Why a UX Metrics Menu Helps Align Business and Research for Impact (and How to Create Your Own)

Imagine you’re sitting in a shareout meeting with a product manager. You recently conducted UX research to help the team identify a way to help the customer accomplish their goals more quickly and with fewer headaches.

But as you await the big moment—when the PM sings your praises, revealing how your work led to the solutions—they say “this improvement is incremental in the overall user experience”, a characterization of your impact that is both unexpected and at best, only scratches the surface of what got you to this outcome.

You might be wondering what went wrong, and you’re not alone — any UXR in this position knows the importance of making it easier for our stakeholders to clearly describe how our insights helped them make a better business decision, meeting or surpassing company goals— and the negative consequences that can accompany getting any of the above lost in translation.

To help solve this issue, I’ve developed a UX metrics menu tool, ensuring my stakeholders are aligned with my research plans and reminded of how they directly impact a decision they need to make.

🙋 Get the free UX metrics menu template.

So, how can creating a UX metrics menu help you align UXR and business goals?

In this article I’m going to walk you through:

• What a UX metrics menu is and why you want to create one
• The steps to take when building your first metrics menu
• Best practices for making your metrics menu successful

What is a “UX metrics menu?”

In short: A UX metrics menu brings together several pieces of critical user experience data and connects them with your organization’s strategic goals and KPIs, all in a digestible, shareable format to make it easier for you to demonstrate progress and speak in the language of the business.

While the metrics that are meaningful to an organization will vary depending on the company, product, and industry, here are a few commonly used metrics: 

• Time on task: How long it takes users to complete a specific action or process. 
• Customer support tickets: Number of support requests received over a period of time.
• User retention rate: The percentage of users who continue using the product over time.
• User engagement: Metrics like number of interactions, frequency of use, or depth of navigation

The menu of metrics—usually in the form of a table or chart—is presented to stakeholders before a project starts, and serves as a moment to align on the problems or opportunities expected along the way. As important, it helps everyone agree on a definition of “success” when the project’s complete.

🧐 Read how these UXRs find meaningful metrics at their orgs.

Why use a UX metrics menu?

Businesses want to know if they’re headed in the right direction. Despite KPIs that focus on progress and OKRs that identify a target and the goals, you can’t count on a  product owner to have access to, know how to calculate, or which metrics to choose. A UX metrics menu helps fill in this potential knowledge gap.

The idea to create a menu of metrics emerged from an experience like the one I described in my intro (which really happened to me). My stakeholder was both very excited at the potential benefits of my UX work, but unable to communicate those benefits to a group not directly involved in the work.

That meant the PM wasn’t able to drive home the value of UX research in her workflow. And that is why you want a UX metrics menu: It’s an easy way to accomplish two important tasks:

1. Ensure that you and your stakeholders or partners speak the same language
2. Agree in advance that the team can define project success and measure it

It’s also a teaching moment. For many of us, we’re working with stakeholders who don’t know much about UX research or its capabilities to inform experience decisions. A UX metrics menu offers a focused space to coach and upskill your partners on its power.

When to use a UX metrics menu

The UX metrics menu is typically set up at the beginning of the year when the strategic goals and objectives are rolled out for the year. It can also be used in the project kickoff and design phase of the process, when stakeholders are still aligning on the problem or opportunity. 

It’s really useful to talk about and use a UX metrics menu before you’ve selected your research method. Here’s why:

• The menu will inform your study design. As you probably know, the method you select should closely map to the outcomes or metrics of interest. Starting with the method and then searching for a way to turn the data into decision-driving metrics isn’t a good use of your time or research expertise.

• If you know that measuring satisfaction of internal users is “on the menu” you will need to make sure that you are measuring satisfaction in the contexts that matter to the business 

It’s best to share the menu in the kickoff or planning stages with stakeholders and build the metrics into your project brief of plan. Refer to them when discussing your method, fieldwork, and analysis timelines so that you can use them as a north star throughout your project. 

This way, you’re anchoring your stakeholders in the value you’ll deliver and reminding them of why the project is being undertaken in the first place, such as: 

“We want to increase X, that’s why we’re investigating Y, so we can make a decision about product/feature Z.” 

It’s a nice, tight story for your work.

🧰 Need help choosing a UX method? Try our selection tool.

