another specific page on your site is satisfying the user’s expectations. If your bounce rate is low, that means people are staying on your site for a while, which means that your content is probably what they’re looking for and they are happy to stay. If your bounce rate is high, then there are a few things to consider. You might have a high bounce rate because your page loads too slow, the content on your page is not what the user is looking for, or the layout of your page is unappealing. All of these things make a huge impact on the overall user experience. Similar businesses may be putting a lot of care into creating a satisfying user experience, so you really can’t afford to overlook its importance. Further, a high bounce rate damages your reputation in the eyes of Google and other search engines, which decreases your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Conversions
Website traffic is important, but it is also important that our traffic is of high enough quality that it will convert. Conversion is a telling way to measure the UX because a poor UX is not likely to yield conversions, while a satisfying UX should encourage the opposite.
Behavioural Analytics can be used to track the customer journey. These analytics provide valuable insight regarding which stages of the journey potential customers most often opt-out. With this information you can address the problem; perhaps the task was too difficult or complicated, or you did not provide a reason compelling enough to persuade the visitor to continue with their journey. Most often, abandonment is a matter of inconvenience.
Attitudinal UX Metrics
Customer Satisfaction
Also known as CSAT, customer satisfaction metrics inform you about how satisfied users are with your business and the experience with your site, directly from the mouth of the customer. Using a rating scale, from 0 – 5, customers can rate their experience, with 0 being very unsatisfied to 5 being extremely satisfied. A CSAT scale can pop up on the screen before a customer leaves your site, or following a purchase.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
This metric measures brand loyalty. With a positive UX, brand loyalty is likely to be high, while the opposite is true for a poor UX. The NPS refers to a user’s likelihood of recommending your business to a friend or family member.
To measure the NPS, you can ask users how likely they are to recommend your business based on certain factors, such as their most recent experience with your business’ site, with a recent purchase, or based on your website and content’s overall relevance.
NPS is a popular metric worldwide and is used effectively by many businesses to improve the overall UX.
In Conclusion
You might be able to provide a satisfying UX without accurate measurement, but there is a chance that this is a fluke. If you want to be consistent with your user experience and keep visitors happy enough to return to your website time and time again, then it is important that you measure your success. The above metrics should help gain some deep insight into how users are experiencing your website, and show you where you’re succeeding and where you need to do some work.
