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Data-Driven Web Design: Make (Only) Smart Design Decisions
Web Design

Data-Driven Web Design: Make (Only) Smart Design Decisions

by Adrian Ababei on Jun 01 2017

It's time you embraced the DATA! That's if you still want a leads-generating website and not just a “pretty painting on a wall”, in an art gallery, that, well, everyone's briefly looking at, but no one's buying! The days of aesthetics' “dictatorship” and of the instincts and personal preferences-based decisions are over. It's time you leveled up and took ONLY smart, data-driven web design decision within your organization!

It's data, cold facts and numbers that will hep you get your website from “just pretty” to “both effective and pretty”. It's data, again, that will speed up the design decisions making within your organization and help you launch your Drupal site on time and on budget. 

It will filter all your options down to those that are numbers-backed-up. Those that you can then leverage for ensuring a hassle-free, enjoyable user experience on your website.

And now, let us point out to you the main questions that you should be asking yourself and the key mindsets that you should adopt once you engage in a data-based website designing process.

1. Which Are The Specific Results That Your Website Should Target?

Do you want to attract more subscribers via your website? Or maybe you want to convert your website visitors into customers? Or you aim, instead, for social media sharing or for the downloading of the materials that you're offering on your website?

In other words: which is your specific conversion goal? The one that you're trying to achieve via your website? It's the answer to this basic question that will make the keystone of your whole web design strategy!

2. Move the Spotlight From Your Business Goals to The User's Tasks

First of all, let's get one aspect straight: you are not your website's target user! Therefore, all the data-driven web design decisions that you will make should target the “real” user's needs, pain points and expectations and not yours, as a company!

Now, speaking of expectations, in web design we prefer to call them “user tasks”. The tasks that your website visitors need to complete (to make a booking, to buy a product, to subscribe to a newsletter, to read blog posts etc.)

Your “job”, as the “entity” behind the “front store”, which is your Drupal site, is to make carrying out these user tasks as effortlessly as possible:

 

  • design with user experience in mind

     
  • stick to the generally-accepted design conventions, thus creating a sense of familiarity

     

And it's precisely on those pages on your site where their tasks and your business goals, as an organization, intersect, that your main sources of conversions will be (let's say subscriptions: they can be both something the users need to do, some filling-in forms tasks, and your objective as the website owner, as well)

3. Set Up Your Data-Collecting Tasks, a Key Step in a Data-Driven Web Design

“OK, OK, I get it; I need to make data-based web decisions only, but how do I collect that usable, key data?” you might ask yourself.

Glad you asked, actually! Here are some examples of tests you could run and to-do tasks you could set up and assign to different members of your Drupal team:

 

  • identify your users' current pain points, determine the causes why you're losing conversions on your website, it's own weak points (run some surveys, rely on your customer service team's gathered feedback from your clients etc.)

     
  • analyze your competitors' own sites, see what works and what doesn't in your own industry

     
  • turn Facebook Audience Insights into a powerful tool for getting to know your users better

     
  • try identifying the reasons why your users won't convert: find what the key differences are between your visitors and your customers

4. Make Empathy-Driven Design Decisions

Welcome everyone on your website! Users with disabilities here included!

Especially since Drupal makes it so simple for you to meet the web accessibility standards. 

Therefore, you have no excuse left for refusing to empathize with your users and, this way, for knowingly refusing to achieve your conversion goal.

 

5. Guarantee Your User a “Painless” Visit 

And by “painless” we actually refer to common-sense design “rules” that are constantly being broken by organizations, on their websites, for the sake of innovation.

Remember: when aesthetics interferes with website usability, it quickly turns into a “trap”! Don't fall into it!

Now here are those “common sense rules” that we were referring to:

 

  • always choose context-sensitive icons with meaning (no need to demand your users to “solve mini-puzzles” for figuring out what action each icon triggers)

     
  • resist the temptation of breaking the tried & true conventions ensuring usability on your website (place your shopping cart, your sing in button, your navigation bar and all the other key elements on your web pages precisely where your visitor's used to finding them)

     
  • always “bid on” high contrast for your written content

     
  • guide them through the steps of their tasks with the help of gestural interactions

 

We're more than sure that these web design conventions are nothing new to you. Nevertheless, what we're trying to point out by enlisting them here is that: you should never compromise usability for the sake of innovation, of breaking the norms!