How to create a UX metrics menu in 6 steps

Although your menu can take any number of forms, I’ve had a lot of success using a simple table format, as they're often easier to update, track, and share. No matter the structure yours takes, here are the six steps I follow to create a UX metrics menu.  

1. Find and document the strategic goals and KPIs/objectives

If you haven’t seen these openly distributed, you can often find them in a beginning of year kickoff presentation by leadership. This will give you a high level understanding of your organization’s annual goals.

From there, different departments will often also have beginning-of-year kickoffs and include their more specific goals, initiatives, and KPIs. (your company intranet site often is searchable and may have copies of presentations archived there).

And  if all else fails, you can always message product leads or department managers and request this information. In addition to getting you the information, you’ll also be implicitly showing them you want to connect your work to theirs.

2. List out the strategic goals, corporate objectives, and KPIs 

Once you have your hands on the list of strategic goals, objectives and KPIs, organize them by hierarchy or level—from higher order (strategy) to lower order (the indicators the company will use to track things).

For example, you might find a strategic goal of “increase customer retention,” which could have “reduce account or customer churn” as one of its objectives and “accounts rated by Customer Success as likely to churn, using a rating of ###” as its KPI.

All KPIs are metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs
KPIs are the subset of metrics that an organization has identified as most crucial for measuring progress towards its key business objectives (this is done by the business and UX is likely not involved).

Example - Website Usage
A business has the objective of increased revenue generation. They have defined a KPI as an increased conversion rate by X%. This KPI is directly tied to a business objective of revenue generation.

A metric that is not a KPI could be the % increase in new vs. returning users. This metric is likely one that the business cares about but has not been designated as an official measure of success.

When research uses metrics that map back by using a menu, the results support the story of success.

It’s important that every goal has at least one objective or KPI attached to it. If one doesn’t, then check in with the Product or department head for more information. (Without a clear metric for success, you (and the company) won’t have an idea of how to meet it!)

Here is what this step looks like in our UX metrics menu:

3. Inventory the initiatives supporting the objectives, noting if UX is currently supporting or not

This documents the landscape of UX touchpoints and opportunities to quantify impact.  Some initiatives may already be using UXR metrics for reporting. Others may not yet be using any numbers or research insights to inform their direction. 

If you (or someone on your team) is involved in the initiative, mark “yes” or “no” based on the current status of the project (And before marking no, double check with colleagues to make sure.)

4. Define the immediate stakeholders for each project (and “level up” stakeholders if applicable) 

Now, it’s important to identify stakeholders. In some cases, this could be a product owner (like a head of a department), a business analyst, or someone else who is a key decision maker. This is the person or people who is accountable for the success (or lack thereof) of a given project.

For each of the initiatives that UX is supporting, there will be stakeholders in decision-making positions. Identify who those people are —this gives you a point of contact who should be included (or at the very least made aware) of research you’re doing that could affect that goal. And knowing the metrics and indicators to track that goal gives you a window into what matters to that stakeholder—meaning you can speak their language now.

🤝 Read UX leaders' strategies for better stakeholder relationships.

Noting the “level up” stakeholder (aka the person who is above the immediate stakeholder in your organizational hierarchy) is a good practice. It helps you map out the structure of your company, determining who has soft and hard power—in short, who actually has the decision power for a specific department—and it’s not always who you think it might be!

Remember, “impact” and meeting user needs starts with your immediate or level-up stakeholders. Helping them match insights to the business and sending those learnings up the chain will further support your ability to align UXR and business goals.

📚 Related reading: We cannot serve our users without business buy-in.

5. Describe a desired outcome

Now that you’ve identified the stakeholders, it’s important to understand the outcomes they’re seeking.

Desired outcomes could include more efficiency, greater product satisfaction, a better overall experience, or reducing errors, all of which translate to arguably the most important piece of all for businesses: saving or making money.

For example, if our goal is customer retention, the outcome is keeping the customers we already have. Armed with this information, you now have an additional input for the UX metrics menu, as shown in the highlighted section below.

6. Determine a measurement plan for each outcome

The last step is connecting data to the desired outcome in greater detail. A good place to begin is by answering the question: “What information could leadership use to demonstrate their product has had an impact and produced desired results?”

