How to use Data Analytics to Improve User Experience

How to use Data Analytics to Improve User Experience

However you design and develop your website, the user experience should always be at the forefront of those processes. 

Without an intense focus on user experience, you could end up with a website that discourages visitors from engaging with your business rather than a site that encourages long-term customer relationships.  

Although most of us can agree that an excellent user experience is a foundation for website success, keeping UX number one at all times is no easy task. 

This is especially true when a broad audience interacts with your business and website in various ways.  

Luckily, web designers have tapped into the power of data analytics to gain valuable insights into the UX and implement changes to improve it. 

Here are 13 ways web designers can improve the user experience through data analytics.

Learn More About Your Users

One of the main benefits of data analytics is access to crucial user information. The more you know about your users, the more you can tailor your website to who they are and their website expectations. This makes the user experience much more enjoyable and beneficial.  

For instance, data analytics is about leveraging the insights derived from large datasets to solve customer and business problems. 

When you collect data on your customers’ issues, you can position your brand and products/services as the ultimate solution to help them make changes for the better. 

You can design your website in a way that shows users that your primary goal is to help them overcome challenges, not make a sale. 

When you show users you care about them as people, it sets the foundation for a good experience on your website. 

When you learn more about your users, you can leverage segmentation to provide a more tailored experience. 

Leverage Segmentation 

Segmentation is when you divide your audience into smaller cohorts based on similarities. These similarities could include the following:

• Education level 
• Financial background
• Location
• Age
• Career 
• Marital status
• How someone found your website 
• If they signed up for your email list
• If they’re a recurring visitor  

Collecting data on your users allows you to segment and learn about their unique qualities. 

Then, you can integrate website functions to where specific information shows up when certain users visit your site. For example, when a customer visits your site from Europe, prices are automatically shown in Euros. 

Data analytics can also help you improve your SEO strategy to become more visible to your audience on the web. 

Improve SEO 

Data analytics can be influential in your SEO strategy. This is because you can find what users type into a search bar to get to your site. 

You can identify keywords and phrases that users type to come across your products/services. 

Additionally, you can find the terms users are typing in when searching for a solution to the problem you say you are solving. 

Optimising your website for search engines makes it easier for people to find you online. Then, when they arrive at your site, they’re led directly to helpful content. As a result, their user experience remains in good standing. 

Also, when you become more visible on the web, you want to ensure your CTAs are up to par to continue driving conversions. 

Create Better CTAs

A call-to-action, or CTA, encourages your users to take the desired action after engaging with content. 

For example, the “Buy Now” button is at the bottom of a product description. The link at the bottom of a blog post directs users to your email sign-up. 

Or it’s the picture of a ticket linked to the site to purchase tickets to your next event.    

Data analytics allows you to learn which CTAs resonate most with users. You can use the messaging of the most popular CTAs throughout your website to drive conversions. 

You can also experiment with variations of the animation, colour scheme, and typography used on your best-performing CTAs to design others users will enjoy.   

Many of your CTAs will hopefully lead to a visitor entering the purchasing process. With this in mind, one of your priorities with data analytics must ensure this process is as simple as possible. 

Simplify the Purchasing Process 

How often have you encountered a checkout process with so many steps that you did not move forward with the purchase? 

If the answer is more than a few, you’re not alone. 

Unfortunately, users on various sites report a complex purchasing process as one of the main reasons they leave a website without completing a purchase.  

You can collect data on how your users interact with your purchasing process. 

Based on the insights you gain, you can make adjustments that make the process a lot simpler and seamless. These adjustments could include the following:

• Adding additional payment methods
• Updating your shipping options 
• Integrating an email workflow that engages buyers from purchase confirmation to delivery and beyond 
• Utilising a system for tracking shipments
• Eliminating certain upsells 
• Improving page speed on checkout pages 

You'll likely encounter cart abandonment in learning about your purchasing process through data analytics.  

Get Ahead of Cart Abandonment 

A high cart abandonment rate is one of those things that can keep a business owner up at night. 

It’s difficult to stomach a statistic showing people are coming to your site, putting things in their cart, and then leaving at an alarming rate. 

Data analytics helps find out why people are abandoning their carts. You can track down where people exit the purchasing process and conclude the collected data about why. 

For instance, many users are exiting the purchasing process on the shipping calculation page. 

This could mean they’re abandoning their carts here because the shipping rates are too high, or you only offer standard shipping with no options to get products to your customers faster. 

You could then do your best to find ways to lower shipping rates or provide additional shipping options to get users to complete their purchases.    

Data analytics can also give you insight into your repeat customers. The right product analytics tool, such as Stormly, can also give you insight into your user's behaviour and help you improve your product and decrease shopping cart abandonment rate.

Reward Repeat Customers 

You’re banking on repeat business to keep your operation profitable. 