Serve your users' needs of usability first and impress them later!  

6. Keep Key Information Above the Fold

Although some might argue and feel like going against this convention, keeping the top benefits, the key information above the fold still is a more than relevant “rule”.

You might be thinking that not revealing your products'/services' “luring” benefits from the very beginning builds up suspense, yet you'd better handle your visitors' time with great caution. The more time you ask them to invest in the visit on your website, the fewer your chances to convince them to convert will get.

To sum up: display all your main benefits, your CTA elements and all the other crucial information above the fold. The deeper you'll bury them, the better you'll hide them from your users, “bidding” on suspense, the more frustrated they'll get.

7. Go for an Ideal Number of Choices, A Key Rule in Data-Driven Web Design

And by “ideal” we mean that too many options could get their decisions making process way too cumbersome and challenging. While too few will only confuse your users and make them feel not properly cared for and attended to.

How do you achieve this ideal number of choices? Well, here are some simple tips you can easily put into practice:

 

  • create filters that will help them “swim through” the whole set of options, but make sure you make them as specific as possible and that you add them to the most popular (and therefore the choices-packed ones, too) categories on your site

     
  • opt for simple, straightforward categories

     
  • structure them in a hierarchy by assigning priorities

     

8. Tailor A Personalized Experience for Each One of Your Users

Is there any point in stressing out that we're living in a personalization-dominated digital world?

Users already expect you to “orchestrate” some perfectly tailored experiences for them on your website, so... there's no hiding from this trend anymore.

How do you comply with it while ensuring that all this effort will translate into conversions? Well, by studying your visitors and collecting a whole load of key data regarding their browsing histories on your website, regarding their geolocation, their purchasing histories etc.

Next, you get to leverage all that data for crafting your personalized content (in the format of personalized recommendations) for each one of them.

It's not going to be a quick and easy process, we won't hide this from you, yet a personalized content marketing strategy still remains THE most effective one. If Amazon keeps using personalized content for boosting their sales, then it must be (still) working, right?

 

9.Leverage The Power of Video Content on Your Website

We won't be focusing on this aspect, since we've already dedicated it a two-parts blog post on this site. Using video content on your Drupal site is not even a matter of a “web design trend”, but a data-driven web design decision. It's plain, "cold" data that supports the usage of video content.

10.Use Social Proof For Building Credibility

Testimonials, previous partnering companies' logos, an “impressive” number of sign ups, customer reviews, these all make the type of data that the user, too, collects before he makes his own decision while on your website.

So, make sure you have them all there, displayed and visible enough for your users to easily spot them. This type of social proof is the type of credibility evidences that your users expect to see on your website!

11. Constantly Monitor Your Data and Make The Due Adjustments

So you've launched your website, created based on data-driven web design decisions only. What now? 

Well, now you get back to work and you collect even more data! Site monitoring never ends and designing your website's a continuous process. 

Therefore, always be ready to make some small adjustments here and there if the data you'll collect via GoogleAnalytics, Hotjar or via any other business intelligence tool that you prefer indicates that you should:

 

  • monitor your users' clicks and scroll behavior

     
  • leverage all the information that the heat mapping process delivers you and make the right changes on your Drupal site

     

How about you? Have you already incorporated and turned data into a key component of the web designing processes within your organization?

