97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 74. Deliver Successful Products Through Common Success Metrics

Martina Borkowsky

The principle that you can improve only what you measure has led to countless ways to measure success: product managers want to see a high conversion rate or adoption, software development wants to deliver a piece of software free of functional bugs, and marketing measures the cost to acquire a new customer. Have you noticed the pattern? All of these key performance indicators (KPIs) are in their own silo—their own little piece that contributes to the whole. By focusing too much on these silos, people tend to lose the big picture.

When people think of UX metrics, they often think of “number of clicks.” Numbers are powerful, but if your only goal is to reduce this number, you miss a point. Maybe you added a confirmation dialog to protect customers from unintentionally losing work. This certainly improves the overall experience but also increases the number of clicks—numbers do not always tell you the full story.

Many businesses rely on standard scales such as the System Usability Scale or the Net Promoter Score to evaluate their products. These give you one global number that is supposed to represent user satisfaction. But your value proposition is not objective or comparable to everyone else in your industry. You might produce an app that offers the cheapest flowers online or the most reliable ...