Blog Insights

How to Measure the CX of Your Website

Customer experience (CX) is the sum of every interaction a member of the public has with your organization. From determining what content leads to conversions, or tracking engagement across a complex system of different branded websites, there are unique challenges that mission-driven organizations face when it comes to tracking and measuring the success of their CX.

CX is not just a set of actions, but also focuses on feelings. How do your audiences feel about your organization and brand? At every customer “touchpoint,” you can improve how your stakeholders feel about you.

Your website is a crucial brand touchpoint. It’s where a significant amount of your audience members will come to look for more information, resources, and products. 

There has never been a more critical time for mission-driven organizations to prioritize creating an inclusive customer experience. A positive CX with a brand, resource, or service significantly impacts an organization’s success.

How do you track how satisfied your customers are with your website?

Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this process. Every organization has different goals that they will need to track against, and different challenges that make tracking website success difficult. Whether it’s determining what content leads to conversions, or tracking the CX experience among a complex system of different branded websites, there are some unique challenges that mission-driven organizations face when it comes to tracking customer satisfaction.

There are several CX key performance indicators (KPIs) we recommend to get started. You can use these to gauge how the customer experience of your website improves or worsens over time, and ultimately evaluate the success of your website against your organization’s outreach goals.

Valuable CX KPIs to consider 

1. Engagement time and scroll depth

One very helpful metric to understand your audience’s experience of your content is a combination of engagement time and scroll depth. Looking at both of these metrics together tells you much more than just one of them alone. If someone spends enough time on your page and scrolls down far enough to read your content, that indicates that they found it interesting and useful. Conversely, if they spend time on your page but don’t scroll, or scroll but don’t spend very long, then they may be looking for something else, or perhaps they are interested but want to save it for later, or find a different format. Depending on your measurement system, combining these metrics usually means creating some custom tracking, but the increased insight can be well worth it!

2. Content versus views

There are other metrics that can provide a glimpse into your site’s CX as well. Comparing the relative size of a group of content to the relative amount of views it gets can help you decide what type of content is most valued by your audience. For example, if pages within your “about us” section constitute 25% of all pages on your site, but only get 5% of the views, it is likely that this content is not highly valued by your audience. But if a “research” section is another 25% of all pages and receives 50% of all views, that indicates that your audience really values the content and it would be worthwhile to create more of it.

3. Search activity

If your site has an internal search function, this can be a goldmine for audience insight. You can see which terms people entered, and consider what this means about your site. Perhaps you have content related to the term, but it isn’t easy to find. That is an indicator that your site structure or terminology is confusing to your users. Or perhaps you don’t have related content, and you can get good ideas for what to publish next. You can also track situations where someone uses your site search but then leaves– a good indicator that they did not find what they needed.

These are several KPIs that can help you begin to measure your website’s CX. They will give you a better understanding of the kinds of content that are most relevant to your audiences, and whether people are finding what they are looking for when they come to your site. As you track these metrics over time, you will be able to see whether changes to your site have the impact you intended and are meeting your larger CX goals.