5 WAYS TO IMPROVE UI/UX DESIGN BY GOOGLE ANALYTICS
- Google Analytics is one of the most well-known marketing analytics tools out there — and not because its standard variant is free. In excess of a millions companies worldwide utilize this platform to increase better insights on users and increase the experiences of clients on their sites.
- It’s simple to expect that a web developer’s work stops at planning, designing a web site, but it goes more profound than that after you figure user experience into the conversation.
- Google Analytics is indeed a primarily utilized for market research, but who says you can’t keep track of statistics for an idea on how it can help on your UI/UX Design?
- Keep in mind that conversation rates are the biggest need for any site. And you can’t have good conversation rates when your clients do not have extraordinary experience whereas connection between user and website through various sources like phone or through the desktop computer.
- Which means a UX designer must be curious about knowing what users are doing on the site. You wish to know where your audience of people is coming from, how long they stick around, and how you can make sure to convert them.
How can Google Analytics metrics help with improving UX?
Or it may looks like this, with the analytics.js implementation:
Whereas there’s as of now numerous information focuses made accessible with this essential execution, they end up missing out on other key features. Due to the need of accessible data to consult, to there have been cases where web engineers or designers select to remove a particular highlight on the website, without realizing that most users utilize that features regularly.
Thus, here are five of the foremost vital features in Google Analytics merely can utilize to improve user experience — and isolated you from the rest of the web engineers and architects out there:
1. USE EVENTS TRACKING CODE TO IDENTIFY USER INTERACTIONS ON SPECIFIC PAGE OF YOUR WEBSITE
As stated above, the fundamental google analytics code can only tracks pageviews by default. If the event that you need to track activities on your site, such as button clicks, form submissions, or any sections that is interactable to user. You will be need to fire a separate Google Analytics event. These events can be executed by including the code in those specific pages with Event Category, Actions, and Label information:
Coding Layout for UI/UX Designers:
Coding Layout for UI/UX Designers:
As best practice, you’ll be able to utilize Events Category to gather group events based on a particular function (ex. Page Engagement, eCommerce, etc). In the meantime, you can use event actions to identify the accurate activity that the user made like (Clicks, Scroll, Form Submissions). Additionally, you can use event labels to get the URL where the event was fired.
Alternatively, a much better or stronger way to implement these events would be to utilize Google Tag Manager instead. In lieu of actual Google Analytics code, you will need to add Google Tag Manager code instead:
At this point, once Google Tag Manager is set up, all you need s to setup Google Analytics Pageview Tag and the event labels you wish to add. Essentially, create a new tag by simply clicking the “New” button, then click on Tag confirmation, and Google Analytics will be one of the default choices available
Once you are complete with the Tag Configuration details. You’ll just need to setup the best triggers to fire the event. There are already built-in triggers such as clicks on Google Tag Manager. You can just select the one that is most suitable for your requirement.
Most important, don’t forget to test the tag in Google Tag Manager preview mode, then click publish once the setup is complete.
2. USERS SCROLL DOWN TRACKING
Apart from tracking clicks and other events, Google Analytics can also be used for scroll tracking. How it can be done?
This is very simple and can be done by adding the Google Analytics event code to fire once a specific element that appears in viewport. You can even set the code to fire if the user has scrolled a specific percentage of the page.
Alternatively, Google Tag Manager, scroll tracking can be implemented much easier by using the Scroll Depth trigger. For more triggers and options.
So, you must be wondering, how this feature will help you in terms of user experience?
For starters, this clearly can assist you to decide up to what portion of the page are user willing to scroll down. Since that data is in Google Analytics, you can segment that data based on device or browser, time of day, location, etc.
That way, in case you’re choosing whether you will be able to put specific widget for a specific kind of user, you have got some data to back up your choice.
3. HOW LONG DO USERS STAY ON YOUR WEBSITE?
There is one thing to get insights and learn where users scroll; finding out how much time they spend on the location is another. Gratefully conceivable to measure with Google Analytics.
In Google Analytics pageview tag, you can already get a metric of users called average session duration but sometime this metrics can be inaccurate. After all, Google Analytics truly as it were measures Avg. Session Term based on the timestamps of the data (hits) that it receives.
So how would you get around this limitation? By terminating timing hits. These can help precisely calculate the sum of time a client spends on a page without recording another pageview or event. You just need to send the timing hits by applying this code to fire at particular interims on your website:
A more point by point description of each field is accessible on the Google Developers’ site.
Once executed, these hits will be obvious within the Behavior > Site Speed > User Timings in Google Analytics.
You can also create custom events that fire at specific intervals instead. Like other regular events, these would then be visible in the Behavior > Events > Top Events section. however: make sure to add a “timeout” of sorts for them. That way these hits won’t continuously fire — and the data sent to Google Analytics — for too long, if the page was just left open on an unattended browser.
4. IDENTIFY CONVERSION PAIN POINT AND USER BEHAVIOR FLOW
Behavior flow reports show you a user’s travel from the minute they arrive on an online site right up to the time when they exit. It’s a great solution if you’re finding trouble in visualizing data.
This report is valuable in making a difference when you select particular pages and looking at next few pages that people go to. People you should be on the look-out for include the ones:
- Clicking back and forward between pages
- User that visit pages that you don’t expect
- Leave site in large numbers
This specific report is valuable to:
- Analyze how users carry on at a specific point of your flow
- See what happens instantly before/after users take a specific step or visit a specific page
- Investigate the exact grouping that users perform distinctive interactions
- Isolate whether users are taking any precise sequence to perform different interactions
- Determine which steps in your situation fail most frequently (when the users don’t behave as you intended to be)
By thoroughly analyzing the behavior flow, designers can optimize a user’s journey to produce logical, significant, and easy steps to encourage them towards conversions.
5. KINDS OF BEHAVIOR THAT LEAD TO CONVERSIONS
Suppose a day, an employer / Storeowner / Client wanted to achieve a goal/objective through his website. This may be as different an offering your company product online, lead generation, or creating an awareness.
That’s where the genuine quality of Google Analytics lies. By collecting information based on a combination of pageviews and diverse events, you’ll be able get more in-depth experiences into what users really do on your site. In expansion, you’ll confine particular key activities as conversions on your website by making goals.
To do so, simply go to Admin > Goals, and then click New Goal. You can then choose from a template or set up a custom goal based on a destination ‘pageview of a specific page), events, duration, or even a number of pageviews.
Once you’ve set up your goals, you can then utilize Google Analytics sections to analyze the activities that users with conversions have, versus those who did not convert. Typically, accessible by default — simply select the Converters or the Non-Converters segments to apply on your reports
Designing based on guesswork is not the way to go for any web developer looking to improve user experience. You need to follow a data-based process to construct the perfect bridge between meeting business goals and users’ expectations.
Google Analytics is a extraordinary tool for measuring performance for a website, but as a UX designer, you need to know which metrics to focus on to gather insights and make decisions based on facts and not presumptions.
To know more about Google Analytics, you can check out these official Google resources: