User experience (UX) refers to the perception of utility, usability, and efficiency that a person has when interacting with a product, system, or service. It affects everything from how they perceive the product to how they experience it.
In creating and refining products, most companies, designers, and creators are concerned with improving the user experience. As a negative user experience can negatively affect the way the product is used and, thus, any positive impact is desired. Conversely, designing for profitability sometimes conflicts with ethical user experience objectives and even causes harm as a result. While the user experience is subjective, it is also objective to determine what constitutes the user experience.
The interactions a user experiences with a product or service are collectively referred to as user experience, or UX. It is the unique, internal experience users have when interacting with a product’s interface.
Let’s use an online store as an example. A customer’s user experience (UX) will be poor if they find the purchasing process to be protracted, difficult, and complicated. Instead, if his shopping experience is simple and hassle-free, the UX will be seen as good. This will likely encourage the buyer to select and buy things from those websites where he had a positive user experience.
Experience has become incredibly significant, even though functionality of a product is still crucial. The better the experience you’re providing, the more user satisfaction is achieved.
In an increasingly competitive market, experience has become an essential part of what a product offers. The more positive the experience your customers have, the more likely they will choose you over your competitors. UX has become an essential part of what makes a product successful.
UX benchmarking is essential for pinpointing problem areas and attaining product objectives. Benchmarks provides design team with a starting point from industry norms, rivals, or prior performance to enhance the user experience of a digital product.
UX benchmarking is the process of assessing the user experience of a product or service by utilizing metrics to compare its performance to an important benchmark. Typically, questionnaires, analytics, and quantitative usability testing are used to gather these metrics.
You should be performing a benchmarking study if you want to:
l Monitor a product’s or service’s entire development.
l Compare your user experience against a prior version, a rival, an industry standard, or a stakeholder-set objective.
l Show the worth of your work and UX efforts.
Benchmarking is an evaluation of comparative performance. Identifying a baseline or benchmark to set goals and measure performance is the objective of benchmarking. Benchmarking allows us to determine our performances.
UX Benchmarks Types:
Benchmarks are connected to two types of UX metrics:
l Qualitative data: This includes customer satisfaction, usability, user experience, and other evaluative information.
l Quantitative data: This includes numbers, ratios, and other measurable information.
There are various ways to track UX metrics and display the data. For instance, the Net Promotor Score (NPS) uses a scale from 0 to 10, while time on task employs seconds, minutes, and hours.
NPS gauges user’s satisfaction so, it is considered as a qualitative metric. But time-on-task can be an example of a quantitative metric as it uses time for measurement.
The use of surveys to ask questions and gather data is a common technique for qualitative data collection. On the other hand, teams can utilize tracking and analytics technologies to collect quantitative data, i.e., it typically doesn’t need to be measured by someone else.
What Is the Source of UX Benchmark Data?
Benchmark studies can be considered as summative evaluations that frequently used by design/team leaders and stakeholders to establish metrics and UX objectives. The following are the four main sources for UX benchmarks :
l Product Data
l Competitive Analysis
l Stakeholders
l Industry-Standard Benchmarks
l UX Benchmarks From Product Data: Product data provides metrics for UX benchmarks, and can be collected using popular methods such as product analytics, heatmaps, usability testing, and user research (questionnaires/surveys). These can provide metrics such as conversions, sales, leads, time-on-task, NPS, CSAT and SUS.
l UX Benchmarks From Competitive Analysis: UX teams can use competitive analysis to create benchmarks and identify areas of improvement. Metrics such as bounce rate, time on site and pages per visit can be compared to rival’s averages. Comparison with the rivals can also be done through usability testing by replicating their website for testing purposes. This provides useful insights for improvement and allows for competitor benchmarks.
l Stakeholder UX Benchmarks: Stakeholders typically set UX benchmarks that must balance business goals with user needs, to ensure the product meets customers’ needs. Ultimately, stakeholders expect a return on investment and improved metrics such as increased sales/conversions, customer loyalty, satisfaction and retention, reduced time-to-market, reduced rework/errors, employee retention and labor cost savings.
l Industry-Standard Benchmarks: Industry-standard benchmarks are the KPIs which companies should use as a minimum for performance. Organizations can obtain these benchmarks from research agencies, industry reports, or by commissioning a benchmark study.
How To Perform UX Benchmarking?
Usability benchmarking supports the creative use of patterns and best practices in the product you’re developing.
Here are some steps you should take:
1. Choose what to measure by defining the context of the study and selecting 5–10 important tasks.
2. Decide how to measure by considering time commitment, cost, skill of researchers, and research tools available.
3. Collect first measurement by establishing a baseline and considering external factors that may affect data.
4. Redesign products while keeping usability heuristics in mind.
5. Collect additional measurements after giving users time to adapt to redesign.
6. Interpret findings using statistical methods and considering product context.
Benchmarking and UX Audit With
TECHVED
TECHVED UX professionals provides UX benchmarking and free UX Audit. We evaluate the product/service to measure the performance and identify the scope of improvement.
We inspect your present user experience design for flaws and aim for the greatest level of service quality with close attention to every single detail. This is what we undertake to provide you with a comprehensive view of your product’s present state. visit our website www.techved.com and connect with us for a FREE UX Audit.
Summary : UX benchmarking entails customizing the examined solutions to fit your own objectives, requirements, and resources. Read our latest blog to know all about UX Benchmarking.
