A successful digital product can do wonders for your company. But if you’re not actively improving on what you already have, it’s only a matter of time before another brand emerges and steals the spotlight.
Digital products have been making our lives easier for years. And with the recent AI explosion, you never know which new revolutionary technology will become a mainstay for your users.
In our bustling digital world, simply adopting a new technology for your latest feature or functionality isn’t enough. You need solid research and strategies to ensure it’s appropriately implemented and works for your target audience.
This is obvious to us UX designers — as we NEED this testing and validation to guarantee we’re not investing time and money into something useless. What’s less obvious is how to measure the impact of our efforts.
Key performance indicators (which we’ll call KPIs for brevity) are qualitative or quantitative insights into how your product or feature is performing. When starting a UX project, you define KPIs around your business goals — so they can look different depending on the product.
There may be some overlap in KPIs between the initial launch and subsequent features. But whether your goal is to raise consumer awareness, generate leads, or boost revenue with new functionality, the goals must be clearly defined, closely monitored, and adjusted to keep your business on a profitable track.
How Many Different Kinds Of KPIs Are There?
A lot…Not even joking. For every project goal, there are probably several performance indicators and even more tracking tools to measure your product’s efficacy.
But for the sake of this article (and probably because you don’t want to read about 20+ KPI categories), we’ll narrow it down to four critical components within the digital ecosystem.
Stakeholder KPIs
These are the metrics that everyone should care about. But more accurately, they’re the ones stakeholders (clients, CEOs, investors, and other bigwigs) will hone in on.
Stakeholder KPIs give your colleagues visibility into how your design efforts support their larger business goals. They also help them create a benchmark for future product endeavors, ultimately creating a foundation for an ongoing strategic partnership.
- Revenue (how much profit you generate for the company)
- Lead Generation (how many users show interest in the product)
- Attach Rate (how many existing customers buy the product)
- Audience Penetration (how many target audience members buy the product)
User KPIs
Now for the ones that UX designers care about. Don’t get us wrong, stakeholder goals and KPIs are SUPER valuable in the grand scheme. But User KPIs help us gauge how well we solved the problem we set out to answer.
In UX, it’s about more than just selling a product. It’s about creating a solution for an everyday thing and creating an experience that users love returning to. And these user-centered metrics show us that we fulfilled our purpose in creating a product that builds customer trust and loyalty.
- Activation (The percentage of users that sign up and become active users)
- Retention (The percentage of users that remain active over a given time frame)
- Net Promoter Score (Customer experience insights, usually gathered from surveys)
Usability KPIs
Sounds similar to the last category, right? You can’t have an excellent experience without being able to actually use the product.
These KPIs are tracked when a company wants to fix or optimize their user experience. But when you’re incorporating a new technology or AI feature, it’s essential to monitor usability KPIs to ensure your product isn’t crashing.
- Cross-Device Responsiveness (How well your product performs across devices and screen sizes)
- Performance Optimization (Load times, crash rates, and error rates)
- Learnability (How quickly users can learn to use your product efficiently)
Brand KPIs
These metrics are all about your reputation in the consumers’ minds. While individual perceptions are famously hard to measure, there are a few ways you can quantify your brand’s reach and leverage your findings to set you up for a successful future launch.
- Aided Awareness (How many people recognize your brand when asked about your specific product)
- Unaided Awareness (How many people recognize your brand when asked questions about your industry)
- Intent To Purchase (The number of audience members that express interest in your product and will buy it upon launch)
- Social Media Mentions (How much passive publicity your brand gets through word-of-mouth)
How To Define KPIs For A New Feature Launch
You might think these KPIs could apply to any product or feature launch — and that’s partly true. Each aspect plays a unique role in the long-term success of a digital product. But depending on how your business is growing, you should occasionally shift your focus to achieve a defined goal.
Intent matters…especially in UX design (and ESPECIALLY when you’re incorporating a new technology in your business model). KPIs are there to make sure you get the highest possible return on investment, showing you where you need to pivot to meet your users’ expectations.
With all this in mind, let’s take a look at some common launch scenarios and discuss which strategic KPIs to track.
Scenario: “We’re incorporating a new AI-driven functionality for an established product to relieve a pressing user frustration.”
- Solution: User KPIs
- Why?: A new feature has great power to either help or hinder the user experience. As such, it should be tested thoroughly and consistently evaluated post-launch to understand how your audience responds.
- What Specific KPIs Should We Track?:
- Feature Adoption: Assess how often and how many users are using specific features within your product.
- Task Completion Time: Measure how long it takes to complete specific tasks or actions.
- Task Success Rate: Measure the percentage of users who successfully complete a specific task or action within your product.
- Error Rate: Track the number of errors users encounter while interacting with your product.
