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Discover how to fuel your creativity with the wisdom of insight from Google Analytics, and unlock the true potential of your web design talent. Digital marketing specialist Iain Harper shows us how.
Understanding develops from objective insight, and when it comes to online customer behaviour Google Analytics is an invaluable source. Here are five essential insights that every web designer can learn from:
From the moment someone reaches a website, the design has maybe two
seconds to make a first impression, and first impressions count. Turn
them on with the promise of an easy and enjoyable experience and they'll
stay for more. Bore them, irritate them, or make it look like hard
work, and they'll be gone forever.
The homepage of a site is important in all sorts of ways, but it's a big
mistake to think of it as the starting point for every customer
experience. Typically, less than 40 per cent of visitors enter a website
at the home page, so optimising the engagement value of all the other
major landing pages is essential.
If your design doesn't help a website achieve its commercial purpose
then, not only will the business suffer, your reputation will take a
battering too. It's in your interests to create a customer journey from
landing to conversion that's as streamlined, intuitive and pleasurable
as possible.
Think about the last site you designed. How many people visited it from a
mobile device? How did their experience and performance compare to
desk-bound visitors?
Making comparisons between different kinds of visitor is perhaps the
most powerful feature of Google Analytics. It's the art of
"segmentation" and it can guide your creativity like nothing else.
Analysing data is unfamiliar territory for most web designers, but for
those that can expand their comfort-zone to learn new skills and gain a
more objective perspective on how their designs are consumed, the
professional dividends can be enormous.
Discover how to fuel your creativity with the wisdom of insight from Google Analytics, and unlock the true potential of your web design talent. Digital marketing specialist Iain Harper shows us how.
Designers are born, not made, but it takes more than raw talent to make a
great web designer. What really sorts the wheat from the chaff is an
intuitive understanding of how to craft an engaging and usable
experience. It's seeing the big picture, having the ability to think
like a customer (yes, 'customer' not 'user'), and always remembering
that a website must fulfil its commercial purpose.
Understanding develops from objective insight, and when it comes to online customer behaviour Google Analytics is an invaluable source. Here are five essential insights that every web designer can learn from:
1. Turn me on
From the moment someone reaches a website, the design has maybe two
seconds to make a first impression, and first impressions count. Turn
them on with the promise of an easy and enjoyable experience and they'll
stay for more. Bore them, irritate them, or make it look like hard
work, and they'll be gone forever.
The "Bounce Rate" metric in Google Analytics (Content>Site
Content>Pages) is a fundamental barometer of first impressions. It
tells you how many people left a page without clicking on a single link.
A high bounce rate means the design (and/or the content) is failing to
engage. Look at the bounce for all the important pages in a site and
figure out which ones need improving. Test different styles and monitor
the change.
Check out Content>In-Page Analytics for a visual overlay of how people are interacting with a site design.
The consistent above-the-fold elements are crucial in triggering
positive engagement. The header, main navigation, and whatever appears
in the top-left of the page, have the most impact. Make them count.
Design with flair and originality, but keep things familiar.
2. Happy landings
The homepage of a site is important in all sorts of ways, but it's a big
mistake to think of it as the starting point for every customer
experience. Typically, less than 40 per cent of visitors enter a website
at the home page, so optimising the engagement value of all the other
major landing pages is essential.
Any page could be a landing page, not just those at the top-level of a
site's navigation or those created specifically for individual
campaigns.
To find out which pages are the priority using Google Analytics, look
under Content>Site Content>Landing Pages and compare volume of
visits, time on site and bounce rate to identify what's working and
what's not. Think objectively about how the design of high-performing
pages is different from those that are struggling. Test and refine your
theories.
3. The bottom line
If your design doesn't help a website achieve its commercial purpose
then, not only will the business suffer, your reputation will take a
battering too. It's in your interests to create a customer journey from
landing to conversion that's as streamlined, intuitive and pleasurable
as possible.
Whether a site is selling products, generating leads, taking bookings,
or offering downloads, the optimisation of conversion is your top
priority. From a visual design perspective, less can often be more.
Google Analytics provides two kinds of insight into commercial
performance under the "Conversions" tab. "Goals" are non-financial
objectives like the completion of an enquiry form. "Ecommerce"
conversions relate to actually selling stuff.
Focus on the top "funnels" for goals and ecommerce transactions and
look for the exceptions. Which pages, which stages of the journey, are
working especially well or especially badly. Where are customers
dropping-out of the funnel? Learn from the successful pages to improve
the others.
4. Equal opportunities
Think about the last site you designed. How many people visited it from a
mobile device? How did their experience and performance compare to
desk-bound visitors?
Look under Visitors>Mobile>Devices in Google Analytics and all will become clear.
You'll probably discover that well over 10 per cent of visits were via
smartphones and tablets. That's a hefty (and rapidly-growing) proportion
of mobile consumption and your design work needs to account for it.
Remind yourself of the average bounce rate, time on the site and the
number of pages viewed per visit. Then compare with the data for mobile
visitors. You may be surprised by what you find.
It's also important not to think of "mobile" as a single generic
medium. Look at the differences in performance between iPad and iPhone
users. You'll almost certainly see that iPad visits last longer, view
more pages, and bounce less.
If you're involved with App design (or want to be), this kind of insight will be really useful.
5. Divide and conquer
Making comparisons between different kinds of visitor is perhaps the
most powerful feature of Google Analytics. It's the art of
"segmentation" and it can guide your creativity like nothing else.
As well as mobile visitors, segmentation let's you compare things like
new vs returning visitors and organic search vs referrals from other
sites. They're all important, but where segmentation can get really
clever is with "Custom Segments".
Reports in Google Analytics can be filtered by up to four segments at
once. Click the "Advanced Segments" button at the top of any report,
then the "New Custom Segment" button on the right.
For example, you might want to investigate the landing page interaction
of visitors coming from Facebook and other social channels vs those
coming from search. You could define a custom segment for social network
referrals and then filter the landing page reports to get a better
understanding of visitor behavior.
Conclusion
Analysing data is unfamiliar territory for most web designers, but for
those that can expand their comfort-zone to learn new skills and gain a
more objective perspective on how their designs are consumed, the
professional dividends can be enormous.
Make sure you can get access to the Google Analytics on all the sites
you work with. Absorb all you can. Spot the trends and the exceptions.
Study the step-by-step video lessons
provided by Google and take the "Individual Qualification" exam for
official certification of your new-found expertise (which looks good on
your CV too).
This was actually what I was looking for, and I am glad to came here!
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