Uxfolio.com is a portfolio building website that aims to help User Experience practitioners build their portfolios in such a way that their case studies, or stories, are clearly told and impactful. The site emphasizes that the process of building an online UX portfolio is fast and involves no coding and is specific to UX. Features include templates, copywriting assistance, built in mobile, tablet, and desktop device mockups, and password protection for specific stories.

The model for monetization is subscription based, where more advanced features such as unlimited fonts, custom url, and the ability to hide the uxfolio logo are part of package upgrades and pricing. The price point for the premium service is not high, topping out at $15 USD. In addition, the company strategy involves building a community, as users can access many examples of other user portfolios in a showcase and share their own stories for feedback from others.

The HEART/GSM framework for the uxfolio.com site looks at the quality of the experience for users of the site (happiness, engagement, adoption, retention and task success) and the more specific goals tied to uxfolio’s company strategy. What is the goal for their product overall? Following is an overview of the results:

Happiness: Users should feel that the portfolio they create has been easy to do.  They should also feel strongly that the end result is of high quality and will be respected by peers and recruiters. Once a portfolio is published, a survey can establish if this goal is being met by measuring users satisfaction with their final (and ongoing) result.

Engagement: Users must first feel that it is quick and easy to begin their portfolio project. To be sure that the site is meeting this fundamental goal, a signal to watch for is first time visitors to the site who proceed to sign up and begin a project. Aim to capture this metric over a short period such as one week. Establish a benchmark for this conversion, and a rise or fall over periods of time. If the initial conversion rate is very low, consider A/B testing on other prototypes, or even interviews with potential users to gather insight.

Adoption: A goal for uxfolio must be for users to upgrade from the free program to paid subscriptions. This supports the business ROI and is critical to overall success. A positive signal would be that many of the initial users of the base plan are upgrading to the standard or premium plans. Record the percentage of all users who do so over a set period of time.

Retention: The users of uxfolio.com must stay involved with the site as they work on their portfolio case-studies over time. When they finish a new project in their practice, they must return to uxfolio and add the new project to their existing portfolio. This will take a longer period of time to measure, as users will only make such important updates every month or two. Measure the number of users who are signed up for a standard subscription, who have not been active for 1 month, and who then return to site and republish (click publish button) within a 2-month period.

Task Success: a uxfolio business strategy is to build a community to spread word and gain more users. Users must engage, sharing their projects with others for feedback. A signal to look for is how often this is happening among all users. Measure the percent of users using the platform who share for feedback. Another valuable measure is the ease of this task. Measure time taken by users to give feedback, and also completion rate. Users may be dropping the task if it takes too long.