So, you must learn who your repeat customers are and why they became repeat customers. Mainly, you want to know what about your website keeps them returning. 

Data analytics can educate you on the similarities between your repeat customers and what each of them repeatedly visits on your site. 

This can help you optimise all pages and things they frequently visit to ensure they’re functional and provide value. 

Also, when you learn about your repeat customers, you can find out what you can offer them as a reward for being a repeat customer to aid a solid user experience. 

For example, would they enjoy spending loyalty points on whatever they want in your store? Do they wish for exclusive coupon codes and discounts?  

In addition to rewarding repeat customers, allow data analytics to guide your efforts in reengaging one-time purchasers. 

Reengage One-Time Purchasers 

You never want visitors to stop their visits to your website at just one, even if that visit ends in a purchase. 

As stated above, repeat buyers are your bread and butter. Without long-term customer relationships, your business longevity is uncertain.  

So, use data analytics to gain insights into one-time purchasers. What’s making them stop at one? 

Then, use what you learn to strategise how to reengage them with your brand and reintroduce them to your website. 

Data analytics also offers an opportunity to improve the user experience, so it wows first-time visitors.  

Take Better Care of First-Time Visitors 

Many first-time visitors become repeat visitors because of their incredible first experience with your website.  

You can collect data on why some of your first-time visitors came back and why others didn’t. This can help you:

• Keep design elements that first-time visitors interacted with the most 
• Highlight content that attracts first-time visitors 
• Give first-time visitors a delightful introduction to your brand 
• Identify visual content that resonates with first-time visitors 
• Create a guide for how first-time visitors should navigate your website to get the most out of it  

Your first-time visitors and other users can directly impact how you design your user experience when they provide feedback. 

Data analytics can assist you in defining what kind of feedback you need from users and how to gather it best.  

Gather Valuable Feedback From Users

One of the best ways to improve your user experience is to ask users directly about their experience. 

Although this may be true, many company leaders have no idea what to ask their users to get feedback to make fundamental changes. That’s where data analytics comes in. 

Let’s say you think the user experience is being impacted by a poor website design. 

Your data analytics collected information on how users interact with your navigation bar. 

Specifically, how you designed it isn’t prompting users to click on your blog.   

To evaluate this design decision, you send out surveys with specific questions about how the website’s design helps or hurts them finding your blog. 

The feedback you collect allows you to implement changes quickly to highlight your blog on your navigation bar. 

Another way to improve your user experience through data analytics is to optimise your home page. 

Optimise Your Home Page

Many of your users will start their website experience on your home page. 

Whether they’ve reached it through a search on Google or clicked on the link in your social media bio to access it, users expect your homepage to give them a glimpse into what they can expect on your site. 

You can collect data on how users are navigating your home page. 

1. Are they bouncing from your home page? If so, what is the cause? 
2. What are you missing on it? 
3. How do your users usually navigate a website homepage? 
4. What content do they expect on it? 
5. Is there another page on your site that’s more popular? 
6. Can you bring some of that information to your home page to make it more favourable? 

When you answer questions like these, you can give users a better experience with your home page. 

Also, a considerable part of optimising your homepage is structuring information appropriately and ensuring seamless navigation. 

Design Fitting Information Architecture and Navigation 

The way you structure information on your website should be intentional. 

In other words, you should structure your website's content to encourage users to navigate it how you’d like them to. 

Your navigation should also be designed in a way that helps users access what they need when they need it. 

Collecting data on how users interact with your content can help you experiment with different information structures until you find the one that gives them the experience you envision. 

Furthermore, collecting data on how users engage with your navigation can help you tweak it until it’s functional and straightforward. 

Furthermore, when structuring the content on each webpage, think about the end-to-end design for your entire website. 

Because all your web pages are tied to one website doesn’t mean they’ll automatically be cohesive. 

So, structuring the content on your website with the same information architecture design on each page ensures a consistent brand and user experience. 

Data analytics is also beneficial in your utilisation of colour. 

Use Colours Properly 

Although it’s tempting, you shouldn’t be choosing your favourite colours for your website. 

Instead, your colour scheme should reflect your brand and be rooted in the behaviours you want to incite from your users. 

If you haven’t heard of colour psychology, it studies how colour influences human behaviour and evokes specific emotions. 

For instance, red captures people’s attention. It’s often associated with passion, excitement, and intensity. Blue, on the other hand, evokes calmness and peace from people when they see it. 

You can use data analytics to collect information on how users resonate with your colour schemes. For example, are they avoiding pages with particular colours and loving other pages with a different colour scheme? 

You can use colour to enhance the user experience as you track users' interactions with colours.    

Conclusion 

Utilising data analytics to improve user experience is an intelligent business move. 

Continually improving the user experience ensures your website remains successful, which betters your chances at turning users into loyal customers.