In the past, people usually relied on intuition or gut feeling when it comes to the matters of design. Unfortunately, this kind of approach is highly unreliable. Sure, those with a lot of experience in the field will unknowingly draw patterns from their previous success or failures, but this usually comes down to a limited number of people (who have enough experience in the first place). Today, web designers have something much more reliable to lean on- the notion of data analytics.
John Wanamaker once said that one half of everything he spends on marketing goes to waste. The problem, however, is that he can never know which half. Still, this statement was uttered ages ago and today things are much different than they were at the time. Thanks to the internet and numerous analytics tools we have at disposal, in 2017 it is more or less possible to accurately predict which factors affect website or app users the most. By knowing this, you can also see which website elements are most likely to result in a great ROI.
What Kind of Data Are We Talking About?
We keep repeating this word data, but what kind of data are we actually talking about. Well, broadly speaking, there are two major groups of data you will be concerned with. The first one is the so-called quantitative data, which is quite objective and easy to track. It mostly deals with the questions of who is visiting your page, how long are they on it before they leave and what are they doing while on it.
On the other hand, you also have qualitative data which is much more abstract. It is supposed to explain which of your features they liked the most and why they came to you in the first place. It isn’t hard to guess how this can be quite difficult to explain. Still, with the sample that is big enough and the right analytics tools, even some of these subjective issues can be simplistically explained.
Learning from Top-Dogs
The Internet is a strange place to say at very least. Seeing how anyone can post virtually anything online, it is not that unusual to encounter completely contradictory information during your search. If you look hard enough, you will probably find someone claiming that slow, buggy and overall broken websites have a better conversion rate than those well optimized. While these kinds of ridiculous claims are easy to dismiss, sometimes the tips you encounter will seem legit, which does not necessarily make them so.
In a situation where one guide tells you one thing and the other one something completely different who do you listen to? Well, no one actually. You don’t listen, you look for yourself. One of the most efficient ways of learning is learning on the example, but you first need to find a nice example to follow.
Start by finding a website with a high conversion rate and see what they do differently. For example, according to recent surveys, 8 out of 10 people don’t read past the headlines. This means that you must find a way to make a killer title, but you are also doing this on the clock. From the moment a visitor enters your website, you have about 8 seconds to make them stay. This is where the fun part starts.
Data-Driven Design
In order to make your landing page as efficient, you need to make its design data-driven. This means no speculation and no gut-feeling’. You are only supposed to be driven by the UX. For example, it is known that the speed of the website is one of the major components in the overall user experience. Sure, you may want to make your landing page as interactive as possible, but you need to ask yourself what your clients would value more, a highly-responsive website or the one giving them a plethora of unnecessary options to choose from.
However, the page needs to be functional as well. Overcomplicating things will only make your visitors get frustrated and leave. If you are leading an e-store, you need to enable your clients to make a purchase in just a few clicks. If you are offering a service, you need to enable your clients to strike a deal in just a few clicks. It really is that easy. Furthermore, you need to integrate as many payment gateways as possible. In a situation where you don’t support their preferred payment method, they are more likely to go to your competitor than apply for a payment option your website supports.
Conclusion
The greatest problem in succeeding online is that currently there are more than one billion active websites on the internet. This makes any effort you make statistically unlikely to succeed. However, with web design influenced by the data analytics, you can significantly improve your chances of both attracting and keeping your audience. To a lot of people, their website is their livelihood. With this in mind, you cannot afford to leave anything up to chance.
