Say your team designed a website that’s creative and beautiful. You’re sure customers will love it. But sales are stagnant, and there’s no increase in calls or queries. What gives?
Without tracking data points to see how users are interacting with your website or digital product, there’s no way to identify and address issues. Data-driven design is exactly that: measuring and using data to make user-focused design decisions when building online experiences.
Getting Started
There are numerous data points digital designers should request, says Janna Fiester, VP of UX and brand innovation at Sandstorm, a digital branding agency. These include:
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Business goals
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Web analytics (most-visited content, mobile vs. desktop visits and page load time, for example)
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Conversion metrics
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User behaviors (where they click, how far they scroll and what they skip)
Fiester notes you can collect this data through:
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Interviews
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Usability studies
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A/B testing
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Surveys
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Heatmap tools
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Field studies
Once you’ve begun collecting user data, evaluate to see if your product is meeting customer needs.
Data-Driven Design in Action
Working with CLR, a cleaning products company, Fiester identified through user research that a primary user goal in visiting the website was finding where to buy a specific product.
In response, after conducting a usability study, her team implemented some changes. They renamed their “Retail Locator” tool “Where to Buy.” They created a simple three-step custom product search. And they integrated Google Maps for their high percentage of mobile users.
The ROI? A 380% increase in use of the page, an 11% reduction in bounce rates and a 12% increase in page views.
Photo credit: AlenKadr/Shutterstock
