The six steps for justifying better UX, Forrester says that for every $ 1 invested in UX, a company has a return of $ 100. In another study, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) estimates that more than 1 trillion dollars is invested in IT projects each year and 15% of projects are abandoned before they are completed. This negligible number of failures equates to a loss of 37 billion dollars. Yes, a lack of proper UI can be expensive.

As User Experience designers see the inherent value in improving the experience of products and services. The value of design and how it has impacted the website can be calculated with different metrics. This ensures to keep a check on ensign improvements and get an adequate Return on investment from design.

NN group mentions these four steps to calculate ROI:

• Gather a UX metric in a benchmarking study
• Choose a KPI
• Convert the UX metric into the KPI
• Report the calculation responsibly

Gather a UX metric in a benchmarking study

A product or website equivalent digital asset can be known by its one main feature or multiple features. In a benchmarking study, it is important to figure out which feature to focus on or take the entire project under review. The benchmarking study can be achieved by

• Surveys
• Research
• User interviews
• Market research
• Competitor analysis
• User personas

For the case of ROI based on UX, we will focus on metric samples such as

• Surveys or questionnaires distributed during testing
• Analytics
• Quantitative usability testing
• Customer support

Choose a KPI (Key Performance Indicator)

A KPI is an essential tool to achieve desired goals. KPI helps the company refine and justify their plan, which they most care about. Choosing a KPI is to bring everyone in the team/company together to achieve the same goal, which ensures the growth and performance of the company.

KPI depends upon the company’s long-term and short goals.

Examples of KPI:

• Profit
• Cost
• Customer lifetime value (CLV)
• Employee-Turnover Rate (ETR)
• Employee productivity
• Donors & donor growth

KPIs can also be measured in terms of value by design or user experience. The ROI cares about how the design impacts what the company cares about. Here stakeholders have to think about aligning both user and KPIs

For instance, UX KPI can be % of people subscribed to the newsletter. The underlying business goal is that by subscribing, the customer has also enabled notification and has provided an email address indicating the consent to be engaged and communicated with.

Here the business goals aligned with customer goals ensure the company collects emails of potential customers, and users get exposure to services by the brand.

Convert UX metric into KPI

ROI of the UX is when one metric is converted into another metric. This metric presents how the design impacted the growth and business performance.

Conversion rate/ratio is when a customer visits the website, completes a course of action, and signs up for the newsletter. Here the conversion rate can be easily calculated.

For example, 30 people visit the website and 20 people sign up for the newsletter. Here the conversion rate is 66.6%.

Calculation: Conversion rate = (conversion/total visitors)*100

In other cases, the conversion rate calculation can be complex, as every metric is not related to how many users are signing up, but what is their experience and action, and how it impacts the company goals.

Report Responsibly

As mentioned above, different metrics are calculated with their formulas. Conversion rate and dwell time cannot be calculated with the same formula and presented in the same chart.

The documentation of the research and findings has to be as detailed as the team wants, it should not just show figures but how and why it happened.

Here at OriginUX, we believe in documenting research that is strong and visually presented.
For example:

Here is an example of how the user interview was documented for an e-learning website project.

Guide on how to measure in a framework:

The HEART framework by Google is one way to calculate one feature or the entire website ROI from UX.

	Goals	Signals	Metrics
Happiness	Users find the app helpful, fun and easy to use	Responding to survey Leaving 5-star ratings Leaving user feedback	Net Promoter Score Customer satisfaction rating Number of 5-star reviews
Engagement	Users enjoy app contents and keep engaging with it	Spending more time in the app	Average session length Average session frequency Number of conversions
Adoption	New users see the value in the product or new feature	Downloading, launching app Signing up for an account Using a new feature	Download rate Registration rate Feature adoption rate
Retention	Users keep coming back to the app to complete a key section	Staying active in the app Renewing a subscription Making repeat purchases	Churn rate Subscription renewal rate
Task Success	Uers complete their goal quickly and easily	Finding and viewing content quickly Completing tasks efficiently	Search exit rate Crash rate

To learn more about Google’s HEART framework, visit the blog where we extensively explain how the framework works and help in calculating metrics of small features to the entire website.

The importance of UX design cannot be overstated; pie charts and sophisticated computations cannot do it justice. Remember this the next time you visit Disneyland or use Google; there are successful organisations that have established their reputations on design thought.

“We need to stop worrying about proving the value of design and just focus on outcomes that provide value”

– Denis Weil

For many businesses, embracing UX design is as simple as replacing bad design. Poor design can result in costly and time-consuming support calls, as well as lost revenue and increased development costs. The Covid-19 epidemic has resulted in numerous success stories of well-designed experiences and applications assisting individuals and businesses.

Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the entire premise of questioning design’s return on investment and start constructing a better world?