After reviewing over 100 online portfolios, one of the key missing ingredients in 95% of the portfolios is explicitly stating what a difference your UX project made.
But this takes planning.
Even before starting the project, your goals must be defined. The goals should relate to the company’s goals or key performance indicators (KPIs). Then, based on those goals, you need to define what success looks like.
Here are some possibilities of goals:
- reduce user errors
- improve user engagement
- add a feature
But how do you know when you’ve reached that goal? What does success look like? To add to the examples above:
- Reduce user errors by 50%.
- Improve User Engagement (Determine what this means. What needs to be measured? # of clicks? # of purchases? time spent between clicks?)
- Add a feature. What makes adding a feature successful? Does it have to do with time spent completing a transaction that uses the new feature? Or is there an increase in sales because of the new feature?
As you ponder what success looks like, keep in mind that UX metrics need to have the following:
- a timeframe
- a benchmark
- a clear reason for being collected and reported
- tied to an action the customers take
Two types of UX Metrics
Before we get into the common UX metrics to measure, let’s discuss the two types of metrics:
Attitudinal
These metrics test how users feel about a product or what they say about a product. Measurements are captured through surveys, feedback forms, and interviews.
Behavioral
Behavioral metrics determine what users do with or how they interact with the product. Examples (discussed below) include Time Spent on Task, Task Success Rate, User Errors, Abandonment Rate, etc. Analytical tools (Google Analytics) can capture many of these measurements.
As you ponder what to measure, here are 5 common UX metrics to consider.
5 Common UX Metrics
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
This measures how happy your customer is (or isn’t) about a specific product or feature, or about their user experience in general.
To measure a customer’s frustration or satisfaction level, a 5-point or 7-point scale is recommended, from deeply dissatisfied to highly satisfied. Using emoji’s instead of numbers also works well (very sad face to a very happy face)
Sample question: How well did our product meet your expectations today?
System Usability Scale (SUS)
This metric enquires about the usability of your product or new feature.
This defined 10-item Likert scale questionnaire provides an at-a-glance look at the ease of use (or lack thereof) of your product or new feature. Respondents rank each statement on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
For more info: What’s the System Usability Scale (SUS) & How Can You Use It? (Hubspot)
Customer Effort Score (CES)
This metric measures how easy (or not) it is for customers to interact, or accomplish a specific goal, or resolve an issue within your product.
Again, using a 5-point or 7-point scale from very difficult to very easy is the best way to measure this.
Sample question: How easy was it for you to …?
Net Promotor Scale
This metric measures how likely your customers will recommend your product.
On a 5-point or 7-point scale, they rate their ‘likeliness’ from Very unlikely to Very likely.
This is a very straightforward question.
Question: How likely are you to recommend our new product (or feature) to your colleagues?
Time Spent on Task
This is a very common UX metric. It’s also known as Time Task or Time on Task. It measures how efficient or productive a customer is when using your product.
If it takes too much time, it potentially points to a function or interaction poorly designed.
Time on Task helps you identify usability issues.
Student Projects
As mentioned before, a UX metric needs a benchmark. Subsequent measurements of that metric will determine whether you are reaching your goal(s).
But how do you get a benchmark if you are doing a student project?
Here are a few ideas:
- Benchmark a task or a product from a competitor
- Take an initial measurement of the UX metric, then improve the metric throughout your design process (This may be difficult to do if you are designing a new app. However, at some point in the design process, you can start collecting data to see how specific UX metrics improve across the entire design phase.) Some metrics will be easier to do this on than others.
- Attitudinal metrics fit well with student projects. You are asking the users how they feel or what they say about your product. Again, it may be difficult to get an initial benchmark, but showing the results of these metrics when captured at the end of your project helps recruiters understand the success of your project.