Industry UX Research
A large-scale research study on how to optimize the User Experience for Native Mobile App users
At Baymard Institute we have a whole research topic devoted to online shopping UX and usability specifically on native mobile apps.
Through more than 1,000 hours of large-scale Mobile App UX research, we’ve identified 360+ in-depth User Experience guidelines that are particularly important to native mobile apps.
This mobile apps UX research is based on more than 200 qualitative participant/app usability test sessions following the “Think Aloud” protocol (1:1 remote moderated testing).
The tested apps were chosen to reflect the apps provided by leading sites in the industries: Apparel (e.g., ASOS and Banana Republic), Mass Merchant (e.g., Amazon & Walmart), Home & Hardware (e.g., Home Depot and Lowe’s), and Beauty (e.g., Sephora and Ulta). During testing the participants encountered 900+ usability issues on the mobile apps, which have subsequently been analyzed and distilled into the 400+ UX design guidelines.
This page provides you a brief overview of Baymard’s ‘Mobile App’ UX research. Full access to all of our Mobile App UX research is available as part of Baymard Premium.
We’ve conducted an UX benchmark assessing 26 mobile apps across 330+ of the mobile app UX guidelines. You can view the mobile app UX performances from our latest benchmark in the graph above, which summarizes 8,000+ weighted UX performance scores.
You can expand each theme and topic in the graph above for an in-depth view of the ‘current state’ of mobile app UX performances. (scroll down to access the in-depth case studies for each of the apps)
As the scatterplot shows, the averaged Mobile App e-commerce UX performance for these leading benchmarked apps is decidedly “mediocre”. In fact, 80% of mobile apps are tightly clustered in the “mediocre” category with just 12% faring “decent” and 8% at “poor”.
Further, none of the benchmarked mobile apps rated “good” or “perfect” overall, leaving considerable room for improvement in the e-commerce user experience.
This is a subset of the full benchmark which includes 251 e-commerce sites.
View our full UX benchmark
You can explore our in-depth UX case studies of the below mobile apps. In total these contain 8,000+ UX performance scores and 7,000+ best practice examples from mobile apps.
FREE RESEARCH CONTENT
Explore design patterns across 900+ examples of mobile app designs and features, all annotated and organized into 21 different page types. This is a great way to get inspiration and to get a feel for emerging trends in native mobile app design.
FREE RESEARCH CONTENT
We’ve released a small subset of the Premium UX research findings for Native Mobile Apps for free in these articles:
Mobile App UX Trends: The Current State of Mobile App UX (10 Common Pitfalls & Best Practices)
Food Delivery & Takeout: New UX Benchmark with 3,000+ Performance Scores and 2,000+ Best Practice Examples
Mobile UX Trends: The Current State of Mobile UX (15 Common Pitfalls & Best Practices)
Baymard: 2023 and 2024
Top 1% E-Commerce UX Awards — 2023 WINNERS
Generalizability of UX E-Commerce Research
Payment Method UX: Designing Payment Selection
Make All Color Swatches Available in Mobile List Items for Visually Driven Product Types (57% Don’t)
New 2023 Mobile Apps UX Benchmark with 2,200+ Performance Scores and 2,200+ Best Practice Examples
Mobile Apps: New UX Benchmark with Over 3,700 Performance Scores and 2,800+ Best Practice Examples
3 High-Level UX Takeaways from 1100+ Hours of Testing Leading Food Delivery and Takeout Sites
Online Grocery UX: 5 High-Level UX Takeaways from 1,100 Hours of Testing Leading Grocery Websites
Combine Variations of Products into One List Item (12% Don’t)
Offer Relevant Autocomplete Suggestions for Closely Misspelled Search Terms and Queries (69% Don’t)
Always Provide the Full Scope for Links on Mobile Homepages (58% Don’t)
17 Common UX Pitfalls Telco Websites Suffer From
12 Common UX Pitfalls ‘Online Grocery’ E-Commerce Sites Suffer From
New UX Research Study on Native Mobile Apps (incl. app usage rates)
Always Provide a Submit Button Adjacent to the Search Field on Mobile (21% Don’t)
Always Sort Product Lists by Diversity-Based “Relevance” (24% Don’t)
PAID RESEARCH CONTENT
With Baymard Premium you get access to 400+ UX guidelines relevant for mobile apps, along with 8,000+ UX performance scores and 7,000+ best practice examples from native mobile apps. On top of this, you also get access to 175,000+ best practice examples and 275,000+ UX performance scores from other platforms and industries - sometimes the best inspiration comes from outside your own industry.
