For us at Baymard, 2025 was an exciting year, with thousands of hours of new UX research and benchmarking conducted.
Within the last year, we’ve released the 2 major research studies — Loyalty Program UX and Telco UX Deep-Dive — along with 19 industry-specific benchmarks.
We’ve also launched a brand-new research pillar: Quantitative Insights.
In addition to this, we released UX-Query and UX-Ray to further help ecommerce sites access and apply our UX insights based on over 200,000 hours of Baymard UX research findings.
As the new year begins, we provide an overview of our releases in 2025 and outline the roadmap for 2026.
2 New UX Research Studies in 2025
In 2025 we wrapped up work on 2 new studies: an industry-specific study (telco) and a new core theme study (loyalty).
1) New “Telco” Research Study
Our new Telco UX study included 3,500+ hours of research solely devoted to this industry.
The research included 16 sites focused on US and UK telco providers, including both large mobile networks and MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) carriers:
- US carriers: T-Mobile, US Cellular, AT&T, Verizon, Optimum, Visible, Mint Mobile, TracFone
- UK carriers: EE, Vodafone UK, Three (3), O2, Sky, GiffGaff, iD Mobile, Tesco Mobile
See the findings from our Telco UX research study or explore our Telco UX articles:
- New Telco UX Research: 3 High-Level Takeaways from 3,500 Hours of Testing
- 17 Common UX Pitfalls Telco Websites Suffer From
2) New “Loyalty & Rewards” Research Study
In late 2025, we wrapped up 1,900+ hours of research on “Loyalty & Rewards” features, layouts, content, and designs.
The research included 17 sites with popular loyalty programs: Sephora, Adidas, Expedia, Starbucks, Target, Ulta Beauty, Bath & Body Works, H&M, DSW, Abercrombie & Fitch, Frontier, Southwest, Hyatt, Chick-fil-A, Crumbl Cookies, Domino’s Pizza, and Kroger.
As a result of our qualitative research findings we’ve now published 12 Loyalty & Rewards UX guidelines.
Also, for this theme we’ve undertaken a large-scale quantitative study, surveying 2,003 US adults who are members of at least one Loyalty program.
Our quantitative research has resulted in 8 Loyalty Strategic Briefs — a new way of providing insight into a UX topic that combines data visualizations with narrative analysis.
See the findings from our Loyalty & Rewards research study or explore the Loyalty & Rewards study launch article.
New Research Focus Area: Quantitative Insights
In 2025, we launched a program to vastly increase and improve our quantitative research insights.
Quantitative Insights are visual, survey-backed data that highlight user habits and preferences across key areas of the ecommerce user experience, from general online shopping preferences to loyalty program expectations.
Each insight is derived from large-scale usability surveys and quantitative research projects, providing a fast, scannable way to understand critical user behaviors.
We’re rolling out new insights every month, with 2 new industry-focused studies coming soon (Home & Hardware and Furniture & Home Decor).
Explore our Quantitative Insights — 18 of these are available on our Free plan — or learn more in the Quantitative Insights launch article.
Baymard’s 10 Most Popular UX Research Articles in 2025
The 10 most popular UX articles for the year are:
- Checkout UX 2025: 10 Pitfalls and Best Practices
- AI Heuristic UX Evaluations with a 95% Accuracy Rate (Human-Level Accuracy)
- Homepage and Category Navigation UX 2025: 67% of Mobile Sites Have Mediocre-to-Poor Performance
- Product Page UX 2025: 15 Pitfalls and Best Practices
- Mobile UX Trends 2025: 9 Common Pitfalls & Best Practices
- Drop-Down Usability: When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Use Them
- 10 UX Requirements to Follow for a User-Friendly Homepage Carousel Design
- Product List UX 2025: 8 Common Pitfalls & Best Practices (80% Have Serious Issues)
- 10 Cyber Monday UX Best Practices
- The ‘Credit Card Number’ Field Must Allow and Auto-Format Spaces (80% Don’t)
2 New Product Updates 2025
1) UX-Query — Get Instant Answers to Any UX Question
After a year of testing, we released our AI-powered UX search assistant UX-Query in spring 2025.
Just type in your UX question and get insights in seconds — every answer is 100% verified and backed by our Baymard research.
The feature is a great way to:
- Validate your design decisions
- Get research-backed answers instantly in meetings
- Save time on internal testing and desktop research
Try UX-Query with the free plan or learn more in the UX-Query release article
2) UX-Ray 2.0: Research-Backed UX To-Do List in Minutes
In 2025, we also released UX-Ray 2.0, which scans live ecommerce websites (or images of upcoming designs) and provides an instant heuristic evaluation of the site’s UX.
