Understanding the basics of business—and how “the business” thinks—is a very important, rarely discussed skill for anyone in user research. And not to spoil it for you, but the primary concern for “the business” is MONEY: where it’s coming from, where it’s going, how it’s being used, and how it’s being saved. As researchers, we should aim to uncover money-saving (or money-generating) insights. And as frustrating as it seems to have to explain “Good design IS good business” (Shout out to Andrea Sutton, visionary & former VP of Design at AT&T), answering questions about ROI is a necessary element in building trust with the business.
Of course, as any researcher knows, the ROI of usability testing isn’t always as cut-and-dry as the ROI of, say, website conversion. Usability testing is qualitative, and qualitative data is basically trends in user opinions, mistakes, and emotional states. The effectiveness of these insights—and whether or not they’re properly implemented—is almost entirely based on three things: the operational efficiency of your development team, their ability to interpret nuanced information in a way that leads to business-enhancing action, AND the business’ willingness to trust and use qualitative insights gathered from a handful of users to inform their approach to product development.
Let’s examine how research teams can effectively collaborate with the businesses they support by educating them on how ROI is best understood within the context of usability testing.
KPIs, ROI, and usability testing: what it means to measure human experience
Businesses seek out usability testing because they want their product or feature to be user-friendly, hoping it will retain customers, entice new ones, and ultimately boost revenue. They’re eager to see hard numbers at the start of the process, in the middle of the process, and at the end of the process to identify clear improvements or areas of decline. The metrics most often used for this type of analysis are KPIs and ROI. In usability testing, there are nuances to how these metrics play out, and researchers need to convey these nuances to have sufficient cooperation from the businesses they conduct research for.
A KPI, or a “key performance indicator,” is a quantifiable measure of performance over time with a specific objective in mind. A good analogy would be the kind of preparation a person makes for an extreme physical feat, such as a marathon. While training, you don’t go out each day and run 26.2 miles—while that is your end goal, you implement many smaller goals over time to make that final feat more likely to happen. You measure your heart rate, recovery rate, and other related data points that give you insights into your gradual improvement.
In usability testing, KPIs can be broken down into the following categories (or something similar):
- Number of usability tests run: The number of tests run over a period of time can show increased user research maturity in an organization because it reflects a commitment to iterative design and user-centric development. This attitude shows proactiveness and seriousness, which greatly improve ROI outcomes.
- Amount of time to research: This KPI looks at the amount of time from concept to actual research. Ideally, there’s a short amount of time between an idea and research beginning because time lost is often money lost in the long term.
- Number of usability issues fixed: this KPI shows how much research actually gets implemented in a given amount of time and can indicate that research is successful.
- The number of insights from UXR on the roadmap: If a business’ product and tech teams are including user insights from research to create a business roadmap, this means user research is influencing company strategy, which is a sign of successful research.
When measuring the ROI of usability testing, the first rule of thumb is for a business—and all of its teams—to agree with the researchers they’ve hired about what constitutes the ROI framework. These business objectives could include conversion rates, engagement metrics, customer satisfaction scores, and development costs.
On the more qualitative side, usability testing can yield a positive ROI by providing valuable insight into more intangible, but no less impactful, information about how a site or feature impacts users on an emotional and behavioral level. This, in turn, leads to a more intuitive and user-centric design, which reduces support costs and increases customer loyalty.
Think of ROI as all of the long-term positives gained through the process of training for a marathon: greater health, long-term friendships, personal satisfaction, and a new orientation towards life.
Clear roles, clear objectives, clear results
Thorough usability testing can be done effectively with even just five to eight qualified subjects, this requires excellence on the part of the research team. The better the researchers, the less costly the testing (usually, but there are always exceptions). A very skilled research team who uses solid methods can hew a lot of information out of a small sample size. In contrast, a less skilled team might struggle to pinpoint what’s going on and, therefore, require more users (thereby running up costs for the business).
On the business side, product and dev teams need to be efficient at taking design recommendations from the researchers and generating new iterations to be re-tested if they take ROI seriously. Some organizations move at a snail’s pace due to internal disorganization, power struggles, or a lack of understanding of the purpose and efficacy of usability testing. Ideally, with a fast-moving design team and an easy approval process, more insights will be found and implemented in a shorter amount of time, which impacts ROI significantly.
As we said at the top, researchers need to understand business objectives to conduct their research well and demonstrate value. Similarly, businesses need to understand how KPIs and ROI look from a quantitative and qualitative perspective and not dismiss usability research as an unnecessary expense. Together, they can gain a deeper understanding of user experience and implement those insights in a way that boosts revenue, deepens customer satisfaction, and boosts a business into the long-distance category.