Sales and marketing leaders and their website managers at every business hope that visitors find their websites (and other digital properties)

• effortless to navigate,
• pleasing to the eye,
• accommodating to any limitation or disability,
• clear in its presentation of information,
• and smoothly and intuitively functional when the visitor answers a call to action.

When an organization’s site meets all those expectations, the result is good user experience.

But how do you create good UX?

First Research, Then Design

The data gathered in UX research must inform the design process. Otherwise, you’re just guessing about user needs and behaviors and improvising your design according to your own tastes and intuitions. That won’t work.

UX research involves gathering data that informs how – and how well -- users interact with your website. UX design involves laying out each page and using colors, styling, fonts, and imagery to bring it all to life. When solid research guides design, the resulting website looks good and functions well for site users.

Where to Start UX Research

If you don’t understand users’ needs, you can’t craft an experience that meets those needs, so it’s important to put user needs first.

How do you find out what those needs are? For starters, ask users who are part of your target audience. Sounds simple, right? In practice, gleaning accurate, useful responses from site users requires some interview technique and some insight into human behavior. (We’ve addressed those issues previously.)

User research doesn’t end with interviews and surveys. It extends into corroboration, from user testing and from analytical data from your website: Google Analytics, heatmap studies, and other website data. Compare and analyze these three categories of data to triangulate your way to accurate, actionable insights.

With that data in hand, you can influence the overall design of the website for improved UX.

How to Apply UX Research Data to Specific Aspects of Web Design

Navigation

Your UX research will tell you if users have trouble finding certain areas of your website. Research data will also tell you which content is most important to your site visitors. (It’s not always what you assume to be most important.)

A UX strategist can combine that data with traffic data from Google Analytics to understand how often those pages are accessed and to detect the roadblocks that prevent users from getting to them easily. The strategist can then recommend changing the site’s navigation to better prioritize content that users prize but the current navigation buries.

The visual element of navigation comes into play here. Maybe the website would function better with a mega menu, with visual cues to bring to the forefront content buried deep in the navigation.

Page Layout

Data, especially website heatmaps, can show that visitors simply don’t see a certain piece of content. Is it at the bottom of the page? Does the data show that users just don’t scroll that far? Is the content important enough to take to the top? If the top real estate is too crowded, how else can we bring the desired content into the user’s field of vision? Page layout plays a big role in establishing the place of any give piece of content within the content hierarchy.

A UX designer can sort out these priorities and suggest design options that reflect them. They might include changing design elements that shorten the page and naturally raise the content in question. Visual elements, such as patterns or alternate colors, could enhance the prominence of that content.

Calls-to-Action

Data-driven design can likewise make a big difference with calls to action. If data gathered during the research phase indicates that users are missing certain calls-to-action, a UX designer can suggest alternate designs. Sometimes, simply changing the color of the button can strengthen presence on the page and raise the CTR, or click-thru rate, to the expected level.

UX Is Both Data and Design

The moral of this story: Take your time and do your research before you start choosing colors, fonts, and layouts. Collect the data and use it to guide design decisions. It will save time and money in the long run and, more important, site users will reward you with repeat visits, higher engagement, and more conversions.

Learn more about our UX & Website Strategy and UX Design services and reach out to us anytime for help.

If you don’t understand users’ needs, you can’t craft an experience that meets those needs. So it’s important to put user needs first. https://nwsdigital.me/3U2uwKT @northwoods #userexperience #uxresearch #uxdesign