useroften

Useroften is a proposed metric used in user experience research to describe the frequency with which individual users perform a specific action within a digital product during a defined time period. It is a descriptive statistic intended to complement other measures such as engagement or retention, focusing on action cadence rather than outcomes.

Etymology and scope: The term combines user and often and is not part of formal standards. In practice, teams define the unit of time (for example per day or per session) and select the action of interest. Because definitions vary, comparisons should be normalized to the same unit and population.

Measurement: Useroften is derived from event logs or analytics data. For a cohort of users, it is typically expressed as the average number of occurrences per user per unit of time. In addition to the mean, practitioners often examine the distribution, median, and the share of users who exhibit at least one instance. Contextual factors such as feature exposure and session length affect the value.

Applications: It is useful for understanding habitual actions, feature adoption, and friction within a product. The metric can inform product roadmaps, prioritization, and personalization strategies by highlighting actions that are performed more or less frequently than expected.

Limitations: The value of useroften depends on data quality and recording practices and can be misinterpreted if the action has different value across users. Privacy considerations apply, and it should be used alongside qualitative insights to avoid drawing incorrect conclusions.

See also: user engagement, frequency, usage analytics.