Measure and improve user satisfaction

Date adopted: 
October 21, 2020
Last update: 
October 26, 2020

You must have a plan to continue to improve the user experience for your service or website after it launches to the public.

You'll do this by tracking, measuring and improving user satisfaction. eServices will help you with this process.

Why do you need to track user satisfaction?

You track user satisfaction to learn what users think about your service or website and where they run into problems. Understanding this will help you determine how you can improve your service or website so it better serves your users and their needs.

Think about user satisfaction when you design your service or website

It's important users have a way to provide you with their feedback at various stages of using a service or website.

eServices will work with you to determine what methods will apply to your service or website. For example, if you are creating a digital government service, we'll work with your developer to ensure they use our online design patterns to include a feedback form on the service.

Consider user satisfaction for the entire service

Although we're focused on the digital service, the user experience doesn't end when they complete an online transaction.

For example, if an artist applies for funding so they can go on tour, the end of the transaction is not when they first submit their funding application. Their experience with the service isn't over until they submit their final report and get money from the government to pay their expenses.

In these cases you can measure user satisfaction of the entire service by giving users a way to hare their feedback at the very end of their involvement with it. For example, for users applying for artist funding to tour, you can include an opportunity to provide feedback in email communications.

Measure user satisfaction

You can measure user satisfaction throughout the service development process.

Discovery

If there is an existing service, you can use the available data to measure user satisfaction. You can use these as a baseline and then measure to see if the new service improves the user experience.

Prototype development (alpha)

Conduct user research once you have a prototype. You can observe people 'using' the prototypes to complete a transaction. Another option is to conduct remote usability testing. These methods will help you gauge user satisfaction as well as provide you with insights on how to improve your service.

Beta

You can carry on measuring user satisfaction in beta by conducting more user research. Some methods you can use are:

  • observing people using the service;
  • user interviews;
  • usability testing; or
  • satisfaction surveys.

These methods will help you pinpoint why and where your participants are dissatisfied with the service or website. Iterate and improve the service and confirm the changes have improved user satisfaction though more research.

Live

You will continue to measure user satisfaction once your service is live. Monitor and prioritize user feedback you collect via the service or website. In addition, and where possible, we recommend you also collect feedback from:

  • Front-line staff. Front-line staff interact with the public and may collect feedback as part of their process.
  • Government of Yukon social media. If you have posts or advertisements related to the service or website, you can learn what people are saying about it.

How to improve user satisfaction

When you launch your service or website to the public, you should have a plan to iterate it to make sure your users are satisfied and can accomplish the task they set out to do. eServices will help you with this plan. We'll help you prioritize user feedback to address and give you advice on how to address the feedback.

Follow these steps to iterate your service or website to improve user satisfaction.

  1. Monitor user feedback and track it in the project backlog.
  2. Prioritize this data to pinpoint which parts of the service to change.
  3. Propose solutions and create a prototype so you can test changes on real users to make sure they have addressed the issue.
  4. Implement solutions that test well.
  5. Continue to regularly monitor user feedback to make sure the changes work for users in the way you anticipated.

Make sure you repeat this process regularly so you can improve users satisfaction over time.