Conducting a UX benchmarking study step by step

UX benchmarking is the process of evaluating the performance of an app or website based on criteria accepted by stakeholders or universal standards. It’s a type of summative evaluation that revolves around the testing of prototyped solutions.

If you’re here, you’re probably looking for help conducting your own UX benchmarking study. I will explain UX benchmarking in detail to understand when a product needs it and break down this complex process, outlining the steps needed for its successful adaptation.

Editor’s note: This article was rewritten on 10 April 2025 to provide deeper guidance around when to use benchmarking and how it fits into the broader design process, clarify the steps for conducting a UX benchmarking study, and suggest popular tools for UX benchmarking. Special thanks to the original author, Yaroslav Malymon, for his contributions to the first version of this post.

What does benchmarking mean in a UX context?

In the UX context, we evaluate the product’s performance based on quantitative data, although qualitative data does play an important role too. Considering the fact that qualitative data is subjective, we’d need to investigate any behavioral patterns we observe with the company’s end-goals in mind.

The quantitative metrics (e.g., task time) are benchmarked with each iteration to track UX improvement over time, which typically correspond to a larger business goal (e.g., more revenue).

When should you consider UX benchmarking?

UX benchmarking is necessary when:

• Revenue is below the stakeholders’ target
• UX metrics are indicating a poor user experience
• Measuring the company’s or UX team’s performance after specific changes in the product
• Market shifts changed the nature of competition
• A new paradigm appeared in industry standards due to innovations, law changes, average industry performance, etc.

In other words, if the company has a business problem that the UX team can solve, it should conduct UX benchmarking.

Benchmarking is always a part of a bigger process for a company’s performance optimization and improvement. Businesses operate in a volatile environment with innovations and new competitors continuously appearing on the market. Therefore, a developing company should always have an active team of UX specialists that work full-time to update the company’s design and keep track of customers’ shifting behavioral patterns.

How does UX benchmarking fit into the design process?

UX benchmarking is a summative method of UX research, since it yields conclusive insights based on quantitative user data. Specifically, it evaluates how successfully and quickly users accomplish a set task.

But time is money, so you wouldn’t be willy-nilly benchmarking tasks unless something has led you to believe that there’s room for significant improvement. That “something” is what we call a formative method of UX research.

To give one example, let’s say you’ve determined revenue is below the stakeholders’ target. Somewhere between that and UX benchmarking potential improvements, we’d need to pinpoint the root problem and learn as much as we can about it. In other words, we’d need to form a hypothesis about a problem and what solving it would mean.

There are infinite ways to conduct formative UX research, but here are a few choice ones:

• Exit surveys (learn where and why users leave)
• CES surveys/CSAT surveys (learn which user experiences are/aren’t good, and why)
• Interviews (because sometimes you just need to ask directly, “What can we do to improve?”)
• Focus groups (same as above)
• Reason-for-cancelling surveys (unreliable for B2B products, but it can be a good starting point)
• Heatmaps (discover unusual user behaviors)
• Session recordings (same as above, but with much more graphical fidelity)

Utilize whichever methods feel appropriate for your project, in whichever order — there’s no right or wrong way to find lost treasure. For the most part, this data gets collected on autopilot.

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UX benchmarking tools typically provide heatmaps and session recordings right out of the box. Typically, you’re able to throw in a few survey questions too. This provides you with fresh data as you’re iterating and UX benchmarking. I suppose, in a way, this can make UX benchmarking formative too, particularly if you’re discovering problems this way.

So with all of that in mind, UX benchmarking’s place in the iterative design cycle looks a bit like this:

UX benchmarking study: A step-by-step guide

Step 1: Decide what to benchmark

Using the data gathered using formative UX research, you should be able to identify user problems, prioritize which ones to solve, and come up with solutions to test. For the most part, this data self-gathers on autopilot long before the UX benchmarking process.

After this, the trick is simply to decide what to benchmark. For example, if the business problem is low revenue and the UX problem appears to be a complicated checkout process, you’d prototype a simplified checkout process and then benchmark its success rate and task time under the very fair assumption that a better checkout process would advance the business goals.

Step 2: Define standards you will look up to

By definition, the benchmarking process relies on a comparison to predefined standards. However, there might not be universal standards that everyone at your company follows, which means that the company has to find reliable standards on its own. There are four types of standards that you can use for UX benchmarking:

• Product performance data — Qualitative and quantitative UX metrics that the company had before launching the new product or implementing changes. For example, before the latest changes to the product, the satisfaction rate was 3.5/5, while after the update, the rate increased to 3.75/5
• Competitors’ performance — Available industry best practices and their results. For example, your current conversion rate is 1 percent, while your main competitor has 5 percent
• Company’s goals — Standards set by stakeholders. For example, your average retention rate is 10 percent, while investors want to achieve 20 percent
• Industry performance — Average rates between a set number of competitors. For example, your SUS rate is 2.7/5, while the average rate among the ten main competitors is 4.1/5

Step 3: Establish your initial benchmark

In this step you’ll ask participants to attempt the task using the current version of the design. The metrics yielded from this will be the benchmark for the next iteration.

Step 4: Prototype and test the solution

This step is all about prototyping the solution. You’ll use all of your formative UX research to solve the problem and then test said solution. Naturally, you’ll measure the same metrics and compare the data to that of the benchmark.

You can iterate on this step as much as you want, and even use the heatmap, session recording, and survey features of your UX benchmarking tool of choice to get fresh data on each iteration beyond the metrics that you’re benchmarking.

Step 5: Implement and analyze the solution

Once you’re confident about the solution, implement it and compare how well the business goals are being met now compared to that of before. A suitable key performance indicator to track could be a simple conversion rate.

If the business goals don’t improve, you must consider that while the UX did improve, you perhaps solved the wrong problem or need to solve more of them.

UX benchmarking tools

UX benchmarking tools are those that enable you to test prototypes. They provide heatmap, session recording, and survey features for additional insight, but of course the main benefit is to benchmark the prototypes as you iterate quickly.

According to the 2023 Design Tools Survey, the most popular tools for user testing (UX benchmarking) are:

• UserTesting
• Maze
• Useberry
• Lookback
• Optimal Workshop

The highest rated UX benchmarking tool is UXTweak.

Of course there’s nothing stopping you from directly A/B testing solutions on your live app or website, but this is typically pretty complicated, requires more resources, and takes away the ability to iterate quickly.

Conclusion

For the data-minded tinkerer, UX benchmarking is a lot of fun, especially when it’s tied to a core business goal such as the increase of revenue. But that aside, it’s a crucial aspect of the UX design process as it facilitates iteration, which is great for resource management and revenue.

All in all, benchmarking is a business-friendly method of UX research that solves UX problems, and ultimately business problems. Although it focuses on quantitative data, there are opportunities to gather qualitative data as well, so this UX design process isn’t one to miss — bookmark these steps!

Thanks for reading!

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