How to Use UX Metrics?

Meet a guide to UX metrics — only things you need! 11 metrics, examples and tips on using them. Let’s go!

What are UX Metrics

They are sets of data that show you whether your product is effective. They let you make adjustments to it based on real user data, not assumptions. Grab these methods and calculate your UX success:

1. Usability Metrics

They show how easily users can complete a task using your interface:

Time on Task

How long does it take users to complete a specific task? This metric will show your areas for improvement.

For example, if your users can’t find how to pay for the product in a minute or less, you should make adjustments asap! Otherwise, your business will be left without paying customers!

Task Success Rate

This one tells us how many users can successfully complete a certain task. It can be calculated by dividing the number of completed tasks by the number of attempts. For example, if 5 people out of 10 can find how to sign up for your product, your task success rate is 50%, and it should be improved.

Error Rate

Measure how many times users make mistakes during a certain task. For example, if 3 people out of 10 navigate to the wrong part of your app or website, your error rate is 30%.

Average Number of Errors

This one might seem similar to the previous metric, however, users can make several mistakes while performing one task. You should know what are the weaknesses to adjust the UX to that.

Usability Ratings

What can be simpler than just asking your audience about how they liked your product? You can offer a scale and ask them to specify how much effort it took them to reach the final goal:

Another example is a 5-star rating. Ask users general questions about how they would rate your product or offer them

2. Engagement Metrics

They show in which way users interact with your product:

Page Views and Scrolling Time

These two metrics are perfect for websites and can tell you how many people visited each page and how much time they spent there. They can be accessed via Google Analytics or any other analytical tool. Some of them even allow us to track readability, which is displayed as the percentage of a page your users scroll to between leaving. For example, if there are new visitors on pages but they leave without taking action, something may be wrong with the UX. People just can’t find what they need.

1/7/30-Day Active Users per Feature

This metric is also called DAU, WAU, MAU, which stands for daily active users, weekly active users and monthly active users. It shows the percentage of customers who used a feature during a certain period of time. For example, “7-days active users” used the feature regularly during the last week. “1-day users” launched it only yesterday.

Time In-App or On-Site

The longer your users interact with the product, the better. Imagine thousands of people launching your product for a couple of seconds. This may be reasonable if you develop a new design for a clock. :) In other cases, they just won’t get enough value from it. If the metric shows poor results, you might improve the UX together with the marketing team, as there are plenty of aspects that can affect this rate.

3. Conversion Metrics

They can tell you about prolonged engagement and user retention:

Conversion Rate

This rate means the percentage of people who complete a particular task or action. For example, for every 100 visitors you get, if 50% sign up for your newsletter, your conversion rate is 50%. You can calculate it with the help of analytical tools that you use to track users’ actions. Choose the goal (registration, subscription, purchase, or whatever) and calculate the percentage based on the number of all your visitors.

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

A rating scale between 1 and 10 that measures user satisfaction. All you need is to ask people to rate your service or product. 1 means the worst impressions and 10 — the best ones. NPS shows how likely users will recommend your product:

• Those who rate your product 9 or 10 are called Promoters. They will likely do that.
• Passives are not going to take any actions after interaction with the product.
• Detractors won’t recommend people use your product or even share the worst feedback about it.

After users rate your product or service, you can ask them about why they have chosen such a rate. Collect more details and improve your UX!

ROI (Return on Investment)

It shows what the company has gained by investing money in the UX. Surprisingly, this metric works well not only in marketing! Of course, there are a handful of factors that influence users’ decisions, so we recommend using this metric together with the ones mentioned above. For example, if the company has invested $5000 for a new sign-up page, after which the product got many customers who paid $10000 for services, the ROI is $5000.

How to Use These Metrics?

As they say, good counsel does no harm. So, you can start with only one metric for each part — usability, engagement and conversion. However, the more data you collect, the more precise decisions you make. Avoid the guesswork and intuition-based UX. Analyze what your audience needs to make your product a real best-seller!

Soon we’ll share more details about frameworks and methodologies that advanced designers use. Stay tuned! ;)