UX Benchmarking

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What is benchmarking?

Usability testing can form a part of what is termed ‘benchmarking’. This is the process of setting a standard of performance based on either external sources, such as a competitor’s website, or by assessing a current website, for instance, using task times as a measure.

Prerequisites

Before any benchmarking takes place, there are two key prerequisites.

• Clarity around purpose: There must be clarity around the purpose of the website, that is to say, the business objectives of the site.
• Clarity around experience: There must be a clear understanding of what experience factors or measures contribute towards those objectives.

Without knowing what a website should be doing, it becomes very difficult to assess its effectiveness.

Hypothesis-driven design

On that second point, finding exactly what makes a website deliver on the objective set for it can be tested using a series of hypotheses. This technique is derived from Ling Methodology, and can be termed hypothesis driven design.

Using this approach, we clearly state what we believe will happen as a result of a change to a design or feature. This should be structured where cause and effect are unambiguously stated. For example, “We believe this feature will achieve this outcome based on this metric.” So a design change or a new feature leads to an outcome signified by a particular metric. This also bears a resemblance to what is known as the Scientific Method, demonstrating cause and effect.