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It's these common patterns that'll help you distill this huge pile of data and see who the “average user” for your product is.   Stakeholders involved UX design team Deliverables: usability studies user personas user stories Stage 2: Define the Problem That the User Is Having “What are the most important things to understand throughout a UX design process?” The problem that you're trying to solve with your product. And why solving that problem would be beneficial to your business. In other words, how the user’s problem aligns with your business goals. Articulating a clear problem statement is one of the UX design process best practices. Figure out what the user needs (or what problem he's dealing with) and plan out your product as a solution to those needs. For example: It's not a shopping cart that your online store's customers NEED. What they need is an overview of the items they've selected and of their total cost. The shopping cart is the solution to precisely these 2 customer needs.  Here are 4 helpful questions to focus on: What problem do we want to solve? What are our users' needs and why are these particular needs important to them? Are there any existing or anticipated limitations to address? What are the benchmarks for success? Source: uxdesign.cc Stakeholders involved product manager product design team Deliverables: a clear user-need statement that includes: a user, his problem or need, and his goal storyboards customer journey map Stage 3: Do Some UX Competitive Analysis  Who are your competitors? And what approaches have they adopted for their own products? How are they different/better than yours? How well do other software products, with similar features, perform? This is that stage of the process where you run extensive research on: your target market your competitors the latest UX/UI trends Stakeholders involved design team  Deliverables: market research competitor analysis Stage 4: Sketch Out a Wireframe    Another valid answer to your dilemma — “How to approach user experience design” —  is:  You put together a low-fidelity wireframe for your software product. It'll be the link between: your app's/website's visual design and its information architecture And it's also a quick and effective way to get your idea across all the teams involved. At this stage you: brainstorm ideas  explore possible solutions to that user's problem/need that you've identified in stage 2 (and hopefully come up with a better solution than your competition)  explore several ways of displaying different types of content and information identify the content that you need to prioritize, according to how important it is for the user journey No need to invest too much time (and creativity) into something too detailed. Whiteboard photos, pencil sketches on paper will do since at this point you'll be focusing exclusively on: the main functionality the user experience … on every screen Stakeholders involved design team Deliverables: user flows hand-drawn sketches wireframes sitemap lots and lots of sticky notes with ideas written on, that you can sort by hierarchy and group by theme Stage 5: Create a Prototype Another one of the UX design process best practices to follow. That's because you'll want to have a draft version of your product that users could test before you do any coding. The great thing about prototypes is that they simulate the real experience — you touch the “Next” button and it takes you to the next screen— so that testers can have a real feel of how the real app will function. They get to experience its design in... real-time. Stakeholders involved design team Deliverables: paper prototype design images icons design specifications such as colors, typography, theme, guidelines, styles low-fidelity prototype high-fidelity prototype interactive prototype Stage 6: Have It Tested by Real Users  How to approach user experience design? You collect as much feedback as possible on your product prototype. And here are 3 battle-tested methods: usability testing remote user testing A/B testing And you sure don't run short of means to make the most of user testing: from simple observations to surveys to questionnaires  to interviews … there are “n” ways to get your valuable feedback from real users. Deliverables: user feedback usability report analytics report audit reports on the prototype's UI lists of areas that need improvement (or features that should be removed/replaced) Stage 7: Develop and Launch Time to bring the developers in! Now it's their time to shine. To implement the designs and: structure the database build the server build the back end functionality tie the back-end to the UI  One of the UX design process best practices to follow here is having the design team... stick around. They might need to intervene and make small tweaks to their design or simply to communicate any issues that arise while developers are implementing it. Stakeholders involved development team design team Deliverables:  a high fidelity version of the user interface with functionality and user experience baked in Stage 8: Evaluate  Time for a new round of... analysis. And here are a couple of questions to guide your evaluation process: How do users respond to our product? Do they find it easy to use? Where does it get it right, in terms of user experience, and where does it... fail? Does it manage to solve their problems/meet their needs? Stakeholders product manager design team Deliverables: new feature ideas that might need to get implemented lists of issues reported Final Word: The UX Design Process Comes Down to Learn.Think. Make So, to give you a final answer to your question — “How to approach user experience design?”: Many of the stages included in our process are debatable and perfectly... optional (i.e. you might feel like skipping the wireframing part if you have a solid design system set in place). Feel free to swap stages in and out and to adjust the process to your own business, your teams, and your specific project requirements. What you should not consider as optional is the 9th step in designing the user experience that I haven't included here: The UX design process is an... ongoing one. You'll need to constantly improve and to polish your designs to fit new circumstances, new contexts, future user challenges... No UX experts in your team to hand over all these tasks to? We're here to help! Just drop us a line and let's design the best user experience for your app/website. Image by William Iven from Pixabay ... Read more
Adriana Cacoveanu / Aug 24'2020

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(416) 243-2431

Toronto Downtown

First Canadian Place,
100 King St. W. Suite 5700, Toronto

Toronto West

2275 Upper Middle
Rd. E, Suite 101
Toronto

New York

1177 Avenue of the
Americas, 5th Floor,
New York