Improving your website’s user experience (UX) is paramount when it comes to making a good impression on potential and existing users. Even if you have brick-and-mortar stores, most people are moving their shopping online, and you want to keep their business.
Kissmetrics breaks down why website UX is vital, and how to measure and improve it.
Why Website UX Is Important
More people are shopping for products online or subscribing to online services in the digital age. So, even if you have the best products in the world, no one will ever know unless they can find their way to your checkout page and convert.
In order to get your customers there, you have to give them what they want. And what they want is an appealing, functional website, intuitive navigation, clear information and clear call-to-actions. In short, they want you to guide them through the experience.
Anything less and visitors will never make it to your purchase page.
Types of Metrics Used to Measure UX
There are a variety of ways to measure user behavior and how they experience your website.
These metrics can be measured and compiled into reports using a digital analytics tool. The following sections list nine of the primary metrics used by businesses across all industries to measure their UX.
Journey Mapping
Mapping your users’ journey throughout your website can lead to essential insights about where your content is working and where it falls short. Seeing what pages they visit and where their sticking points are can help you refine your sales funnel. It can also show you how far through the funnel potential users get before dropping out.
When you see where visitors drop out, you can focus on fixing what’s wrong at that specific stage of the journey. Maybe our account registration is too complex to navigate or you’re missing a call-to-action. Maybe the page took too long to load. You can only fix these problems if you know which pages your visitors are seeing.
User Churn Rate
User churn rate measures the number of users who stop using your products or services in a given period. It gives you insight into user satisfaction and indicates whether there is a problem with the product that needs fixing. In the short-term, it provides an idea of how much money you’ll need to spend attracting new users.
Keep in mind that a high user churn rate is not uncommon in certain industries.
User Retention Rate
The user retention rate is the opposite of the user churn rate and measures the percentage of users who stick with your service. The higher your user retention rate, the less you’ll have to spend on customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Statistically speaking, it’s almost always less expensive to keep existing users than it is to attract new ones.
Conversion Rates
Once you attract visitors to your website, the real work begins. Visiting doesn’t automatically mean that someone converts.
Conversion rates measure the visitors to your website who proceed through the sales funnel and eventually complete desired events like: signing up, providing their email, watching a video, or completing a purchase. The majority of visitors may not complete any events or convert, but you can use the data you collect to optimize your site so that more of them do..
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer lifetime value, or CLV, measures how much money a single user is expected to spend on your products throughout their entire relationship with your company. This can be calculated by assuming that the user continuously stays loyal to your company and purchases new models or updates to your product at specified intervals. Those intervals will vary based on the products you offer.
For example, you could expect a customer to buy new clothes much more frequently than you would expect them to purchase new cars.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
The net promoter score, or NPS, measures which users are most likely to recommend your company to their friends and family. Those who are likely to recommend you are classified as promoters and people who will actively speak against your company are classified as detractors.
Ideally, your percentage of promoters will outweigh your detractors.
Unlike other metrics, NPS is measured by surveying users directly, meaning their responses may be biased. A user might respond negatively if they’ve had a bad day, regardless of how they normally feel about your product.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Customer effort score, or CES, is a similar survey to NPS and measures how satisfied your users are with their experience on your website or within your product. Instead of asking how likely they are to recommend your product(s), it asks how easy they found your service, website or product to use.
If possible, you want to minimize the required user effort as much as you can since people prefer to use simple and straightforward products.
Average Response Time
If your company or website offers any kind of customer success or support, this is a crucial metric. Whether users are ordering products through an e-commerce website or struggling to install software, they will likely want to speak to a representative.
This can happen through an email, live chat, text, or phone call. Average response time measures how long customers have to wait before they get a response.
Average Resolution Time
Similar to the average response time, the average resolution time measures how long it takes for a user or customer’s issue to be resolved. A resolution doesn’t necessarily mean a fix since they might be contacting your company with a question or complaint that is out of a representative’s control. Still, the faster your team can resolve the issue or answer their questions, the happier the user or customer will be.
How To Improve Website UX
Improving your website’s UX comes down to a few basic ideas:
- Know your target audience.
- Format the right design.
- Speed up the process of page navigation.
- Add key touchpoints.
Understand Your Audience
The first step to understanding your target audience is to install a behavioral analytics tool like Kissmetrics on your website. By analyzing the data you collect,, you can segment out your users based on the actions they take. You’ll be able to create user personas and predict their needs and wants based on factors like average age, location, annual income, household size, previous purchases, features used and other data.
When you know who your users are, it’s easier to improve your products and give them what they want.
Improve Page Speed
A user’s page speed may not always be in your control, but you should make every effort to get your website running smoothly and speedily whenever possible. In this modern age, users have very little patience for slow, clunky websites, and even a few seconds of waiting for a page to load can cause them to leave the page.
Google also considers page loading time when assigning rankings to websites, so if your page is slow to load, even the best SEO content won’t feature very high on the list.
Consider The Layout and Design
The design of your website is the first thing your visitors see, and you want to strike a balance between exciting and sleek. Too much information or graphics can overwhelm the visitor and distract them, whereas too little can bore them.
You also want to make navigation straightforward so they’ll easily find what they’re looking for.
Simplifying your formatting using any top eCommerce website builders isn’t just about making your website sleeker and more aesthetically appealing. It can also decrease loading time. The majority of your page’s loading time comes from making HTTP requests for each element on the webpage. These elements come from fancy graphics, fonts, styles, icons, and other scripts.
Add Key Touch Points
Key touchpoints are the instructions or tips your users need to understand your products, how they work, and get to know your company. These key touchpoints are areas of interaction between your users and your company.
Key touchpoints can include:
- Online advertisements,
- Social media posts,
- Chatting with user representatives,
- Product reviews,
- Feedback surveys.
The more interaction visitors can have with your company, the more you can develop their loyalty and investment. By demonstrating that you care about them, your company turns into a friendly presence instead of a faceless corporate entity.
With the right key touchpoints, you can increase your conversion rate and keep existing users from churning to your competitors.
Conclusion
UX is constantly in flux so monitoring the metrics listed above over time is the best way to quantifiably measure and improve experiences. With granular data at your fingertips, you can see how users react to changes in your website and tweak issues proactively instead of waiting for them to affect revenue.
Visit Kissmetrics for more information on measuring UX and improving your website.
Sources:
Key Product Management Metrics and KPIs | Altexsoft.com
User Effort Score | Questionpro.com
20 Ways to Speed Up Your Website – and Improve Conversion by 7% | Crazy Egg
