User experience: what is a high-performance UX?

Generally speaking, we often tend to summarize performance in figures. This is often used in the sports world, with a time, a distance travelled, or the number of successful passes. But when we talk about opening a new route in mountain climbing, or performing a specific figure in skating, we are also talking about performance.

The same applies to user experience. A successful UX will simply be associated with a direct impact on sales and revenues, but other indicators, both qualitative and quantitative, must also be taken into account. Here are the ones that will allow you to determine your UX performance:

1. Business

This seems to be the most obvious indicator, so let's start with this one.

Put plainly: it seems undeniable that improving customer experience, whether online or offline, will increase conversion rates, and thereby the volume of sales, or the number of subscriptions, for example.

But there can also be more indirect effects of your UX on your business. If we take the example of L'Oréal, the offer of new services can, for example, enhance your customer experience and have an impact on your sales. Following the implementation of virtual reality technology, L'Oréal has developed new user experiences that allow users to perform a skin diagnosis using an app and recommend products adapted to the user's skin type. These new experiences will not only improve your brand image (a topic we will develop below), but also boost your business.  

2. Customer Satisfaction

Your UX performance can, and even should, also be measured by your customers' satisfaction.

User experience (UX) is now a key differentiator for a brand in the same way as product or price. The competition to deliver a differentiating user experience is therefore increasingly strong. It is now necessary to consistently and comprehensively measure user satisfaction in order to focus on what makes a difference to the user. By "comprehensive", we mean that every point of contact with the brand must be taken into account, as they form one and the same customer experience and it is important not to compartmentalize it.

Satisfaction can be measured in several ways: with quantitative indicators such as the score of an app, the score of a restaurant on TripAdvisor, or by using Attrakdiff ratings for example. But also, with qualitative data such as reviews and feedback that will be linked.

3. Brand Image

This third indicator is the natural continuation of the first two. This is because a well-designed user experience will lead to the finalization of the purchase, to the satisfaction of the user, and in this way participate in the construction of the brand image

UX performance will therefore not only generate repurchase from satisfied user, but also recommendations to other potential users.

Brands are increasingly relying on these recommendations.

The simplest and most meaningful example is the choice of a hotel or restaurant: who doesn't look at the ratings and reviews on Google or TripAdvisor, therefore relying on the experiences of other customers, to find THE perfect deal.

But we can also find the same principle implemented in other sectors and in a different way.

For example, Darty has chosen to turn its customers into ambassadors, by offering a dedicated discussion section on each product sheet. Users talk together, ask questions and give feedback on their experience:

"This system is proving to be an effective conversion lever: the reviews and advice of other users are a guarantee of trust and credibility, reassuring visitors and making them more likely to buy"

as explained in this article. Compared to traditional reviews, this leads to more interactivity and makes it easier to answer visitors' questions.

Others choose to use their customer feedback to highlight them in their communication campaign. This is the case, for example, of the Qonto bank. Promoters now express themselves online and allow the brand to back-up their message with facts.

4. Productivity

This indicator differs from the others in that the impact is internal, while the others are external.

A powerful UX also means productivity, because building your projects based on your users' experience will allow for 2 things:

First of all, by putting the user at the heart of the decision-making process and giving him the role of referee, you will avoid debates among employees and therefore simplify the decision-making process. Here, you will save time.

Second, not only will you make decisions faster, but you will also make the right decisions based on your users. The SDS Consulting study conducted among 735 companies shows that the front office represents 40% of the development effort and 80% of the unforeseen patches for a digital project. Consulting your users avoids spending time and money on developments that would have to be corrected later, or worse, that would have been useless. Here, you will save time and money. For example, according to L'Oréal, the regular use of user studies and tests allows them to save 3 agile sprints per digital project.  

You can find more information on UX productivity as well as the Ferpection productivity gain simulator in this article from our blog. 

5. Societal Impact

UX must respect the user as a whole since he is at the very heart of its design. The user must therefore be considered not only as a consumer, but also as an individual and a citizen.  

More and more initiatives are showing that doing business is not incompatible with being responsible. Even if it may sometimes seem or be contradictory to a company's business objective. Adam Mosseri, Instagram's CEO, for example recently said:

"We will make decisions that will hurt business if it helps people's health and well-being".

Going one step further, a suggested customer experience can even influence the consumer and allow him to have a positive impact on society. For example, this is the case when a retailer decides to implement solidary rounding at the time of payment by credit card in its points of sale. Or, more recently, Google has highlighted on its search page the 5 actions to follow to slow down the coronavirus epidemic. 

In conclusion, to evaluate your UX performance, don't just look at the impact on your sales. You can build a dashboard to have a more macro-image and put this indicator in perspective with those we have just detailed.

You can also review our webinar on the subject right here

In conclusion, how to measure this UX performance