User research uses various methods to identify pain points experienced by your current customers regarding your existing website design. The goal is to incorporate the findings to create a website design that addresses the needs and wants of your customers and improve the performance of your website by filling the identified gaps.
But, why does the website of your business needs to perform user research?
Let’s uncover the three good reasons why user research is essential for your brand.
Creating relevant designs for your website
User research places people at the heart of your designs, products, or systems. As mentioned before, user research utilises various methods, such as quantitative and qualitative research, to seek in-depth data of what is doing good or could be improved at your current design. The data that you get then can be used to create relevant designs for your website.
You may wonder how is that possible.
It is because when you understand users, be it for your website, system, or product, you can come up with designs that are relevant for your users.
The data and results you receive from user research will help you understand user behaviours. As a result, you can make informed decisions based on data—not just your understanding alone.
An easy to navigate website with an enjoyable user experience
Users and potential users expect your website to be easy to use or learn and provide a pleasant user experience. If the user experience is not satisfactory, chances are users will look for alternatives, like your competitors.
But, how do you achieve this goal? You need your website design to be accessible and developed from unbiased experience. And user research comes in handy for this goal.
Designing a website with user research as its basis will prevent confirmation bias from happening.
For example, you want to revamp the website for your cryptocurrency media. Your website designers and developers are fantastic, yet they never work on a cryptocurrency website previously. User research can help you with the revamp that will create an enjoyable user experience for your website.
That is possible because the basis of the revamped design is not on their experiences—it is what your users would love to see.
User experience brings Return on Investment (ROI)
Good design brings Return on Investment (ROI). Well-planned designs help the growth of business with things, such as generating more sales or acquiring more significant numbers of leads, making your investment in creating good design worth it.
Need proof?
A report titled The Business Value of Design from McKinsey & Company shows that good user experience and designs can reward a business with 10% annual growth compared to 3-6% of the industry.
That is why if your business is wondering why:
- Your newsletter subscription is low
- E-commerce checkout abandonment is high
- A specific call-to-action button is doing better than the others
- Chatbot receives negative feedback
Then, performing user research can help you answer that question.
User research can identify the pain points of your current website, products, or services. Addressing those pain points are vital in giving a pleasant experience for your customers.
The key takeaways
User research helps your business in these ways:
- Put the users as the most important thing during design decision so that you can create relevant designs for your users
- Seeing things from their perspective, helping you to create a more user-centric website, leading to an easy to use website
- Enjoyable user experience leads to a higher likelihood of converting potential customers into your customers and maintaining brand loyalty for your existing customers
