Do you always follow your gut when making decisions for your website?
Designing your website often starts with what you feel will make a website look good.
However, you’ll most likely be changing your plans when the results of your efforts come in.
But this is okay because tracking and measuring your site’s performance from a design standpoint is important.
At the end of the data, you’ll rely on data on how to
In this post, you will learn how to gather data about your target audience and design your website accordingly.
Two types of data to gather
There are two types of data you want to analyze: quantitative and qualitative.
To put it simply, quantitative data answer the who, when, what, and where questions you have about your audience.
On the other hand, qualitative data is quite harder to extract.
If you already have quantitative data, the next thing you want to do is know what they feel while browsing your website.
Basically, qualitative data answers the “why” question.
This will help you create more engaging experiences which will, in turn, increase the value that you bring to your users.
How to design with data
Make sure that you have the tools to properly measure these two types of data.
Here are some tools to use if you want to dig deep into what your users tell you.
All of these tools have their benefits and serve their purpose if you need to track your user behavior, what keywords they use, or what buttons they click on your website.
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- SEMrush
- Ahrefs
- Hotjar
- Google Tag Manager
Ask the right questions
Designing with data is an overwhelming task.
There are a lot of measurements to analyze and results to keep track.
Getting sidetracked happens especially if you aren’t sure about the purpose of your data collection.
So focus on a specific goal so you don’t end up collecting data that won’t be useful on how to know your audience better.
Here are a few questions you can start with:
- What challenges do our visitors face when visiting our site?
- What do my users expect to see on my site?
- What functions should we consider to improve their experience?
- Did my design experiments affect our engagement rate?
After listing down your questions, begin to look for answers from the tools that we listed or other resources that you can find online.
These answers will lead you to a clearer path and help you determine your next steps.
Use information to create a mockup
Once you find out the answers to your questions, apply the information you learned to your design decisions by creating a mockup.
Designing with data simply means that your designs should be based on what the users do on your website and how you can increase their engagement with it.
A wild guess on what they feel about your blog is one thing. But your website’s data provides concrete evidence about their overall experience with your website.
So use the gathered information before creating your mockup.
If you notice that they immediately leave your site, check your site speed.
If they only reach the top fold of your site, review the quality and the design you use.
Believe what the data tells you and create various mockups that you can use for our next step below.
Test results
Make sure to test the results!
A/B testing is a simple process that you really need to do regularly.
Try to run some experiments when you create multiple mockups.
Do users stay longer when the theme is yellow rather than orange?
Are bigger buttons getting more clicks than the smaller ones?
A/B testing is where you do one thing and then another with only a slight change in an element.
Then, you’ll be able to know which is more effective in converting to your set of goals.
Remember to rely on the actual data that your A/B tests say rather than just making assumptions.
Get the opinion of your audience
Try to do a semantic differential survey on your website.
The goal is to present your users a few options and ask them to give their rating on a sliding scale that consists of opposite adjectives on each end.
Done correctly, the insights you’ll get are valuable and can be critical to the success of your future designs.
It’s the perfect way to resolve any of your customer misconceptions and make changes as quickly as you can.
Conclusion
Backing all your future actions and design ideas with data can yield you better results. Try to do the things we stated above and make sure to take a good look at what the data tells you.
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