Special Topics - Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics - page 235

agree with their assumptions, these two sets of calculations yield a total of about
$1.75millionannually,eitherintimesavingstotheresidentsorincreasedfees
to the state. Although Withrow and colleagues (2000) don't specify how much
was spent on the redesign of this portal, we can safely assume it was dramatically
lessthan$1.75million!

This example points out some of the challenges associated with calculating
usability ROI. In general, there are two major classes of situations where you
might try to calculate a usability ROI: when users of the product are employees
of your company and when users of the product are your customers. It tends to
be much more straightforward to calculate ROI when the users are employees of
your company. You generally know how much employees are paid, so time sav-
ings in completing certain tasks (especially highly repetitive ones) can be trans-
lated directly to monetary savings. In addition, you may know the costs involved
in correcting certain types of errors, so reductions in the rates of those errors
could also be translated to monetary savings.

Calculating usability ROI tends to be much more challenging when the users
are your customers (or really anyone not an employee of your company). Your
benefits are much more indirect. For example, it might not make any real differ-
ence to your bottom line that your customers can complete a key income-gen-
erating transaction in 30% less time than before. It probably does not mean that
they will then be performing significantly more of those transactions. But what
it might mean is that over time those customers will remain your customers and
others will become your customers who might not have otherwise (assuming
the transaction times are significantly shorter than they are for your competi-
tors), thus increasing revenue. A similar argument can be made for increased
task completion rates.

SOME ROI CASE STUDIES

A variety of other case studies of usability ROI are available. Here's just a sampling.

• TheNielsenNormanGroupdidadetailedanalysisof72usabilityROIcasestudies

and found increases in key performance indicators of 0% to over 6000%. The case
studies covered a wide variety of websites, including Macy's, Bell Canada, New York
Life, Open Table, a government agency, and a community college (Nielsen, Berger,
Gilutz, & Whitenton, 2008).

• AredesignoftheBreastCancer.orgdiscussionforumsresultedina117%increasein

site visitors, a 41% increase in new memberships, a 53% reduction in time taken to
register, and a 69% reduction in monthly help desk costs (Foraker, 2010).

• Afteraredesignof Move.com's home search and contact an agent features, users'

ability to find a home increased from 62 to 98%, sales lead generation to real estate
agents increased over 150%, and their ability to sell advertising space on the site
improved significantly (Vividence, 2001).