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Customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) both shape how customers interact with your business. UX focuses on customers’ experience using your website or other digital products, while CX is broader, encompassing their relationship with your brand across the entire customer journey.
Getting both right can measurably impact your business. Maine Lobster Now, for example, used Shopify to improve their website’s user experience with a faster, simpler checkout that made ordering easier for customers. Better UX improved the overall customer experience, and business results followed: overall conversion increased 69%, while mobile conversion increased 97%.
A 2025 Zoom/Morning Consult study highlights the potential long-term value of customer experience design. It reports that one in three customers say that a strong customer experience could keep them loyal to a brand for a decade or longer. On the flip side, 60% say just one or two negative experiences would be enough for them to leave a brand.
Learn the key differences between customer experience and user experience, the metrics you can use to evaluate each, and how the two work together to support your business and customer goals.
What is customer experience?
Customer experience (CX) covers the complete customer journey with your brand––all the online and offline interactions they have from discovering your business to after-sales support.
Together, these interactions shape a customer’s overall perception of your brand and can influence satisfaction and loyalty.
A customer experience strategy is your specific approach to these interactions, grounded in what you know your audience cares about. In contrast, customer experience optimization focuses on identifying and improving each step of the journey.
Sandra Powers Murphy, founder of luxury footwear brand Scarlett Chase, explains how her brand’s customer experience extends into packaging and post-purchase support.
“It’s about the whole experience,” she says on Shopify Masters.
“When you buy from us, the packaging is beautiful. The dust bags are lovely. We make a shim kit that’s custom to our brand. If your feet are slightly different sizes and you need some fit adjustability, those are complimentary. Those things matter.”
What is user experience?
User experience (UX) refers to how customers interact with and use your website or other digital products. It’s one aspect of their broader customer experience. UX elements of your online store include its design and aesthetics, as well as factors like navigability, page load time, site organization, clear copywriting, accessibility, and mobile friendliness.
Good UX makes it easy for customers to find information and complete tasks, such as searching for a product or completing a purchase. Poor UX, like confusing navigation or a complex checkout, introduces friction that can cause users to abandon tasks.
Many ecommerce brands have experienced firsthand how UX elements like mobile optimization and site speed impact conversion. For example, umbrella brand Original Duckhead learned this firsthand when visitors to their website were dropping off.
The brand shifted from designing their website for desktop screens to a mobile-first approach.
“We quickly realized that we needed to have a better user experience and that we needed to be mobile-first. That change made a big difference in our revenue and conversion rate,” says Founder Morgan Cros on Shopify Masters.
Customer experience vs. user experience: What’s the difference?
Here are some key differences between CX and UX:
When and where it happens
Customer experience can happen online or offline, before or after a customer makes a purchase. CX includes all interactions from discovery to post-purchase.
Ecommerce UX happens when customers interact with a brand’s website or other digital products, whether on a desktop, mobile device, or tablet.
Who’s responsible
Creating a positive customer experience requires 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 a website, app, or other digital product. 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 on platforms beyond the ecommerce site, like social media.
UX goals, by contrast, focus on improving a website’s usability and functionality and removing friction from digital interactions. These goals might include ensuring readability across multiple devices, simplifying navigation, and making checkout faster and easier.
Metrics
CX and UX teams collect data and customer feedback to identify pain points, but they assess different things.
CX metrics focus mainly on broad perceptions of the brand to better understand whether the experience leads to happy (and returning) customers.
Key metrics for CX include:
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT). CSAT measures how satisfied customers are with a particular product, service, or interaction. It’s usually expressed as a percentage.
- Customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV measures the total net profit a business can expect over the course of a customer relationship.
- Customer effort score (CES). This score reveals how easy or difficult it is for customers to interact with your brand.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS assesses customer satisfaction by asking how likely someone is to recommend your brand.
- Churn rate. This metric measures the percentage of paying customers who don’t return for repeat purchases. It 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 your initial design, then following up with at least two redesigns to improve your overall UX design.
To get to that final design, UX teams use software or data analytics platforms to track:
- Website usability. This measures how easily users can accomplish tasks when they’re on your website (such as adding a product to their shopping cart). Success and error rates from usability tests give UX designers actionable customer data on what’s working and what needs improvement.
- Bounce rate. This metric measures how many website users visit one page and leave.
- Conversion rate. This illustrates how many users take a specific action, 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. This means considering anyone who interacts with your brand.
Ecommerce UX focuses on the end users of a website or digital app.
How UX and CX work together: a real-world example
Aviator Nation shows how improving individual user interactions can improve the overall customer experience.
Previously, the apparel brand used separate ecommerce and point-of-sale (POS) systems, creating gaps between the online customer experience and in-person experiences in retail or pop-up settings, like music festivals. For example, store employees struggled to help customers return or exchange items they purchased online.
After unifying their ecommerce and retail systems on Shopify, Aviator Nation could connect customer histories across channels and offer a more seamless customer experience, such as processing in-store returns for online purchases.
A smooth online checkout contributes to good UX. Connecting that interaction with what happens when the same customer later visits a store helps create a positive CX across the entire customer journey.
Customer experience vs. user experience FAQ
What is the difference between user experience and customer experience?
User experience shapes how customers use your website or app. Customer experience covers that plus every other touchpoint, including social media, customer service, and post-purchase support. In both cases, you’re trying to help customers perceive your brand in the best possible light.
Is CX part of UX?
UX falls under CX, not the reverse. UX complements the overall CX by optimizing customers’ experiences with the company website. CX includes elements such as customer service, marketing, and communications, while UX focuses on digital experiences like your website or mobile app.
Should my business prioritize user experience or customer experience?
CX and UX address different aspects of the customer journey, so neither should be prioritized over the other. Instead, you should identify pain points in the customer experience and focus on the areas that need the most improvement. For example, high cart abandonment might signal a need to improve UX, while recurring customer service complaints could point to a broader CX issue.
