Annnd we are back.



In this article you will find out what methods of UX Analytics will help you to create a killer UX!

You will get inspiration and a direction for your next steps.

(If you missed part 1, read it here!)



You might remember this table:

Methods of UX Analytics

Let’s start with the qualitative methods first:

Usability Testing

Usability testing is straight forward: You assess the UX of your product by testing it on users.

You do not ask for the users opinions though. Instead you observe systematically.



There are two main variations of usability testing:

— Hallway testing: You ask strangers

— Expert review: You bring in experts of the field (for example: students for testing an app for students)

Usability testing let´s you:

— Analyze usability issues before product release

— Analyze performance

— Analyze if participants complete tasks successfully

— Analyze how long it takes to complete a task

Session Replay

Usability testing is great, but it has a number of issues:

Time: You will spend quite a bit of time to plan and execute a usability test

You will spend quite a bit of time to plan and execute a usability test Participants: You need to find fitting participants and pay them

You need to find fitting participants and pay them Cost: You need professional equipment to conduct a good observation

Session Replay can be a cost and time efficient alternative that can be performed on a daily or weekly basis.



With Session Replay, you can record and replay videos of real user sessions.

You can review the user journey, including touch interaction and time spend on each screen.



While Usability testing provides you with more detail, Session Replay has the benefit that you can observe your users in a natural setting.

Focus Groups

Focus groups usually consist of a small group of ~6–10 people.

After using your product, the group is brought together to discuss issues and benefits of your UX.



The discussion is led by a moderator.

You will need a good moderator, because it can be hard to determine if a discussion makes sense.

Sometimes a point that appears to be irrelevant on the surface might prove valuable if you analyze it afterwards.

After the discussion, you will need to create a report and evaluate it.

Diary Studies

As the name suggests, diary studies collect information by having participants write entries every day.



That has the advantage that there is a longer time frame involved, you are not just limited to one session.



However, diary studies have the tendency to be inaccurate. This is due to low control of participants and the nature of recalling events. I personally think that Usability Testing and Session Replay are the better alternative here.

User Feedback

Chances are that you are using this already.

You probably already are receiving e-mails and comments that give you feedback on your product.

This feedback is really valuable, as it comes from your core users.

However, with a business that is operating at a medium or large scale, it can be hard to take every user feedback into consideration.

It is also really hard to centralise this feedback, especially if you get dozens of comments per day.

Heatmaps

Heatmaps visualize your users actions by overlaying colours.

The “hotter” (more red) the colour, the more interaction.

Heatmaps are quite popular, because they are easy and fast to understand due to their visual presentation.



Here is a example of an use case:

Heatmap Mockup

You instantly can see that most users are logging in via Facebook.

Now you can use that knowledge and move the FB button to the top to improve your UX.

Heatmaps are especially helpful in evaluating your most important button:

The CTA (Call to Action).

Quantitative Analytics

Web Analytics

With Web Analytics, you can view every type of data that you can imagine — as long as it can be expressed in charts or numbers.

You can track views, clicks, active users etc. With most tools you can even set your own metrics.

You always should be looking to be using one web analytics tool, I am recommending Google Analytics or Mixpanel.

Form Analytics

Form Analytics are, as the name suggests, conducted by forms.

It is direct way to ask users for feedback and express it in numbers, making the results easy to evaluate.

For example: “How easy do you find it to navigate through our app from a scale from 1 to 10?”

However, there is a thin line: You can annoy your users by asking for feedback all the time.

Ironically, using this type of UX analytics can possibly lead to a worse UX.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is an industry standard.

Let’s say you are undecided on what is the best way to proceed with a screen, so you implement two versions of what you want to test (Layout, Button colours etc.).

Afterwards, you check which version had the best conversion rate and where the user stayed the longest.

Now you have an empirical proven result that shows you the better version.

However, this form of analytics only works if you already have a big amount of users. As a rule of thumb, the data only gets relevant after being tested with at least 2000 users.

Click Testing

Click testing shows what part of the screen users click on first, or what sequence they are using.

You should track each click, as well as the time it takes the user to make the click.

This way you can find out what path of clicks your users take intuitively.





And with that we are done — for now.

Are there any other parts of UX Analytics that you want me to write about? Let me know in the comments!