Neglecting to continuously improve your user experience (UX) is a huge mistake for your business. Potential customers will eventually make their way to your website, and the last thing you want is for them to leave without taking action. That’s where UX comes into play.

A high-level UX is influential in a potential customer becoming an actual customer. But how do you create the best UX for your customers? Data, of course. Customer data can be instrumental when making decisions about UX design. However, you must be intentional and strategic about what customer data you collect and use during UX decision-making.

UX designers and business leaders can determine the most insightful customer data connected to UX design and decision-making by taking the following steps.

How to Determine the Most Useful Customer Data for Bettering UX 

The most useful customer data for bettering UX is unique to each business. In other words, it depends on your customers and what they need to thoroughly enjoy your website.

The following steps can help you determine the most valuable, helpful, and insightful customer data to enhance your UX design and decision-making for your unique customer base.

Understand How Customers Move Through Your Site

First, look at the entire customer journey on your site. What do people do when they first get there? Do they visit other pages before going to the purchase page? What are their most common behaviors on each page? How do they navigate the buying process?

Understanding the customer journey helps you pinpoint where your UX design may be lacking. You can then compile a list of touch points worth taking an extra look at to improve your UX.

Also, examine where customers leave your site and engage the least.

To learn more about heatmapping tools that can help you identify your users’ journey, check out our article “6 Heatmap Software Tools to Boost Your Conversions.”

Examine Where People Are Leaving Your Site and Engaging the Least

Take a deeper look at where people are leaving your site. Examine where they engage the least, too. Doing so will narrow down where to focus to improve your UX design. It will also help you figure out what you need to look at in your customers that will explain why they’re leaving your site and not engaging with specific parts of it.

Next, define what you want to learn about your UX design.

Define What You Want to Learn

Yes, you want to learn how to create a better UX design for your customers. But what specifics about your UX design must you understand to do that? Document questions you want to be answered about your UX design, so you have a clear path forward.

For example, don’t use general questions like “Why are customers leaving my website?” Instead, aim for straightforward questions like “Why are customers dropping out of the purchasing process?” or “Why does my product page have the least engagement?”

Defining exactly what you want to learn is one of the seven steps of the decision-making process, and will help you narrow down the most critical data to collect.

Armed with your precise UX questions, the last step is figuring out what you need to look at to get answers.

Figure Out What You Need to Look At to Answer Your UX Questions

For every question you have about your UX design, customer behaviors help you answer them. Collecting data on customer behaviors that speak to the questions you have about your UX design is crucial.

For example, let’s say you want to know why your abandoned cart rate is so high. In that case, you should collect data on where customers drop off in the purchasing process. You may find that it’s the shipping page. The additional charges may be too high, causing your customers to leave.

It’s all about collecting and analyzing the right data, so you can identify the most productive improvements to make to create a more enjoyable user experience.

Customer Data Especially Useful During UX Decision-Making 

Of course, you must choose customer data unique to your specific UX questions. If you aren’t sure where to start, look at these customer data points to guide you to the next steps in your efforts to improve your UX design.

User Testing Data

User testing is typically done at the beginning of your UX design process. Before you make UX design ideas permanent, you run them by a group of test users to see if they find them efficient and valuable. Moving forward with certain ideas may be a good move if they do.

Conducting user interviews and focus groups is the best way to collect user testing data. Select groups and individual users that fit your ideal customer base. Then, ask them to answer specific questions about your UX ideas to determine their worthiness.

Survey feedback is also excellent customer data to dip into for better UX.

Survey Feedback

Surveys are fantastic for discovering what your customers think about your UX design. You can ask questions about a specific component in your UX, or you can ask open-ended questions about your customers’ overall experiences on your site.

Whatever you want to know about your UX, you can put it in a survey and distribute it to your customers. Ask that they are thoroughly honest in their responses and give them an incentive to do so. You can then implement their feedback suggestions for a better UX.

In addition, on-site metrics can be beneficial during UX decision-making.

On-Site Metrics

On-site metrics measure how your visitors engage and interact on your website. Conversion rate, top exit pages, session duration, average time on page, bounce rate, and number of visitors are all on-site metrics that can give you insight into how well-designed your UX is.

For example, visitors may be exiting different pages because of specific UX design issues. Or maybe the number of visitors is declining each day because people can’t find what they’re looking for when they need it.

Look at your on-site metrics to see what they reveal about your UX design.

Lean into customer retention data as well.

Customer Retention Data

Customer retention data is critical during UX decision-making because the ultimate goal is to turn first-time purchasers into returning customers. So, suppose you can determine what about your website’s UX design inspires customers to return repeatedly. In that case, you can optimize these things to provide an even better experience.

Finally, collect and analyze data on how satisfied your customers are with your products.

Product Satisfaction

It’s one thing to get customers to make a purchase. It’s another thing to ensure they’re satisfied with it. When customers are happy with their product, it can indicate good things about your UX.

For instance, if a customer keeps their product, it can indicate that the product was described accurately on the purchase page, and they got exactly what they wanted. On the other hand, if they return it, it could mean your product description was off.

Study your sales and returns. Read the reviews customers leave about your products, and use what you learn to connect product satisfaction to your UX.

Conclusion 

There’s nothing easy about determining which customer data is most useful during UX decision-making. However, the above steps can make the process more manageable and productive.

If you’re having trouble optimizing your user experience for your audience, the team at Lform Design is here to help! Just reach out to us on our contact page, and we’ll be happy to meet and look into ways we can optimize your customers’ online experiences.