A breakdown of the SUPR-Q psychometric questionnaire for usability testing.
A good usability test will reveal flaws in your UX design, such as areas that are frustrating your users, failing to convert, or just need some general UI improvements. With the right users and a good task script, you'll receive a wealth of qualitative insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your designs.
To complement these insights, a number of psychometric questionnaires have been developed to quantify and score user experience. Not only do numerical scores help UX researchers measure improvements over time, they can also help to quickly identify which users had a good or bad experience.
On top of that, different questionnaire models offer different score breakdowns or vectors, illustrating specifically which aspects of the user experience are better or worse on your website or app.
What is the SUPR-Q?
The Standardized User Experience Percentile Rank Questionnaire is one of several scoring models we've implemented at Trymata to help UX researchers holistically understand and measure product performance.
The SUPR-Q is a short but powerful 8-item questionnaire designed by Jeff Sauro of MeasuringU. It differentiates itself from other models with its 4-factor analysis (usability, appearance, trust/credibility, and because it includes NPS by default, loyalty). The SUPR-Q algorithm also measures your score against a regularly-updated database of other websites.
SUPR-Q consists of 8 questions, shown below. Users respond to the first 7 questions using a 5-point Likert scale, where 1 represents "Strongly disagree" and 5 represents "Strongly agree."
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The website is easy to use. (Usability)
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It is easy to navigate within the website. (Usability)
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I feel comfortable purchasing from the website. (Trust)
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I feel confident conducting business on the website. (Trust)
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I will likely return to the website in the future. (Loyalty)
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I find the website to be attractive. (Appearance)
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The website has a clean and simple presentation. (Appearance)
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How likely are you to recommend this website to a friend or colleague? (Loyalty)
The scores are averaged and assigned a valued between 0-100, and then composted into your overall score. An important factor about your score: 50 is average.
SUPR-Q comes in two types: ecommerce, which is displayed above, and non-commerce. As you might have guessed, the difference is a matter of website intention. Non-commerce rewords questions 3 and 4 as follows:
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The information on the website is credible. (Trust)
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The information on the website is trustworthy. (Trust)
The final item – question #8 – is the NPS (Net Promoter Score), a single question often used as a standalone survey for measuring users' loyalty to a brand. This question uses a scale from 0 ("Not at all likely") to 10 ("Extremely likely").
The SUPR-Q, like all psychometrics, is administered after users have completed a task-based session using a website, app, or other digital product.
What makes SUPR-Q unique?
When assessing the quality of the website user experience, why should practitioners consider using the SUPR-Q over other psychometrics? In short, the SUPR-Q is more concerned with the more abstract nature of users rather than the usability of your product.
Want to get a SUPR-Q score for your website or app? Get started for free below:
Comparing SUPR-Q to other psychometrics
The SUPR-Q is just one of a number of psychometric survey models available for quantifying users' experiences and perceptions about your digital products. Below is a brief roundup of other alternatives, and how they compare to the SUPR-Q.
SUS
The System Usability Scale is the most widespread measurement in UX and usability testing, and for good reason. SUS will give you the topline rating of your product’s usability, but unliked the SUPR-Q, it doesn't offer subscores like loyalty and trust that measure different aspects of the user experience.
PSSUQ
The Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) is great for testing the overall quality of information in addition to usability, but like the SUS, suffers from the same problems in demonstrating desirability.
ALFQ
Trymata’s own Adoption Likelihood Factors Questionnaire and SUPR-Q are sister psychometrics in their intentionality. Both measure more than just usability, tapping into the heart of the user’s more abstract thoughts of a product such as trust and credibility.
One notable difference is the development stage: SUPR-Q is best utilized for established companies that users are familiar with, and whose designs have already been through rounds of SUS and/or PSSUQ testing. Meanwhile, ALFQ is built for UX and design teams on the opposite end of the spectrum who can’t rely on brand familiarity, major market competitor scoring, or previous design success.
SRS
The Survey Respondent Scale is the brainchild of a partnership between Trymata, MeasuringU, and QuestionPro to address the cognitive stress and fatigue of survey responses on testers. SRS is an extremely specialized metric that is meant more for marketing than usability.
What's your website's score? Pick from any of the above and find out today:
Who should use the SUPR-Q?
With SUPR-Q, we recommend that a company who has already run usability tests in the past and has resolved glaring usability issues think about utilizing the added psychometric capabilities of SUPR-Q to understand and retain customers.
Ecommerce businesses would be a great candidate for SUPR-Q. The goal of ecommerce UX is not only to make just a single sale, but to retain customers and keep them coming back. Getting the NPS results and credibility rating of your site is ideal for great ecommerce UX, which more than most types of UX, relies on brand trust and passive marketing.
Enabling the SUPR-Q for your usability test
To enable the SUPR-Q psychometric, simply proceed to step 4 (the Post-test) of the Trymata "Create a New Test" flow, scrolling past the survey questions, and check the "Include system usability questionnaire results with my test" box. SUPR-Q will be displayed in the drop-down menu beneath.
You will notice that the NPS box that appears under that menu is automatically filled-in, as it is built-in to the SUPR-Q psychometric.
Note: SUPR-Q and the NPS are also great to use in tandem with A/B testing, for both websites and mobile apps!
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MeasuringU and the SUPR-Q license
The composite scoring for SUPR-Q, unlike other psychometrics, is based on quarterly updates provided by MeasuringU.com, from whom you can purchase a license and import data into the most up-to-date calculation. The SUPR-Q database and algorithm is updated with data from between 5 and 20 new websites. But even without the license, the SUPR-Q is still an accurate and insightful composite of the credibility, desirability, usability of your product.