UX Statistics & Why Your Business Should Invest in Good User Experience

Engaging Website User Experience

“What we’re seeing now is an experience [being] elevated to being an essential part of product strategy.” - Jesse James Garrett, leading American UX designer 

Despite the ROI potential for website UX design investment averaging just under 10,000% (you read correctly), still, only 55% of online businesses bother to conduct any UX testing on their sites.

In other words, they fail to give themselves this increasingly crucial commercial edge in what is an increasingly competitive online market.

What's more, it’s all downhill from there: in total, businesses lose an estimated $2 billion every year owing to bad user experience. In fact, up to 70% outrightly fail as a result of this bad user experience.

Shocking statistics, yes, but also ones no business need be part of, should it develop a little more awareness of and foresight into the importance of good UX design. 

In the following analysis, we’ll go through some fascinating UX statistics for a closer look at this reality, both in general terms and in those of mobile devices.

If your online business hasn’t fully optimized its customer interface, you might find this reality sobering and one in which to recognize that websites are no longer for just looking pretty.  

What’s the difference between UX and UI?

But let’s first be clear on these definitions, given they are terms often interchanged mistakenly. 

Where UI (user interface) is concerned with a website’s aesthetic qualities (images, buttons, checkboxes, text etc.), user experience – UX – is about user interaction.

UX concerns how the interface actually works and how a user reacts to and progresses through it. 

Or not, as the case may be. For this purpose, UX designers routinely conduct behavioural research before beginning the design process itself. 

Why Is UX Important? 

Because if a business is to enjoy any real success, its website must fully engage the consumer.

Good UX develops and sustains a user’s interest, efficiently accommodates his or her requirements and thereby increases the chances of an improved website conversion rate.

Remarkably, good UI can increase a website's conversion rate by up to 200% and with effective UX by almost 400%. 

The following statistics illustrate how. 

UX Statistics

The Advantages of Current UX Features & Good Website Design

• UX stats suggest that improving website UX can raise company KPIs by over 80%

• UX statistics also point to video content being 53 times more likely to rank on Google’s first SERP than text 

• Video content is capable of persuading over 70% of people to purchase a product or service

• 80% of internet users are willing to pay extra for a good user experience

• Faster loading times: 25% higher ad viewability, 70% longer sessions and a 35% lower bounce rate is enjoyed by any site loading within 5 seconds

• 63% would consider engaging an online chatbot to communicate with a business or a brand

• First impressions are 94% design-related 

• 75% of judgements on a website’s credibility are based on design and overall aesthetics

• 83% place ‘high importance’ on a seamless experience across all devices

• 90% of smartphone users will make a repeat purchase from any brand that provides a ‘helpful’ mobile UX

Bad User Experience Statistics

• UX stats found 88% of online shoppers polled stated they are less likely to return to a website where they suffered a bad user experience

• 90% of users will leave a site owing to bad design alone

• 70% of online shoppers abandon their carts because of poor UX

• 44% of online shoppers tell friends about a bad online experience

• A mere one-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in website conversions

• Nearly 40% of people will stop engaging with a website when image loading time is too slow

• Over 70% of small business websites do not feature CTA buttons

User Experience Statistics for Responsive Mobile Website Design

• UX statistics show that more than 60% of online shoppers will use only mobile devices for making shopping decisions

• UX stats also show 52% saying they’re less likely to engage with a website that doesn’t use responsive mobile design

• 50% of users will not use an unresponsive mobile website even of a brand they like 

• More than 70% of publishers claim that mobile-optimized content enhanced their positive UX feedback

• Approximately 50% of users begin scrolling within 10 seconds; 90% within 14 seconds

• Infinite scrolling can lower a site’s bounce rate

• 67% say they’d rather reward a mobile-friendly site by buying a product or service there than from one of its competitors

• 85% of adults think a business’s mobile website should be as good as or better than its web app equivalent

• 53% of the time, visitors to mobile sites leave a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load

How to Sell UX to Stakeholders

And yet, with all that said, when employing traditional ROI measures against investment in UX, it’s often difficult for executives to clearly demonstrate what financial benefits there are to that investment.

For UX design teams, often it’s not enough that they create appealing, functional designs: they too must articulate what tangible business results and KPIs are generated from those designs. 

So how do the creative-minded sell enhanced UX solutions to these executives and stakeholders? They must think more in terms of business value and in doing so, consider what the return on investment will be.

