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As the web becomes more interactive, being brought to life through a variety of mobile, touch-screen, VR, and other types of engaging devices, the User Experience (UX) of visitors is becoming an increasingly important area of focus for designers. In order to best assess the UX of any web designs, designers should work with a User Experience Analyst (UXA.) During the design or redesign process, designers who work with UXAs can best judge how visitors perceive their content and site structure. It is the UXA’s job to analyze any web design project for efficiency, structure and layout errors, and engagement potential. UX Analysts will search for areas of the design that can draw the user’s interest and areas that can use improvement. Working together, designers and UXAs can build remarkable projects.
Site Structure
While designers are responsible for drawing up and organizing the structure of a website or app, UXAs should be consulted to make sure the design conforms to known patterns of success across web templates. UXAs refer to research on user attention and focus, often citing studies that follow eye-tracking and clicking habits of users across thousands of websites. By working with a UXA, any designer can ensure they are making the most logical choices for component and element placement on their site or app.
Market Research
Most UXAs will provide the designer with market research tailored to their specific project type and niche. For example, if you’re designing a mobile game for a specific age group and wish to display in-game ads, a UXA can find or perform studies to see where the ad’s exit button will be least likely to be dismissively pressed, increasing your ad’s click-through rates.
If you are building a website, the UXA you’re working with can check your usage of whitespace and image placement to make sure users are seeing the best content first. UXAs will also look over other details that affect your visitors from the speed of your WordPress hosting, to the intuitiveness of your menus. By performing market research, or relying on trustworthy studies, UXAs can apply statistics to your design to help you find the best placement for each type of content. This research is often conducted using on-site eye-tracking equipment or emailed, paid surveys from large groups of users.
Navigation Testing
Designers and UXAs can build stunning, powerful websites together since they will have the combined expertise of artistic design skills and statistical user-behavior data. One of the most important aspects of any web design project to collaborate on is the navigation menu. This is especially true if you’re using creative navbars that float with your scrolling or are situation to the side or bottom of your site. Mobile app designs will benefit greatly from this type of collaboration as well. Navigation menus should be tested by a UXA once designed to check for ease of use and to eliminate any confusing or erroneous features.
User Experience Analysis Reports
If you’re a designer with an existing site and want to know more about how your users are likely to interact with your content, then you can hire a UXA to complete a User Experience Analysis Report. This report will include details regarding the length of time visitors stay on your site, what areas their eyes focus on, how much of your textual content is read or retained, and what users think of your content and images. This type of report can help you redesign areas of your site which aren’t meeting your goals, often leading to dramatic increases in your design’s efficiency.
Measuring Results
Once your designs have been analyzed by a UXA and you have implemented the recommended changes, it’s time to measure your results. This is one way to ensure the UXA report was accurate and that you’re making smart changes to your site or app. The best way to do this is to install a metrics-measuring system on your web host that counts user visitors, length of visitor stay and other factors regarding your visitor’s behavior. If you have WordPress hosting then you may be able to use your host’s visitor tracking software, or install a third-party tracker plugin such as Visitor’s Traffic; Real Time Statistics or JetPack Performance Tester. After installing a visitor counter with in-depth statistical reports, you can watch your traffic grow and your visitor’s behavior change in positive ways.
Web designers and UXAs can work together to build some of the most remarkable projects on the web. By combining the artistic skills and eye for design that web designers have with the testing abilities and statistical knowledge of a UXA, you can be certain your web project will be both; visually stunning and effective. Consider using the services of a UXA during your design process or for a redesign if you’re not getting the results you want on existing web design projects.