Picture this: You’re on the hunt for the perfect cardigan. You land on a promising website, filter by size and color, check reviews, and maybe even chat with customer support about the fit. Every step you take—smooth or frustrating—shapes how you feel about the brand.
That’s where customer experience and user experience come in. They both impact whether you’ll hit Buy Now or bounce—but they’re not the same thing.
Learn about the key differences between the two and how they work together to help you reach business and customer goals.
What is customer experience?
Customer experience (CX) covers all the online and offline interactions someone has with your brand along the customer journey, from discovering your business to after-sales support.
For example, if you run a clothing store, customer experience can include a customer seeing an ad for one of your cardigans on Instagram, navigating to your website to look at the price and material, and visiting your brick-and-mortar store to try it on.
CX can shape brand perceptions and sentiment. A great customer experience—like a productive interaction with a knowledgeable customer service agent or a useful, personalized recommendation based on their search history—can foster customer loyalty. On the other hand, poorly executed CX can lead to missed business opportunities. A Qualtrics consumer study found that a “very poor” customer experience with a company led 38% of consumers to reduce purchases and 13% to stop altogether.
What is user experience?
User experience (UX) refers to your customers’ actions on your website. UX elements of your online store include the design and aesthetics, as well as factors like navigability, page load time, site organization, clear copywriting, accessibility, and mobile friendliness.
Good UX, like a smooth checkout process, can boost sales and increase engagement. Bad UX, such as undecipherable text or broken links, can increase bounce rates and decrease conversions.
Example of user experience and customer experience
Here’s a look at how apparel brand Chubbies creates a positive user experience and customer experience.
As part of UX efforts, the brand’s website has an “Enable Accessibility” option on every page. This means a visitor can enter through any page on its site and easily turn on this web accessibility feature to see large, high-contrast text.
For someone who can benefit from high-contrast labels, that “Enable Accessibility” link makes for a better user experience and a positive customer experience. It’s a technical improvement that makes customers feel valued and considered.
Customer experience vs. user experience: What’s the difference?
Here are some key differences to help you better understand CX and UX:
When and where it happens
Customer experience can happen online or offline, before or after customers make a purchase. CX includes all interactions from discovery to post-purchase.
Ecommerce UX happens online when a visitor is on a brand’s website—whether that’s on a desktop, mobile device, or tablet.
Who’s responsible
Customer experience shapes the overall customer journey. This takes a combined effort from several departments, including marketing, sales, customer service, and product teams.
User experience, on the other hand, normally involves UX designers, UX writers, and UX researchers who optimize the website. They help develop visually appealing websites, write clear copy, and develop clear navigation and checkout processes to create smooth user interactions.
Business goals
Both CX and UX aim to foster customer loyalty and increase satisfaction through positive experiences. However, CX goals are broader, focusing on improving engagement at every touchpoint—including those that occur on platforms beyond the ecommerce site, like social media.
UX goals, by contrast, are specific to the usability and functionality of a website. These goals might include ensuring readability across multiple devices, writing documentation in accessible language, and making the checkout experience quicker.
Metrics
Both CX and UX collect data and leverage customer feedback to identify pain points, but differ in what they assess.
CX metrics focus mainly on broad perceptions of the brand to better understand if the experience lends itself to happy (and returning) customers.
Key metrics for CX include:
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Customer satisfaction score (CSAT). This number, on a scale from 1 to 10 or 1 to 100, measures how customers feel about a particular product, service, or interaction.
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Customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV measures the total net profit a business can expect over the course of a relationship with a customer.
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Customer effort score (CES). This score reveals how easy or difficult it is for customers to interact with your brand.
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Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS assesses customer satisfaction by asking how likely someone is to recommend your brand.
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Churn rate. This metric measures the percentage of paying customers who don’t return for repeat purchases and can be particularly helpful for subscription-based services.
UX metrics gauge usability or how easily users can accomplish a task on your website or app. UX work requires regular testing and iterating. UX experts at the Nielsen Norman Group recommend testing at least two iterations of a design, followed by two redesigns to improve your overall UX design.
To get to that final design, UX teams track:
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Website usability. This measures how easily users can accomplish tasks when they use your website (such as adding a product to their shopping cart). Success rate and error rates from usability tests give UX designers actionable customer data to know what’s working and what needs improvement.
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Bounce rate. This metric measures the number of website users who visit one page and leave. Generally, ecommerce stores should aim to have a bounce rate between 20% and 40%.
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Conversion rate. This illustrates how many users take specific actions you want them to take, such as making a purchase or signing up for your email newsletter.
Target audience
CX professionals have to consider all customers—long-time, new, and potential—at every stage of their journey. Essentially, this means considering anyone who interacts with your brand.
Ecommerce UX is specifically focused on catering to the end users of a website.
Customer experience vs. user experience FAQ
What is the difference between user experience and customer experience?
User experience focuses on the usability and functionality of a brand’s website. Customer experience, on the other hand, encompasses interactions across the entire customer journey, including in-person interactions, customer service interactions, post-purchase communication, and interactions on other platforms like social media. In both cases, you’re trying to help customers perceive your brand in the best possible light.
Is CX part of UX?
No, UX falls under CX. UX complements the overall CX by optimizing customers’ experiences with the company website. CX includes additional elements such as customer service, marketing, and communications, whereas UX is entirely focused on the website experience.
Which is more important: UX or CX?
Both CX and UX play an important role in hitting your business goals. By considering both, you’re ensuring that a customer has positive interactions with your brand.