They must determine which metrics will best illustrate this return. In other words, UX designers must also think as a business leader does. 

Measuring the ROI on UX

Whether a company has an internal UX team or outsources services to conduct its required research, it will often take the following steps toward gaining a fuller understanding of current UX value:

• Define a representative audience: Although not always an easy task, gathering a clarified group for qualitative research is key to obtaining the accurate feedback a website requires before refinements can be made.

• Identify the company’s most important KPIs. 

• Establish UX metrics: Popular customer experience-measuring tools will include System Usability Scale (SUS), Total Addressable Market (TAM), Standardized User Experience Percentile Rank-Questionnaire (SUPR-Q) and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

• Identify and prioritize user tasks: What are users’ primary tasks and what are their attitudes toward them? What matters most to them? This presents a major opportunity for reducing UX complexity. Identifying these tasks can be done via internal surveys where an entire organization gathers then shortlists the results. 

This shortlist is voted on by a representative cross-section of said customers and then graphically prioritized into table format starting with the highest number of votes to the lowest.

• Benchmark the user experience: Establish a baseline from done research for comparing against both an initial redesign and future iterative releases.

• Map UX metrics to company KPIs: This can involve a company’s finance team for aligning revenue across varying siloed divisions. 

• Formulate a plan for improving and/or innovating metrics: This may be in the form of internal activities across teams such as design-thinking, patent filings, conference talks and seminars with UX guest-speaking experts.

• Clarify how design changes impact the company KPIs: Determine which of the UX metrics gathered show the strongest and most explanatory relationship to company KPIs.

• Establish a UX measurement 'playbook' for performing periodic UX audits.

Common UX Areas of Development

Key Website Functions to Determine Good User Experience

Once the research is complete, it is often the case that the following aspects of a website’s user experience will require attention: 

• User design - colours, images and/or video content

• Usability - discoverability, navigation, UI standards

• Consistency - UI design, interaction design

• Interface Layout -  plan pages and interface behaviour

• Workflow - user flow, interaction design, efficiency

• Brand perception - quality, trust, confidence

• User design - the colour palette, images and/or video background

• Structure of information – page hierarchy; the organization and consistency of your content within the website

• User behaviour research – user engagement and how to build trust

UX Best Practice for Your Website

5 Key Measures for Improved User Experience

Prioritize your understanding of user habits, needs and expectations. As with SEO, when you think not about what Google wants but rather of what it wishes to provide its searchers, think similarly about how your website can accommodate your customers.

And how efficiently. 

• Maximize the accessibility of your CTA and checkout buttons 

• Ensure a speedy and flowing checkout time

• Avoid unnecessary questions during the checkout process

• Be crystal-clear on your pricing from the start - hidden charges corrode trust

• Be up-front about your refund policy

Above all, be ready and willing to evolve. Like SEO practice, user experience is a continually shifting landscape that should be given routine attention for its ongoing development. Listen to your customers, welcome their feedback. Your website's conversion rate depends on it.

UX & Google ‘Core Web Vitals’

Speaking of SEO, Google has since outlined a set of metrics for measuring user experience. These look at the most important requirements for a successful UX which include loading times, visual stability and interactivity.

They are UX expectations that all websites should now aim to meet and there is every indication that collectively, they will become a prominent ranking factor. 

Conclusion

For an online business to effectively differentiate itself, it simply must provide an optimum user-focused experience. This is not just for the sake of its website conversion rate but indeed for building trust and establishing loyalty among its customers.  

With deepening digital awareness, so too do those customers become more demanding and thus less patient with anything but a robust, efficient and fully accommodating user experience. Subject them to a negative experience and it's very quickly a case of 'once bitten, twice shy.'

And in such a case, there's then no shortage of other options out there for them to choose from.  Choose a good UX design and you choose good business.

At SDH, we take UI and UX design seriously and are proud of the in-house expertise we have. If you'd like to find out more about improving your website's UI and user experience, drop us a line a hello@startup-house.

Sources:

Smallbizgenius.net - Essential UX Statistics

UXmatters.com - Measuring the ROI for UX

Truelist.co - UX Statistics

Techjury.net - 31+ User Experience Stats 2022

99firms.com - UX statistics

Axongarside.com - Google's Core Web Vitals

Toptal.com - Know Your User