The main task of a designer is to solve user problems. A good designer navigates these problems, knows what they are, and has a set of criteria that help him determine that the problem has really been solved.
When a designer is just starting a project, he has many questions about the target audience of the site and what his final design will be like. He mostly answers these questions based on his personal experience, but these are only limited hypotheses. With the help of analytics, you can better understand the user, dive deeply into the context and quickly create a ready-made tested product from the idea, which will be comfortable and pleasant to use.
With the help of analytics, you can look at the site through the user’s “eyes” even at the stage of its development. Analysis of the site for design will help to avoid many conflicting situations in the team, without which the design process simply cannot do. To understand the importance of analytics, let’s consider the principle of its use at each stage of a designer’s work.
This is the initial stage, during which the designer must find out the main tasks and goals of the business. He should clearly understand what kind of product he has to create, what are the requirements for it, for which users it is intended and how to make this product convenient for everyone.
To understand this, it is necessary to analyze the data of analytics systems. In audience reports, you can see the following information:
By combining this information, it is possible to single out the main segments of the CA, which can be expanded and supplemented in the future.
If the project is just being created and historical data about users is not available, it is possible to carry out an analysis at this stage with the help of in-depth interviews. They involve communication with representatives of the CA for which the process is designed. The list of questions is prepared in advance.
In addition to your own analytics, you can use the analysis of competitors, with its help you can learn from users how they are used to solving their tasks on the sites of competing companies, which elements will help make the product more qualitative and different from competitors. An additional tool for identifying the project’s target audience is a survey. They can be held among site visitors, triggered or on third-party sites.
The previously obtained data help the designer to generate a lot of useful ideas. They arise at the stage of analysis, so some of them can be checked during surveys. This will help to quickly make corrections and prevent many mistakes.
You can use the first click test, for this the designer draws an image and asks users where they would look for this or that opportunity. In such a test, several tasks can be included simultaneously to test a number of hypotheses. The test result is issued in the form of a heat map of clicks with additional statistics. This will help to significantly improve the site interface.
The structure of the site and navigation is checked by card sorting, during which the user needs to arrange the cards with the names of the elements into groups. This will give an idea of how the user sees the structure of the elements.
At this stage, the designer needs to think through all scenarios of user interaction with the site. For this, you can use a customer journey map for each CA segment (Customer Journey Map). Data for the map can be taken from previously conducted research, combining them at your discretion. It displays all user steps in the process of interaction, points of contact with the site, his needs and expectations.
The designer creates a project structure that would maximally satisfy the client’s needs and solve his tasks. Card sorting or one-click text will help test the structure. It is at this stage that the future project is assembled into a single coherent picture.
At this stage, the designer prepares a prototype of all possible types of interface, conducts usability testing of the layout. This is best done with real users, who will immediately point out the problems they face while working with the project.
During usability testing, scenarios are created that reflect normal user behavior on the site. Next, it is necessary to select respondents from each segment of the CA and offer them a situation as close as possible to reality, in which they must go through various scenarios.
The prototype should contain all the elements of the future site, including all the images for the design on the site. This will help avoid breaks when users go through scripts. The “raw” version can worsen the test results. The results will show the problems faced by the user, broken down by CA groups. They will be divided by frequency of occurrence and criticality. Based on the results of the testing, changes are made and the product is easy to use.
Analytics for a designer can be a tool for collecting information for work, a source of insights and a tool to increase the probability of creating a successful product. The ideal option is the teamwork of an analyst and a designer. Together, they will be able to create the most user-friendly design project in the shortest possible time and with minimal effort.