IN-DEPTH REVIEW OF YOUR APP’S UX PERFORMANCE
If you don’t want to read all of the research findings, but “just want the results”, then have Baymard’s team of researchers audit your mobile app (and/or mobile & desktop website).
The audit provides you with a detailed external review of your app’s UX performance across 360+ app UX elements, as well as a detailed UX performance comparison against 26 leading mobile apps. The UX audit provides you with 30 prioritized suggestions for UX improvements to your app, each with best-practice implementation examples from other mobile apps.
“Baymard produces some of the most relevant and actionable user experience research available. They really understand the needs of UX and Product Management professionals, and their deep experience in the eCommerce field allows them to offer sophisticated, nuanced insights.”
“Baymard has been a great resource in helping us improve the customer experience. We are continually applying these best practices to our sites.”
“I can not tell you how much help your benchmark studies have been for our company, e-commerce and UX teams. We have used and continue to use these reports for baseline benchmarks as we build test protocols or eye tracking scripts etc. in lab.”
“Thanks again for the great work on our checkout project. Our whole group found it incredibly insightful. We’re applying the suggestions you provided to our new checkout design which launches at the end of the month! One of my colleagues was also interested in your group’s competitive expertise with regard to responsive web and native apps.”
“Thank you. This was an excellent piece of work: professional, thorough, and actionable for the team. We’re very happy with the work Baymard has done for us.”
“Thank you very much for the 7 usability audits of our country-specific sites. The audits have provided us with specific and actionable advice, allowed us to prioritize development resources, and enabled us to compare UX performance between the 7 different country-specific sites, and against State of the Art implementations. The audit itself is done really professionally, and the recommendations contain actionable and insightful information.”
“Intelligent, consumer-focused insights that are clear and actionable. The team in the room really loved the way the Baymard Institute highlighted the optimizations in the various user experience elements (copy, layout, design, calls-to-action…), from the perspective of consumer struggles. Baymard’s Usability research really complements our other existing research tools.”
“Thank you, this was really insightful!”
“We’ve received some awesome feedback from our Merchant Success team as well as our merchants about all of the UX Audits we’ve had thus far with Baymard. Thank you so much to you and your team for all of your hard work. The pilot with Baymard has been going fantastic and I’m really excited with all that we’re learning! You have an amazing platform, team and super helpful data base for us to work with.”
“Having Baymard is like having access to a magical UX super power. I can't believe how helpful and easy to use it is, given the vast array of tools and information they provide!”
“Baymard's audit services give us a detailed view of usability improvements across our entire site. This is so much more comprehensive than running individual usability studies.”
“Clear, concise, actionable, data-driven insights!”
“I was able to bring these designed solutions home with me and kickoff multiple optimization projects that I am confident will affect the site in a positive way, both in usability and conversion.”
“I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for the amazing work on this audit. You should know that this has been very well received internally and there’s a lot of excitement around adopting the ideas you have shared.”
“Very thorough and professional UX review of our website, based on an extensive amount of previous UX research insights within the industry, and specifically targeted to our needs. We received both critical and, most importantly, constructive feedback, along with actionable, prioritized suggestions and best-practice examples. This will allow us to address the areas of improvement and significantly help ameliorate the experience users have on our website, which in turn is expected to drive conversion rates and reduce the number of customer service requests. We can highly recommend Baymard's UX audit.”
“Damn. The reports that the @Baymard folks do cost money, but they’re worth it.”
“This has been fantastic: really good recommendations, really comprehensive.”
“I can confirm that the list was fully implemented. Every time we put up a change we either A/B test or we watch it very closely to determine that it’s doing better and not the opposite. So I can confirm that these fixes have improved our checkout. Thanks for everything.”
“Excellent tool – looking forward to using it with our other sites and prototypes as they’re developed.”
“We found the audits extremely helpful and validated a number of changes we have been wanting to make or are in the process of making, so thank again for all the great insights.”
“This was indeed very helpful guidance and a very well-documented roadmap for us to fix, validate, organize, collectively understand and continually improve our ecommerce foundation.”
