Countless technical terms and dozens of software options often make measuring UX variables seem very complex at first. But with the right tools, it’s easier than ever to start measuring THE UX and collect valuable analytics data for your company. You can find out what you should pay attention to and which software is best suited for your endeavor in this article.

Today, there is a variety of quick-to-set-up and easy-to-use tools that allow you to fully automate and measure a wide range of UX metrics. Also, some of the tools in their base version are even free. The question is therefore rather: “Why haven’t you started measuring yet?” than “Why should you measure?” If you haven’t thought about which metrics or key performance indicators (UX KPIs) you want to measure, you might want to read the following article first:

The six UX measurement tools

Depending on what you want to measure (and achieve), you may need a different tool. Some of these “tools” focus only on a single task; others —– such as Hotjar — excel in several disciplines. In the meantime, there are hundreds of UX measurement tools on the market, and new ones are added every month. Even for advanced users, it is difficult to keep track and choose a suitable tool. But don’t worry! We are happy to reduce this complexity for you and introduce you to our selection of the most renowned, important, and well-known tools:

Feature/Tool	Hotjar	Google Analytics	Delighted	Optimizely	Survey Monkey	User Zoom
User Analytics	✓	✓
Heat maps	✓					✓
Surveys	✓				✓	✓
Customer Feedback	✓		✓		✓	✓
A/B testing				✓		✓
Website Recordings	✓					✓
Funnel Conversion	✓	✓				✓
Price monthly from	€ 25	Free	€ 20	On request	€ 28	On request

1. Hotjar

Hotjar is probably the easiest tool to use to measure your website data and get user feedback. In professional circles, it is also referred to as the Swiss pocket knife of user experience tools. The software includes the following functions:

• Website Recordings
• Heatmaps
• Conversion Funnels
• Feedback Polls
• Onsite User Surveys

Hotjar is also ideal for using so-called “bottlenecks” on your website (or funnels). On a page where, for example, many users jump off, you could ask users why they don’t complete the purchase process. In terms of value for money, Hotjar is very far ahead (from 25 EUR/month). Also, you have the opportunity to test the tool for free for 15 days (as of April 2018). How Hotjar works: How to best start measuring via Hotjar is excellently described in this article. 

Intro to Hotjar… in 60 seconds

Alternatives to Hotjar:

• Crazy Egg
• Mouseflow
• Capturly

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a very often used measurement tool that allows you to analyze user behavior on your page. The standard version, which is usually sufficient for large companies, is available free of charge and can be set up quickly and easily. These are the most important functions:

• Tracking qualitative and quantitative user behavior
• Conversion Tracking and Experiments
• Number-of-visitor details (language, origin, demographics)
• Behavioral flow
• Organic and paid (AdWords) Google search keywords that get users to the site

You can find out what the Google Analytics user interface looks like and what you can do with the tool in the following video:

Google Analytics Beginners Tutorial

Alternatives to Google Analytics:

• Kissmetrics
• Woopra
• Mixpanel

3. Delighted

metrics in a very simple and convenient way:

• NPS (Net Promoter Score)
• CSAT (Customer Satisfaction)
• CES (Customer Effort Score)
• 5 Star Customer Reviews Scores on your product or service

Depending on the gusto, the surveys can be played out via the following channels:

• E‑mail
• Sms
• Website

Once the data has been collected, the information is processed and displayed to you in a clear dashboard. Due to its very intuitive and appealing interface for the respondents, Delighted achieves a comparatively high response rate. You can find out how Delighted works in detail and get a live demo here.

Alternatives to Delighted:

• Qualtrics
• MySurveyLab
• Wootric

4. Optimizely

Optimizely is the most well-known tool for A/B testing (also called split testing) on the market and helps you find out which variation of your website is most successful or profitable. In many cases, even small changes in image selection or a Call To Action text can lead to dramatically higher conversion rates. Especially at the beginning, when not much work has been put into optimizing the conversion. Optimizely is installed quickly and easily using a code and offers you an easy-to-use user interface that makes the complex matter of A/B testing manageable even for beginners. You can find out how A/B testing and Optimizely work in detail in the following video:

How to Use Optimizely for A/B Split Testing and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

testing, in which only two variants of a page are compared, you can also perform so-called multivariate tests with Optimizely. The latter aims to find out which combination of variants leads to the best result. 

Alternatives to Optimizely:

• Google Optimize (free)
• Visual Website Optimizer
• VWO

5. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a veteran of online surveys and lets you quickly and easily create, send, and evaluate surveys. To prevent you from redesigning every survey from scratch, the tool offers you a variety of questionnaire templates, depending on the type and scope of your membership, including:

• Employee Satisfaction Questionnaire
• Net Promoter® Score
• Market research surveys
• Marketing surveys
• Etc.

For a (significant) surcharge, you can also benchmark your organization’s performance (or test/survey) performance with that of others in your industry.

Introducing the new SurveyMonkey

Alternatives to SurveyMonkey:

• Google Forms (free)
• Typeform
• AskNicely

6. UserZoom

UserZoom belongs to the category of all-in-one tools. In return, however, you will also be offered a lot (all combined on a single platform). These are the most important functions:

• Usability testing
• Online surveys
• User Feedback Monitoring
• Card-Sorting
• Tree tests
• Click tests
• Timeout tests

All in all, UserZoom is a very diverse and powerful tool for the more advanced user. For beginners, it might be better to start with less extensive (and cheaper) tools. 

Alternatives to UserZoom:

• UsabilityTools
• UserTesting

What should you measure … and with which tool?

Now that you know the most important UX measurement tools on the market at the latest, there may be a big question unanswered: Which metrics/KPIs should you measure? Because only when this central question is answered can you select a suitable tool and start measuring. Unfortunately, the devil of error often creeps in here: if you don’t pay attention, you could end up measuring the wrong thing. For example, one million website visitors to your e-commerce store per month are pretty impressive. But as a metric not correlated to, say, the number of conversions/sales, this says very little. The right KPIs and metrics are the ones that will help you improve your company’s bottom line and achieve your goals at the end of the day. It is a science and discipline in itself to define the right KPIs for an organization, department, or project.