When companies talk about website performance, the conversation often starts with numbers. How fast does the page load? Where do we rank in Google? How much traffic are we driving?
These are important metrics. But they only tell part of the story.
A website can be fast, technically sound, and even well-optimized for search, and still fail the people who use it. Imagine investing in a sleek new homepage only to discover that customers can’t figure out how to get to your product catalog. Or picture a fast checkout page that looks polished but gives no confirmation after a purchase. The transaction goes through, but the customer is left wondering: Did that work? Should I click again?
This is the hidden risk of a poor user experience (UX): it quietly erodes trust, creates frustration, and pushes people away. And it doesn’t always show up in your analytics until it’s too late.
Drop-offs at checkout, abandoned forms, and rising support requests are all signs that users are struggling. Maybe not because your site is slow, but because it’s hard to use. Those struggles translate to missed opportunities and revenue. In fact, Forrester Research found that a well-designed, frictionless UX can raise conversion rates by up to 400%. This is why UX should be treated as a core performance metric right alongside SEO and speed.
But metrics need numbers. How do we turn usability into something measurable?
User experience can feel subjective. One person thinks a site is “fine,” another insists it’s confusing. Without a shared framework, it can be difficult to evaluate or quantify what is really happening.
That’s where heuristics come in. In simple terms, heuristics are a set of usability principles that highlight what makes an experience clear, consistent, and user-friendly. They break something broad like “UX” into specific dimensions that can be examined, such as how well a system communicates status, whether the design follows consistent patterns, or how easily users can recover from errors. Looking at an experience through these principles helps reveal both strengths and gaps in usability.
Instead of debating opinions, heuristics give you criteria. You’re not asking, “does this feel good enough?” You’re asking, “Does this page follow the principles that prevent confusion and support user confidence?”
Heuristics may sound complex at first but evaluating them is straightforward. The idea is simple: take each principle and look for real-world examples of how your website supports (or fails) that principle.
To get started, follow the ten heuristics set forth by industry leader Jakob Nielsen:
Visibility of system status
Match between system and the real world
User control and freedom
Consistency and standards
Error prevention
Recognition rather than recall
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Help and documentation
On their own, these principles can seem vague and high-level. They set a standard but may leave you unsure about what to check on your website to know if you measure up.
The design team at Adage likes using Miro for putting principles into practice and has created a resource that makes the first part of a heuristic evaluation accessible to anyone. Our UX Heuristics Scorecard Miro Template breaks each heuristic into plain-language questions and examples that guide your team step by step. Instead of needing to interpret abstract principles, you can work through simple prompts: Does the page give feedback when you save changes? Is it clear what step you’re on in a process?
This makes a heuristic evaluation something any team can do. Designers, product managers, marketers, even leadership, can look at the same questions, compare notes, and get a shared picture of how the experience performs.
In addition to tracking progress over time, this scoring creates business value by:
Prioritizing high-impact improvements by focusing on the areas where poor usability carries the greatest risk or cost.
Aligning teams around a shared language so design, product, marketing, and leadership are working from the same insights rather than subjective opinions.
By quantifying usability, you make UX evaluation concrete enough to guide decisions at the strategic level, not just the design level.
When UX is measured, it stops being a vague concept and becomes a true performance metric. A heuristic evaluation gives you the structure to see where your digital experience is strong and where it’s costing you. With a clear scorecard in hand, you can track progress, prioritize investments, and make decisions based on evidence rather than assumption. In the end, that means a website that not only performs well across traditional metrics, but also delivers the clarity, confidence, and ease your audiences expect.
While self-evaluation is a great first step, an unbiased, expert perspective often reveals friction points you might miss. At Adage, we use these heuristic principles to help clients audit their digital ecosystems, identifying exactly where user frustration is costing them revenue. We’ve partnered with organizations to transform their low usability scores into high-performing, thoughtful experiences that drive conversions.
Ready to see how your website measures up? Contact us today to schedule a professional heuristic audit and let's discuss how to improve your score.
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