Below are six ways in which you can evaluate user experience.

#1 Draw Insight from Pageviews and Average Time on Page

These basic Google Analytics metrics are a good entry point to begin your investigation as to the reason why there’s so much or so little going on your website.

Tool to measure — Google Analytics.

Pageviews

Pageviews tell you how many times users accessed a particular site on your website or the whole website itself. It’s a metric useful in determining if the content of a site is enticing and engaging, or if your customers are forced to jump all over your website searching for content which simply isn’t there, thus needs to be added.

Pageviews also count page reload times, which in turn, might indicate that a page loads with errors and the user if forced to reload it repeatedly to get what he or her wants.

Average Time on Page

Average Time on Page shows you an estimate of how long viewers spend on a particular page. If a page has a low Average Time on Page and a high % Exit rate, you should be alarmed there’s a problem causing people to veer off that site.

#2 Lower Your Bounce Rate to Increase Conversion

Although Bounce Rate appears in the same Behavior Overview tab in Google Analytics as Pageviews and Average Time on Page do, it’s a metric that can indicate so many issues it deserves its own category.

What Is Bounce Rate?

It’s the percentage of visits which have concluded on the same page a user began his or her visit without browsing further. As scary as it sounds, keep in mind that some pages are designed for a single view because your visitors only need to see your number or fill out a form. That’s why, as with all other metrics, Bounce Rate needs to be backed up by other metrics to help you decide if you should worry about it.

High Bounce Rate can mean poor copy, poor website performance, poor web design, or complicated subscription form, just to name a few. With eCommerce shops, high Bounce Rate is also an indication of cart abandonment, which can mean issues with a complicated checkout process.

Now let’s focus on the human aspect of evaluating UX.

#3 Use System Usability Scale to Evaluate Your Apps

The System Usability Scale (SUS) came into life in 1986 but to this day it’s commonly used for measuring software usability. SUS is a ten-question survey for subjective application assessment.

SUS is a cost-effective method that brings the best results in combination with various in-app analytics. You can easily perform a SUS survey on your own, by asking a portion of your customers to answer the questionnaire.

The respondents answer each question with one of five answers ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. A SUS score is an overall usability evaluation for a particular software. It is not a survey you can use to focus on improving only the low-scoring points.

Below are the ten questions included in the SUS survey.

1. I think that I would like to use this system frequently.
2. I found the system unnecessarily complex.
3. I thought the system was easy to use.
4. I think that I would need the support of a technical person to be able to use this system.
5. I found the various functions in this system were well integrated.
6. I thought there was too much inconsistency in this system.
7. I would imagine that most people would learn to use this system very quickly.
8. I found the system very cumbersome to use.
9. I felt very confident using the system.
10. I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this system.

How to Calculate Your SUS Score?

First, sum up the scores from all the answers.

Questions one, three, five, seven, and nine equal the number of the answer on the scale minus one.

Questions two, four, six, eight, and ten equal five minus the respective number of the answer on the scale.

Sum up all the items and then multiply the result by 2.5. It’s your SUS score.

NOTE: Anything below 68 points should be an indication there are usability issues in your application that need to be further assessed and addressed with other methods.

#4 Measure Your Website’s UX with SUPR-Q

The Standardised Universal Percentile Rank Questionnaire (SUPR-Q), is an evaluation method for websites, developed by Jeff Sauro. SUPR-Q is partially based on SUS method, with the exception that, aside from usability, it’s also used to measure trust, loyalty, and appearance.

The SUPR-Q questionnaire consists of eight questions to which participants give Strongly Disagree–Strongly Agree answers.

Although SUPR-Q can be a bit pricey—the prices for a full license vary between $3,000 to $5,000—it does give your website a reliable score that you can compare with other websites operating in the same industry.

Sample questions used to determine particular metrics:

Usability—Is the desired information easily accessible to your customers? Is the purchase process easy and fast?

Trust—Do customers feel their confidential data is secure while they’re making a purchase?

Loyalty—Would your customers make another purchase? Would they leave a positive review of your business?

Appearance—How do your customers perceive your site visually-wise?

#5 Alert Customer Support to Your Customers’ Feedback

You can use the SUS or SUPR-Q surveys to measure UX but it’s also useful to make your customer service department pay attention to what your customers have to say about specific features of your site or the checkout process.

You can also ask your customer service employees to throw in a UX question while solving various customer service tickets. It can be anything from questions regarding the ease-of-use of the website or application, the product browsing process, or usefulness of provided product descriptions in making a purchase.

Also, the very questions your customers are asking should pin your attention to specific problems. For example, frequent questions about obscured layout that is preventing customers to make a purchase, or script errors that block certain features during cross-platform or cross-browser usage.

#6 Use Google HEART to Measure Various Metrics

You can use various Google products, such as Google Analytics or AdWords, to draw insight on strictly technical metrics of UX, but to aid you in achieving various UX goals, Google created the HEART framework.

HEART framework helps to measure and later improve user happiness, engagement, adoption, retention, and task success.

What Do the HEART Metrics Mean?

Happiness—evaluates traits such as satisfaction with website or its ease-of-use (measured with a survey)

Engagement—masures engagement based on analytical metrics, e.g. time on page, sessions, clicks (taken from Google Analytics)

Adoption—how many new customers are acquiring your product (Google Analytics)

Retention—measures the number of returning clients (in Google Analytics)

Task Success—measures the completion of specific tasks, such as creating an account, eCommerce product search result match (tested with a survey)

The benefit of HEART is that you can grasp meaning from all of these metrics or focus only on results of one or two to bring out the best out of your targeted website goals.

Without evaluating your UX, you cannot expect to deliver proper buying experiences for your customers, which is the key element to high conversion rates and customer retention. Even looking at your Google Analytics results alone can already give you an idea as to what needs improvement.