A hands-on UX/UI guide for enterprise software development teams, making the business case, what goes into building a strategy for project success and how to calculate the ROI of your next UX project.
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When measured correctly, revenue from UX projects can be directly correlated with your investment. This is why it is increasingly important to have metrics in place in relation to your UX projects. These metrics will place a critical role in being able to show UX as a profit-centre.
User experience activities can reduce developmental inefficiencies in a number of ways, such as diminishing wasted development time, shortening development time altogether, and instead focusing on perfecting the user interface. User studies show that 70% of projects fail due to lack of user acceptance, which is a common consequence of lack of UX design.
Conversion rate allows you to measure the impact of UX activities on your KPIs (key performance indicators). If you are attempting to measure direct activity on your application, then UX can significantly influence those numbers through branding, usability and accessibility. This method allows you to observe the different components that make up your UX impact user behaviour.
Drop off rates are another way to measure the number of users who decided to abandon a workflow before completion or take too much time to complete a task. Being able to measure the drop off rate is critical because it allows you to identify which part of your UI is causing user dissatisfaction and at which step they decide to abandon the task. In order to calculate drop off rates, you will need google analytics or another engine to track user activity to convert the raw usability metrics into a SUM score (with the help of a SUM calculator). The formula used to calculate the drop off rate would be:
Number of users / number of unique users in each segment x 100 = Drop off rate (%).This metric will be used to record any errors that may arise as well as identifying user interface design issues that impact users’ ability to proceed through the conversion funnel. Single usability metric (SUM) is a standardized metric that calculates task completion rates, time used to complete tasks, and satisfaction and error tolls. Your SUM can be easily calculated using a SUM calculator. SUM has a direct correlation to drop off rates considering that:
Fewer UX errors = Fewer conversion drop-offs.It’s difficult to quantify customer satisfaction. It can seem like an imprecise process with nebulous
results. Customer experience expert, Gerry McGovern, developed the TPI (Task Performance Indicator) method
to measure the impact of changes on customer experience. TPI assesses changes to an app or website with
regard to a defined set of customer “top tasks.” Govern says that the testing group should include 13-18
participants to produce stable, consistent results.
For each task, the user is asked a task question via a live chat. The user then completes the task and provides the answer. The interviewer ask the user how confident they are in their answer.
Several factors can influence the answer. TPI takes into account:
How long it should take to complete the task under best practice conditions.
At the end of each task, people are asked how confident they are.
The user is unsure; their answer is almost correct.
The user has high confidence, but the wrong result.
The user gives up on the task.
The user takes longer than the allotted 5 minutes.
Govern’s methodology, which you can read more about here, can be, however, time consuming. Other user researchers instead advocate pushing out live versions to A/B test in order to get higher volumes of data.
You can also use many other metrics to gauge user satisfaction, like reduced errors or ease of completion.
These can be app specific and may not work for your situation:
Application usage — The increase (or decrease) in application usage. Use this metric to demonstrate that your UX overhaul has improved the app’s appeal.
User interaction — Good UX may increase or decrease how much users use the system and the length of each interaction.This metric will vary from project to project. If the goal is to deepen user engagement with the application, the desired outcome will be an increase in user interaction. If the team is looking to boost user productivity and the efficiency of the app, the goal may be to reduce interactions.
Support requests — If your application has improved in ease of use and intuitiveness, you should be able to measure a decrease in calls to the help desk.
Training time — Likewise, by making the UI more user-friendly, it should help reduce the amount of time to train people to use the application.
Task completion rate — A common metric that measures the percentage of tasks correctly completed by users. The task must have a defined goal or completion point, such as filling out a form. This will help show the efficiency of the UX design. Before measuring, define what constitutes success.
Task completion time — The length of time (minutes/seconds) it took users to complete a task. Use this metric to gauge whether or not the UI improved user productivity. It can also be used to track the learnability of the application.
Error rate — This metric measures the percentage of users who made an error or mistake during a task. To err is human, but a higher percentage represents an opportunity to improve your app’s UI.
Average number of errors — By counting the number of errors or mistakes users made on average during a task, you can identify usability issues.
Ease of completion — Survey users to determine the ease with which they were able to complete a task. The single ease question (SEQ), asks users to rank how easy or difficult a task was to complete, with 1 representing “Very Difficult” and 7 “Very Easy” is a good way to capture ease of use and the ease with which a user completes a task.
These metrics allow a company to observe the difference in user behaviour and time saved for the company while also taking into account an increase in company earnings as a direct result of a UX project.
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We hope the guide helps you plan your next UX/UI project. And remember, we’re always here if you have any questions, or need any help.
