User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UE) are two equal parts that make up one memorable online customer experience. Your website or mobile app shouldn’t only look professional and “pretty.” It should also work seamlessly, offering your users an experience they can’t find anywhere else, one that keeps them coming back.

Even the biggest companies with the most recognizable brands still place an emphasis on an easy and enjoyable online experience. It’s part of what makes them some of the most powerful companies in the world.

Take Apple, for example. Apple products have been lauded for their effortless and simple interfaces. The company’s website follows the same principles. With large graphics, very little “fluff,” and clear call-to-actions, Apple’s website is extremely easy to use. The user never has to question their next step in their online journey. It’s a far cry from the Craigslist website.

User experience directly relates to customer experience. Below, we’ve outlined some simple metrics and measurements you can perform on your website or application. They’ll help you determine whether you and your users are in sync, or whether a poor experience is driving away potential business.

Start by measuring user activity to get insight into how long users spend on your website or application, how engaging they find it, and whether they can successfully complete your intended conversion actions. Activity metrics include:

• # of Sessions
• # of Pageviews
• Session Durations
• Installs or Downloads
• Form Fills
• Link Clicks

You’ll not only discover what’s working on your site, you’ll also discover what isn’t working by monitoring for any areas of confusion or low performance. Where can your online customer experience be bolstered? Where aren’t you meeting expectations?

There are some great tools you can start with to gain these insights, including Google Analytics, Zoho PageSense, and Zoho SalesIQ. They’ll track user activity, provide you with data dashboards, and even create heatmaps that outline where users are most engaged.

It’s one thing to get users to visit your site or download your application, but how many of them are returning? If users visit your site once and never come back (and never convert), chances are your application or site isn’t falling short of their expectations. Maybe it is hard to navigate. Maybe the information is hard to find, or perhaps the info they need isn’t there at all.

Look at your analytics to determine bounce rates, session durations, returning vs new visitors, and pages per session. Longer durations and more pages per session indicate that users are engaged with your site or application. High bounce rates mean that something turned a user away before they could take another action, whether that was clicking a link or navigating to a new page.

For websites, Google Analytics featured behavior flows. You can follow your users through their journey from their first page to their drop off. Where are they navigating away? How can you make converting them easier?

If your conversions are low, take a step back and consider the actions you want your users to take. Maybe you’re asking them to do too much (call, fill out the form, download a whitepaper). Too many call-to-actions will overwhelm users, while a single unclear call-to-action will force a user away.

Not sure whether you offer good customer experience? Ask the customers themselves! Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores are an incredibly popular Key Performance Indicator and can easily be used to measure the success of your UX campaign design.

CSAT surveys typically use scales, ranging from 1 to 5 or 1 to 10. They’ll ask customers to share their satisfaction with a brand and the experience it offers. From there you can take the scores that ranked highest (for example, on a scale of 1 to 5, you take the surveys with a score of 4 and 5) and divide that total by the number of survey responses. Take that number and multiply it by 100. Then you will have your customer satisfaction percentage.

Send CSAT surveys to customers who visit your website via a pop-up. What sort of questions should you ask on the survey? You can start with some simple ones:

• This website gives me all the information I need. (Rate from 1 to 5)
• Navigating this website is easy. (Rate from 1 to 5)
• The content on the site is relevant to my needs. (Rate from 1 to 5)
• This brand cares about my experience. (Rate from 1 to 5)

Worried about getting honest answers, or any answers at all? Offer your customers something unexpected as thanks for filling out the survey, whether that’s a coupon code or gift card.

Every industry is different, so satisfaction percentages aren’t exactly concrete and the same for every business. However, once you see how your customer experience measures up to competitors, you can adjust and figure out how to improve.

If you find yourself in need of help with UI/UX design for your website or app, turn to KDG. Our award-winning UI/UX experts can help you design and develop an online experience your users are sure to remember. From user research and persona creation to competitive analysis and multi-faceted testing, we have access to the data, insights, and metrics guaranteed to guide your site to success. Contact us today.