Main image courtesy of Mind Inventory.
A good user experience (UX) design is about how your product makes users feel and what your product can do for users.
One of the best ways to do that is to keep your homepage warm and inviting to visitors.
You will want to know how to measure the success of your UX design strategy, so here are some of the core KPIs for tracking success. A KPI is a key performance indicator, which means these are the factors you should focus more attention on to measure the success of your UX design.
Let’s take a deeper dive into these KPIs, so you can learn more about why they are important.
This tells you how long the user spent completing a specific task. Usually, the more quickly a user completes a specific task successfully, means the better the overall UX.
If you want to take a closer look into the data of this metric, consider breaking it up into two segments of average length of task completion on the first attempt and the average length of task completion on repeat attempts.
This breakdown can be valuable for repetitive tasks that the user must complete frequently. For example, you would not look at repeat attempts vs first attempt for things like measuring onboarding or registration. Since the user will only complete these processes once. Although, you could measure the time it takes the average user to complete the onboarding process, that way you can make any necessary changes to streamline the process as much as you can.
This KPI can sometimes be called the “task succession rate” and it allows you to know what percentage of users complete each step in a user flow.
Keep in mind that it is easier to measure the completion rate of tasks that have a clear start and end. For example, if you are measuring the success rate for registration, you can easily tell if a user has not completed it since they would have exited the app/page without creating their account.
However, it is important to note that this metric does not actually diagnose a problem, instead it allows product designers to see where the users are having trouble. For instance, it could be where the users are dropping off at a confusing junction, if there is too much effort needed, or if the next step is not clear. If your task completion rate is low, it means that you need to redesign that aspect of your user flow.
This KPI is the human error occurrence rate, which tracks how often users make a mistake during a specific task. This can help you understand where your users are struggling with your product, which can lead you to make better decisions for future product updates or with design decisions.
When tracking the error occurrence rate you can answer questions such as:
Once you can pinpoint what the errors users are making, it will allow you to see how your platform could be redesigned or updated to help minimize the occurrence of the error.
The usual adoption rate looks at the number of new users that are gained over a specific time period. Although, you may want to consider measuring the adoption of new features as they are rolled out. This way you will be able to gain valuable insight into your products quickly to see how much growth is happening or how many customers are trying out the new feature.
The retention key performance indicator allows you to measure the percentage of users that continually use your product long-term. The calculation of your retention rate is comparing your daily active users against your daily new users. Based on the lifecycle of your product, you may want to measure your retention rate in cohorts—by tracking how many users are retained during a period of one week, one month, three months, six months, etc.
When you look at the retention rate you are able to identify the features to prioritize and clarify the best next steps of your product roadmap.
Having a good UX design strategy can save you time and money. For instance there are 4 simple steps to creating a strong UX design. Keep in mind a good UX design focuses on the users no matter where they are.
Now let’s take a closer look into each of these steps to see how you can implement them into your UX strategy.
You will want to first think like the potential users when creating your UX design. Think about what actions they will take on your site or in your app. Make sure to write all of these actions down onto separate sticky notes, then you can arrange these into a user flow—the order that the potential customers would complete each action. Keep in mind you may have to create a couple duplicates of these sticky notes since users may take some actions multiple times while on your site/app.
Make sure to keep this simple and ensure each action could be completed in five steps or less. For instance, for “make a purchase” the steps would be:
It is important to note that one step does not necessarily mean one click. For instance, in our example the 3rd step requires multiple clicks such as choosing the product’s color and adding it to the basket.
Your next step would be to take different colored sticky notes and denote the different feelings or emotions you want people to have when they complete an action. Keep in mind that your UX can evoke these emotions through the combination of shapes, colors, navigation, content, or sounds. Note that the right mixture of these emotional design elements depends on your brand’s voice identity, style, and who your target audience is.
This is when you get to start to sketch out how each page or frame will look on your site/app. You can make these sketches using a whiteboard or a notebook and creating this sketch will allow you to get a sense of which actions need to be on what page along with what elements will aid in completing those actions.
You can use these sketches and the UX flow you created on these sticky notes to make an outline for what your site/app should look like—whether you create yourself or hire a developer to create for you.
The best way for you to gauge if you have created a good UX design is to test early and often, noting any changes that need to be made. Keep in mind that designing a strong UX does not need to be complicated and you do not need to be tech savvy to map out a customer-friendly experience. Just be sure to have a willingness to test early and often.
Overall, having a good UX strategy will be beneficial when measuring the success of your UX design. Remember that this does not have to be a complicated process.
