What UX KPIs and Metrics you can use?
Before we jump to the list of UX KPIs and Metrics that you could use to measure the UX design efforts you invest on your company, let's define first what is the difference between and KPI (Key Performance Indicator) and metric.
What is the difference between a KPI and a Metric?
We often interchange the two terms which is totally WRONG. A KPI is a metric, but a metric is not a necessarily a KPI. Both KPI and a metric is intended to measure success. Why is that distinction very important to understand? It is because KPI is closely related to organizational goals. An organization needs to know their KPIs to perform at their best in order to achieve their organizational goals. If so, how do we formulate our KPIs?
- KPI measures organizational objectives
- KPI provides context that creates meaning on all organizational levels
- KPI is derived from actual data
- KPI must be easy to understand
- KPI drives action
Note that financial outcome in an organization represents the results of driving a good KPI.
Now that we know what is a KPI and a metric, how do we measure UX design efforts we invest on our products?
List of UX KPIs and Metrics
| Category | KPIs / Metric |
|---|---|
| Common | Conversion (sales / visits) |
| Funnel analysis | |
| Basket abandonment | |
| Bounce Rate | |
| Banners | Click through rate |
| Impressions | |
| SEO | Number of clicks to your site from keywords |
| Number of keywords triggering results for your site | |
| SEO positioning | |
| SEM keyword value | |
| Inbound links | |
| Affiliate links | |
| Social Media | Number of Facebook Shares |
| Number of Facebook Likes | |
| Number of Facebook Mentions | |
| Facebook Referrals | |
| Number of Tweets | |
| Number of Retweets | |
| Number of Tweets Mentions (@{twitter_handle}) | |
| Blog Comments | |
| Blog Articles | |
| Video Views | |
| Youtube channel subscriptions | |
| Youtube channel comments | |
| Youtube video reviews | |
| Youtube favorites | |
| Number of Stars in Reviews | |
| Benchmarks (Third Party) |
Alexa Rank |
| Comscore | |
| Hitwise | |
| Compete (US) | |
| Emails & Campaigns |
Email sign-up |
| Open rate | |
| Email Bounced rate (Emails bounced with bad address | |
| Click through rate (CTR) | |
| Unsubscribe rate | |
| Email newsletter churn | |
| Information Architecture (IA) |
Task Completion |
| Time to Content | |
| Clicks to Content | |
| Number of Errors |
There's more and you can check out the references I add below.
If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.- Peter Drucker
This quote from Peter Drucker (The Father of Modern Management) strongly defines the value of metrics and UX Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Every company's goal is to deliver the best products we can to our customers and clients. Companies invest on design with the goal to add value. Thus, in order to deliver and quantify the value that design brings, we must find ways to measure it. The list I added above is a good starting point on how to quantify user experience (UX) design efforts that the company invests.