How the right UX Metrics show game-changing value

How a team showed great UX was worth $100+ million annually

There’s a story I want to tell you. It’s a story that emerged out of my recent work with a UX team. They used this story to excite their executives on how recent UX improvements made a substantial business impact.

Since it’s not my story to tell, I’ve changed many of the details. The events in this story aren’t what actually happened. However, the events I describe are very much like what happened.

While it’s a great story, I want you to pay close attention to how the UX team tells their story. Look at the metrics and the narrative that connects those metrics. It is an inspiring story, and how they tell it is just as educational as the story they tell.

Stories like this one are potent tools for UX leaders. When you tell stories like these, you’ll grab the attention of your executives and senior stakeholders, demonstrating the immense value of great UX in a whole new way.

Here’s the background to understand this story: The UX team works on an invoice-tracking application for small business owners who send invoices and collect payments. The application has been on the market for many years, and for most of its existence, customers paid the business owners’ invoices with checks.

Ok. With all that buildup, here’s the story:

Eighteen months ago, the UX team, collaborating with their Product and Development team partners, released a Pay Now feature to expedite customer payments to business owners.

At that time, their research showed that when customers paid with checks, more than 65% of payments took 20 or more days to land in the business owner’s bank account, with 15% of payments often taking 60 days or more. Everyone hoped the Pay Now feature would dramatically reduce payment times.

When the feature shipped, there was good news and bad news. The good news was that it worked. 60% of business owners who added a Pay Now button to their invoices saw their payment times drop to under two days.

_he bad news was that only 5% of business owners were adding the Pay Now button to their invoices. Most business owners were not…