5 Ways To Use Analytics For Better Web Design

In a highly competitive market, differentiating your business from your competitors is the key to success. An important aspect of this differentiation lies in the way you design your website.

A high-performing website will give your target audience positive experiences that encourage them to buy from you repeatedly. And the opposite is true. A poorly performing website will only frustrate your prospects and customers; which will drive them right into the hands of your competitors.

To create a high-performing website, you need to utilize web data analytics to inform the design process. Using analytics, you can tell, among other things, who visits your website and what they do when they get there.

With that said, web analytics are useful in designing, maintaining, and even improving business websites. Below are five ways you can use analytics to improve your web design:

1. Identifying Problematic Pages

Businesses can use bounce rate analytics to identify and improve the design of problematic web pages. Bounce rate occurs when visitors close the browser without interacting with the site, stop navigating the site, or click on an outbound link. When the bounce rate of a web page is high, it means that the page has a problem. It could either be a dysfunctional link, or the content may be misleading for most visitors.

2. Fixing Conversion Issues

Conversion rate is another critical metric that businesses need to keep their tabs on. Generally, the conversion rate is an indicator of the number of visitors who complete specific actions. The actions can include filling lead capture forms, downloading content assets, signing up for online events like webinars or training, or better still, making purchases.

The conversion rate of any website is basically the most basic indicator of success. If you’re using Google Analytics, you’ll find relevant analytic data on conversion in the technical report. For more information, you can find a helpful resource here. Essentially, a conversion rate that’s lower than the average you’re used to can be an indication of web design issues.

3. Boosting Site Engagement Levels

A site’s engagement rate is a good indicator of how well your target audience is interacting with your website. These rates will help you understand, among others, the amount of time that visitors stay on your site and their behavior, interaction, or actions that they complete on your site.

When a site has a high engagement rate, it could mean that people find the content relevant and useful. Analytic reports can help web designers and marketers identify the best-performing pages and use them as a benchmark for enhancing poor performing pages

4. Reducing Exits On Unintended Pages

The other analytic that businesses can use to improve their websites is the exit rate. This is basically a measure of the percentage of web visitors who quit the site when they reach a specific page. Exit rates for certain pages may be higher than others. For instance, pages that lead to affiliate sites will generally experience high exit rates compared to other pages.

However, if a business experiences high exit rates on unintended pages such as product descriptions or landing pages, it could be an indication of a deeper problem. In such a situation, a business should conduct a deeper investigation to identify the issues and fix them through design.

5. Improving Site Loading Speeds

Visitors expect any site they open to load fast. Slow loading speeds frustrate visitors, causing them to leave. This makes website loading speeds a key hindrance to a positive user experience. It also has a negative effect on site engagement and conversion levels.

This makes it critical for businesses to ensure that the pages on their websites load fast. Mobile device users are particularly affected by this problem. This is because they navigate websites while on the move and expect to view the content as soon as they open a site. Aside from that, many businesses also forget to make their pages responsive to smaller screens, further making the browsing experience a negative one.

Analytics on site loading speeds can provide web designers with quick insights on how fast the different pages of a website are loading. It also affords an opportunity to check if the page is compatible with mobile screens. With these statistics, a business can compare the performance of different pages on their sites and improve slow loading pages.

Final Thoughts

It is not enough for businesses to have websites. To remain competitive, they must ensure that the performance of those sites is above par. The only way to enhance website performance is to review and make use of analytics. Where the analytics show poor performance, web designers can identify underlying issues and fix them immediately.