- Abandonment Rate: Assess how many users start a task but do not complete it.
Scenario: “Our client wants to target a new audience with their latest product update and new features.”
- Solution: Brand KPIs
- Why?: Whether you’re creating a brand new product to reach an established audience or vice versa, you need to ensure that your design, sales, and marketing efforts are landing in front of the right eyes. Tracking brand KPIs will help you evaluate the strength of your brand assets, value propositions, and long-term viability in your new consumer base.
- What Specific KPIs Should We Track?:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Measure the rate of users clicking on a specific element, like a button or link.
- Conversion Rate: Measure the percentage of users who complete a desired action, such as signing up or making a purchase.
- Content Interaction: Track how users engage with various types of content, such as articles, videos, or images.
- Session Duration: Measure how long users typically spend in a single session.
- Social Media Mentions: See how awareness for your product is generated through the audience’s preferred online platforms.
Scenario: “We’re helping our client expand their product suite by creating new products and features geared towards different industries.”
- Solution: Stakeholder KPIs
- Why?: Ultimately, what your client is trying to do here is open up a more profitable avenue for their business through digital products. While it’s important to track other KPIs, lead and revenue generation are the metrics they’ll be focusing on. This will help them identify the best paths for long-term growth and sustainability.
- What Specific KPIs Should We Track?:
- Revenue: (Duh…) Measure the profitability of the new business venture and determine if further expansion is worth the investment.
- Lead Generation: Track how many users indicate interest in the product or feature and complete the sales flow.
- Return Users: Track how many users return to your product after their initial interaction.
- User Churn Rate: Calculate the percentage of users who stop using your product over a given time frame.
- User Ratings and Reviews: Monitor ratings and reviews on app stores or review websites to assess user sentiment.
Scenario: “Our client is updating their onboarding flow with a new integration software to reduce their abandonment rates.”
- Solution: Usability KPIs
- Why?: We touched on the risks of new technology earlier but from a user adoption standpoint. Every technology can crash and burn, leaving your new feature completely useless and bogging down the experience. Luckily, the efficiency of your tech-driven strategy can be verified with the quantitative data from usability KPIs.
- What Specific KPIs Should We Track?:
- Page Load Time: Assess how quickly web pages or screens load within your product.
- App Responsiveness: Measure how responsive your application is to user interactions.
- Crash Rate: Track the frequency of crashes or technical issues affecting the user experience.
- Error Rate: Track the number of errors users encounter while interacting with your product.
- Task Flow Completion: Evaluate how easily users can navigate through your product and complete multi-step tasks.
Some Things To Consider
We know, it’s SO easy to take these KPIs and use them as a guide for launching your new product or feature. But to make a real impact, you need to be strategic when defining KPIs.
Each product, business, and user has unique problems they need to solve. While your list of target KPIs may look similar to the ones listed above, it could also be an amalgamation of metrics from every category.
Always keep these factors in the back of your mind when you and your stakeholders are establishing success metrics:
- Alignment with Business Goals: Ensure that your chosen KPIs directly align with your overall business objectives.
- Specificity: Make your KPIs as specific as possible. Vague or broad KPIs are difficult to measure effectively and may not provide actionable insights.
- Measurability: Define the proper tools to measure your chosen KPIs accurately. Consider the availability of data and analytics tools.
- Relevance: Focus on KPIs directly related to the success of the product launch. Avoid measuring metrics that may be interesting but do not directly impact your goals.
- Time-Bound: Set clear timeframes for achieving your KPIs. Establish both short-term and long-term goals to track progress over time.
- Benchmarking: Take stock of baseline measurements or benchmarks before the launch to compare post-launch performance to the pre-launch state. This helps in assessing the impact of the launch.
- Cost-Efficiency: Factor in the costs associated with achieving your KPIs. Ensure that the resources and efforts required are reasonable and justifiable.
- Realistic Targets: Set targets that are challenging but achievable. Unrealistic goals can demotivate teams and lead to frustration.
- Contingency Plans: Develop contingency plans in case KPIs are not met. This may involve adjusting the product, marketing strategy, or resource allocation.
- Ethical Considerations: Consider the ethical implications of your KPIs, especially if they involve user data or behavior tracking. Ensure that your metrics respect user privacy and consent.
- Long-Term Impact: Think about the long-term impact of your product launch. Some KPIs may focus on short-term gains, but it's also important to assess how the launch contributes to the product's overall growth and sustainability.
By carefully strategizing the KPIs for your product launch, you can gain client and stakeholder confidence by creating a measurement framework that prioritizes business goals and contributes to long-term success and growth.
Still not sure about your new product or feature’s KPI strategy? That’s a piece of cake for the CreateApe team. Start a project with us today!
