Authentic Means of Computing UX Design
If you were awed by the spate of visitors to your site, but baffled by the lack of sales conversions, this post will enlighten your assessment on the same, albeit from a different point of view! Here, we take a peek at this phenomenon from the marketing perspective as well as the UX metrics. Though a high volume of traffic is the desired effect, conversion is where the pie is. Read on to get your cash registers rolling!
User experience is important but so are a host of related tools that have a huge impact on how to generate online revenue. It is not just about driving traffic but also about driving conversions. You could say that UX Design – is about creating the ultimate user experience along with metrics, data, navigation, etc. so that anyone who has medium to low experience can use the website fully without being confused about how to get what you want. Usability is just one of the aspects of UX Design as demonstrated by the UX iceberg.
Definitive Blunders While Accumulating Metrics
Marketing managers have a definitive largesse for numbers, so make sure you don’t get carried away by your figures. Avoid cramming up too much of data and at the same time make sure that whatever data used is reliable. Be sure too that you do not go by unreliable sample size for evaluation- they can be far from the truth if you do not consider the selection metrics, composition and history factors.
Evaluate your UX Metrics with Authenticity
Through Authentic Means of Computing UX metrics you can evaluate the performance of a product in combination with marketing metrics. Sometimes marketing professionals concentrate too much on the numbers that are visiting the website. However, it will be rather difficult to evaluate the value of visitors who might not make a purchase. Instead, if you can clock satisfaction with the way the entire website functions – along with the team behind the scenes comprising of customer care, sales and management then it is saying a lot about how conversions are not just dependent on the website.
You need to fully understand how users are interacting with your website. Do they leave comments, do they make inquiries, or do they click on items they would like to purchase? Conducting user surveyors is a good way to understand how a potential customer thinks and why they don’t make purchases. Therefore, marketing metrics along with user experience metrics could demonstrate how you need to design the website to make the conversions.
Two faces of the same coin!
Online marketing metrics and UX metrics are two faces of the same coin. They might be conjoined but each face of the coin depicts a different image and therefore they also mean different things to the user. Marketing metrics could measure the success of your business but UX metrics don’t really demonstrate the same especially if you undertake to study it using internal and external metrics.
Ever thought of driving UX metrics externally?
While it is easy to understand why it’s important not to scrimp on UX design so that it enhances usability, but the experience the user has on the website could be a direct consequence of some external metrics like customer support.
Customer Support can give you numbers about the kind or queries they get about the website and also give you a fairly clear idea about how many or how few people are making inquiries from them. It just needs a good open communication channel between all departments of the business to get these external metrics. If you have made changes to your website, product or service, there will be increased phone calls or emails to customer support. What you need to study is the trend after the initial few weeks of making the change. Are the numbers the same or have their increased or decreased or are customers making inquiries at a steady flow after the initial change.
Online problem-solving in a jiffy
If you have an online store it is natural you would like to deal with customers online without having them visit your physical office. So, is your website designed in such a way that customers can easily get the answers to queries and complaints online? Are you able to solve their problems through the website in the shortest possible time? If so, you have created a good user experience instead of having your offsite site face the fury of irate users.
And then some internal metrics too
Filling out online forms is not a ‘liked’ activity for most internet users. Build a form that is easy to understand and which has only essentials. If you have complicated forms before the purchase can be made you’ll kill conversions. Measure the time visitors use to fill forms or to quit out of frustration. Perhaps an auto-fill setting, which quickly completes the form, could work towards better conversions. While filling out forms how many error messages do customers get which could frustrate them- and hasten them to leave rather than make corrections!
The use of the back button also demonstrates how easy or not easy it is for visitors to browse your website. If people are using the back button where they shouldn’t be, it means your design needs tweaking so the visitors can move forward as required through the site. Try to take a user survey to find out why the back button is being used frequently by almost all visitors. The search bar can equally demonstrate that visitors are not getting what they are looking for from the menu navigation.
Split pages and navigation? Become responsive!
Do you have content on your website that has split into different pages? This is not a happy situation for the user, especially when using mobiles. Visitors lose interest after reading a couple of pages and you could find them turning away if they don’t find what they are looking for. It is a good idea to have the scroll option so they immediately see what the website has on offer.
Make optimal use of analytics
Let your analytics show how visitors move around on your website. Are they using links or search? The ratio between navigation and search usage also point toward which pages are user-friendly and which you need to improve for a better experience.
The success of the changes you make to the website will be immediately demonstrated if visitors who made purchases are more than the visitors who quit. These are the conversion figures that give you the best indication. Another way to measure your conversions without UX metrics is to calculate the average cost per visitor as you will be using content marketing and advertising also.
Authentic means of computing UX is a constant process that changes according to the ratios you get and not direct conversion numbers through UX metrics. Much goes into creating a UX design besides UX metrics including external factors and not just mere numbers
Why it’s important not to scrimp on UX Design in today’s scenario is a cardinal sin and is seldom realized by most marketing professionals who tend to leave this aspect to the techies. This post has probably sated your appetite on user experience or UX centric metrics! This will probably help you too, to stay ahead of your rivals in the same space. You may come back here periodically to remain abreast, nay ahead, in this wildly competitive arena!