The evaluation is performed across 154 UX heuristics (Baymard UX guidelines) — all based on our 200,000+ hours of large-scale UX research findings.
The unique part? UX-Ray has a documented 95% Accuracy Rate, when compared to how human expert UX auditors would have evaluated the same site.
UX-Ray 2.0 gives you an instant, actionable UX to-do list, empowering your UX team to focus on the areas that matter.
In 2026, we will continue to develop UX-Ray, adding more UX guidelines to site scans, new features, and improving functionality (learn more below).
Learn more about UX-Ray, its accuracy rate, and our test data or try UX-Ray for free now
19 New UX Benchmarks Published
In the last year, we also released 19 new UX benchmarks, adding 50,000+ new best practice and worst practice examples illustrating how leading sites stack up against the 700+ UX guidelines available in Baymard.
You can browse parts of our benchmark dataset for free in our public ecommerce UX benchmark and in the Page Design tool.
These are the new UX benchmarks:
- Travel Accommodations
- Automotive Parts & Specialty
- Vitamins & Supplements
- Sports Gear & Equipment
- Beverages
- European Electronics, Home & Hardware, and Mass Merchant sites
- Eyewear
- Jewelry & Watches
- Footwear
- Educational Reading & Books
- Video Games
- Small catalog Direct-to-Consumer
- Pet Food & Care
- Merchandise & Print-to-Order
- Online Learning
- Flight Booking & Airlines
- SaaS & Digital Subscriptions
- Online Grocery
- Furniture & Home Decor
A Look Ahead of What’s to Come in 2026
Now let’s have a look at the upcoming research, benchmarking, and product updates and releases we have planned for 2026.
Research and Benchmarking
This year we’ll be completing and launching 10 new qualitative UX research studies:
- Core theme retesting: Customer Accounts, Product Details Page, Checkout, and Product Finding
- New Industries: Health & Beauty, Insurance, Events & Shows Ticketing
- Focused deep dives: Groceries & Fulfillment, Complex Product Details Pages, Consumer Electronics
Additionally, we will release new and updated quantitative UX research studies:
- General catalog refresh: Awareness & Product Discovery, Consideration & Purchase Behavior, and Checkout & Post-Purchase
- New cross-geography general catalog study: comparing ecommerce habits and preferences across markets
- New industry studies: Home & Hardware and Furniture & Home Decor, with additional industries to be announced
In the first half of 2026, we’ll also be conducting 12 new UX benchmarks for:
- Platform: Retail Mobile Apps
- Industry benchmarks: Electronics & Office, Toys, Crafts & Hobbies, Home & Hardware, Telco, B2B Electronic Components & Machinery, Health & Beauty, Smoking & Vaping, Food Delivery & Takeout, Mass Merchants, B2B Medical & Pharma, and Internet Service Providers (ISP)
You can see a full breakdown of all releases on our Roadmap & Changelog page.
Product Updates and Releases
On the product side, we are committed to helping you access the research you need in a faster and more personalized way.
Here are some of our product updates & releases to expect in 2026:
UX-Ray Updates:
We’re constantly working on improvements for UX-Ray, which includes UX-Ray rating more heuristics at a 95% Accuracy Rate and updating the interface to make it easier for you to find the relevant UX insights based on your current project.
In fact, we just released the first improvements in January.
UX-Ray can now rate 154 heuristics at a 95% accuracy rate (previously 39), evaluated across 48 different ecommerce websites (previously 45).
You’ll also now be able to see non-rated but highly relevant UX Best Practice Guidelines for your site.
Additionally, UX-Ray now includes a new filtering bar that allows you to surface UX insights based on UI component, page type, business objective and more.
New Native Shopify App:
For the first time, Baymard is creating a Shopify App that connects stores to UX-Ray, allowing you to scan your site and uncover a list of personalized UX insights prioritized by expected conversion impact.
Figma Plug-in Update:
We’re updating our Figma Plug-in to help you design with confidence.
You’ll be able to scan your designs in Figma to surface all relevant UX Best Practice Guidelines, and see which components adhere to them and which need fixing.
UX-Query Updates:
We’re expanding UX-Query’s capabilities and interface, enabling it to reference more than just our UX guidelines.
With the upcoming updates, UX-Query answers will reference additional research content types like Quantitative Insights, best and worst practice examples, and more.
We’re looking forward to another exciting year.
- Christian, Jamie, and the entire Baymard team
Getting access: our research findings are available in the 700+ UX guidelines in Baymard Premium — get access to learn how to create a “State of the Art” ecommerce user experience.
If you want to know how your desktop site, mobile site, or app performs and compares, then learn more about having Baymard conduct a UX Audit of your site or app.