From there, you should be better equipped to define the categories of metrics that align with the desired outcomes.  For example:

1. Reduced time spent on a manual data entry activity > Efficiency
2. Improved employee opinion of internal technology > Satisfaction
3. Reduce complexity and the chance of errors > Usability, Efficiency, Errors‍

Once you have the broader categories, brainstorm some possible ways to collect data that will help you measure impact. For example:

1. Reduced time spent on a manual data entry activity > Efficiency > Track the average time spent per entry before and after implementing a specific change or Customer Effort Score (CES)
2. Improved employee opinion of internal technology > Satisfaction > Single Ease Question (SEQ) or Customer Satisfaction Score (CAT)
3. Reduce complexity and the chance of errors > Usability, Efficiency, Errors > Track error types and frequency or System Usability Score (SUS)

Now that you have feasible options, refine your list based on the current and upcoming projects and what is feasible and impactful. It can be helpful to have the entire research team go through this exercise together.

For additional consistency and transparency, answer these questions and document the answers on the second page or tab of your menu so that everyone can find them.

1. When and how often is data collected?
2. Who is responsible for compiling, managing, and analyzing data?
3. Where is data stored and how will others find it?
4. What question is the data answering? How does it align to the business/project goals?
5. Who are the target user groups?
6. What scales/procedures will be followed?
7. What if any special considerations are there for how/who/when results are presented?

For each of the best options—as decided by your team—document when to use, how to collect, and how to tie back metrics so that they communicate a direct link to objectives. The goal is to enhance the information that supports stakeholders with confidence. 

If, for example, the stakeholder is focused on time savings you can provide a targeted metric, “Removing this duplicative step in the process we will reduce average time to complete this task by 2 minutes each week, which equates to nearly 7 days of sales rep time saved per year.” the business’ ears will perk up.

Having the UX team aligned on a menu of metrics is especially helpful if you are not working in a data-driven environment and directional decisions are made on “a hunch” or from “experience.”

Regardless of your environment,  consistent messaging around insights with the business to build trust will help your cause. If you have access to a lot of data and metrics, you may already be taking some of these steps.   

Once you’re able to add in the possible metrics, you should get something that looks like this:

👉 Get this metrics menu template for free.

Best practices for creating a UX metrics menu

Here are four best practices I would recommend when making a UX metrics menu. Follow these to ensure your time creating the menu is maximized and that the impact will align with business outcomes.

1.  Use it for new research projects

A UX metrics menu is not only useful for tracking the success of a research project or initiative, they can be very helpful if used proactively, too. The metrics within the menu should be tracked and updated somewhere—use shifts in the numbers (in either direction) to spur new research. Notice that CSAT (customer satisfaction) dipped last month? Could be a good time to run some interviews. See that session times are up? Connect with Product to learn if a small update had a positive impact via usability tracking.

2. Don’t choose more than 1-3 metrics for a single project 

As I said above, businesses love numbers. But that enthusiasm can evolve into trying to stuff too many metrics into a single project, muddling your ability to make clear, concise recommendations based on your findings and data. Choose no more than 1-3 metrics from the menu for a single project.

If you’re running a series of projects as part of a larger campaign, then feel free to select more than 1-3 for the entire campaign, but again, keep to no more than 3 metrics per project within the campaign (e.g., a series of usability tests before interviews). This will ensure that research focuses on what is most important and will make the metrics more effective. 

3. Plan to revise the metrics 

Business outcomes change for any number of reasons, and with those changes can come roadmap updates and shifting prioritizations. These might mean that the metrics you’ve used to track and benchmark success (however that’s defined) need to change. Even if you only update the name of a metric, revisit your menu at least once a quarter to ensure it’s fresh and relevant to the work of your stakeholder teams and business leadership.

4. Make it public to stakeholders

A menu that no one can find—or even knows exists—is of no use to you, your stakeholders, and certainly not the users whose experiences you’re trying to improve. Make sure your stakeholders know about the menu and where it “lives.” This could be a project space, inside a deliverable, or even as a link in an internal communications channel. 

It’s a good idea to put it in multiple places and to use a consistent naming convention so folks know what it is exactly.

Time to create your own UX metrics menu

The UX metrics menu can become an important way to stay organized and aligned with the business. Using one has helped me align stakeholders on project goals, track my impact, and learn more about the clients and businesses I work with and for. The menu has also been useful when supporting stakeholders, helping them to make better, data-informed connections between projects and business outcomes.

As important, creating one today will help you create more value for your research practice, ensuring that the next time a stakeholder is talking about your research, they can clearly articulate its impact in terms that the wider business can understand and support.