“It is immensely valuable having a thorough, independent study to help validate my work and in particular, help facilitate buy-off from stakeholders. Baymard has quickly become one of my most trusted resources for the UX/UI field.”
“I found the UX audit a very comprehensive evaluation, with clear reports and actionable recommendations. Baymard's commitment to excellence in user experience shines through its thorough approach!”
“Thanks for everything. The audit was extremely useful, I think we have gained valuable insight.”
“This was…mind-blowing. We’ve been having conversations on the side as you’ve been presenting the audit findings. There’s so much to do!”
“These reports are fabulous. The content is exactly what our team has been looking for, and so much more! Extremely helpful, thank you!”
“I have found the M-Commerce and E-Commerce reports very useful, thank you!”
“I’m an avid user of your reports and recommendations. I have leveraged your articles and findings throughout my career in B2B, B2C, and hospitality.”
“The Baymard team has been a delight to work with on the JohnLewis digital platform audit. They responded to the brief very well, have been very accessible for ongoing clarification and queries and Rebecca was excellent in the recent team share, articulately presenting findings in an engaging walk-through with the wider team which will really support driving engagement and a robust response. Many thanks for all the effort and focus folks.”
“The Baymard reports have proven to be an invaluable resource for us. Comprehensive, pragmatic and actionable. We have redesigned our checkout process and made changes to our category pages based on usability guidelines in the reports.”
“Thanks for this audit and your good work. This was exactly what I was aiming for. Also thanks for the very, very professional presentation, and answering all our countless questions. Very good work.”
“I just wanted to let you know that I think your site is the best thousand bucks I’ve ever spent. I wish I found you years ago.”
“First off, thank you. This was the most engrossed I’ve ever been in a 2-hour meeting. This [audit presentation] was incredibly insightful and very helpful. Many, many thanks.”
“We are very excited to finally proceed with the UX improvements, and I truly believe your audit report will be super helpful to put us ahead of the wave. If you ever need a reference, please do not hesitate to share my contact.”
“Baymard has helped so much: UX was a brand new role at my company when I was hired. I was researching, planning, and designing UX & UI for 5 different products, all by myself. After showing real-world, bottom-line results from a UX centered approach to our products, we have expanded our UX team and greatly improved our UX-to-product process. Baymard’s research database was a critical component to my (and my company’s) success. Thank you!”
“Wanted to thank you again for the checkout audit and walking us through the process. It was super helpful and we can’t wait to apply the changes to our checkout for a better user experience.”
“The recommendations in our audit were awesome - well prioritized, actionable and helped us focus on what to optimize. This audit, along with the e-Commerce Reports & Benchmark Databases, are my go-to resources for thorough, insightful information. Thank you!”
“This is awesome so far. Everyone wants to know what's going on – you just got everyone's attention here. Everything that you've called out is definitely eye-opening for us over here.”
“Some time ago we purchased the Ecommerce Homepage & Category report - the research and insights are extremely useful to us and help us a lot in our work!”
“Given the tricky science of conversion rate optimization, it is great to know that you are dealing with professionals whose advice is based on solid research. It was a pleasure collaborating with the Baymard team.”
“Within a very short time Baymard Institute provided 15 clear, useful improvement suggestions for our checkout process. We intend to implement all of them. It’s easy to find companies that offer website improvement suggestions. But, most companies don’t do their homework and don’t provide specific examples of how best to make the improvements. With Baymard Institute, the checkout process suggestions they made were intuitive, specific, and actionable. I highly recommend their audit service.”
“This UX audit has been very helpful, not just for our design and product teams, but even for the UX research team, because we can reference back to the audit, either in the design of a user research session or when we analyze findings. Thank you very much; this has been incredibly valuable.”
“The Baymard UX audit has been a revelation for our organisation and will likely become a vital tool in our process moving forward.”
“Working with Baymard for our UX audit was an exceptional experience from start to finish. Their attention to detail, depth of analysis, and clear communication throughout the process truly exceeded our expectations. The insights they provided were not only actionable but profoundly insightful. I highly recommend Baymard for their expertise, professionalism, and commitment to elevating user experiences.”
“The audit opened our eyes once again, as we are often blind to our own operations. The comparison with competitors' best practices was particularly helpful.”
This UX research on native mobile app sites is part of Baymard Institute’s full 150,000+ hours of large-scale research catalog, which is based on:
Baymard’s research methodology is described in detail here.