Last year, while giving a speech at a conference, I asked the designers in the audience if they knew the impact their designs had. As I recall, silence was the only answer I got. This didn’t come as a surprise, though.
We often encounter the same silence when we interview for jobs or have random chats with fellow designers. There is a strange belief that a designer’s job is done once the handover is complete – and design success is measured by client satisfaction and praise from other designers.
But is that the kind of success designers should be striving for?
Should the designer brag about how they prepared a visually stunning upsell section or how their design increased the average order value?
The latter sounds much more attractive.
Why Do Designers Avoid Using Analytics?
It usually starts with the fear of the unknown, which doesn’t fit well with design. At the same conference I mentioned earlier, one of the speakers often used “What if” phrases (What if we did that? What would happen?) You see, that kind of curiosity should lead the way in design. And curiosity should conquer fear.
What if I used analytics? Would it make me a better designer? Would I better understand the problems I’m trying to solve?
Most designers never consider the analytical side of design. We all start with aesthetics and never really tap into analytics training. I’ve yet to see a “Become a Design Hero” course that includes a touch of analytics. These courses usually boil down to graphic tools and how to use them.
Opening an analytics interface in later stages is undoubtedly intimidating. I’ve been there. The sheer number of metrics and reports gave me a headache. I remember asking my then-team lead;
“Don’t we have guys doing analytics for us?”
— We do, but if you want to do your job right, you’ll need a basic understanding of analytics and the ability to interpret key metrics. After all, your design should be data-driven. Analytics is sometimes the only data source you’ll have.
No, a Designer Should Not Aspire to Be a Data Scientist
Analytics is truly a discipline unto itself. Things can get complicated and ugly, but it’s okay to back out and ask for help. I’ve done it, and I still do. While I use analytics almost daily, I’ll never say I’m a power user or aspire to be one.
However, learning and actively using analytics has pushed my design process forward and changed the way I approach design, thus enabling me to:
- Prepare designs based on actual behavior
- Back up my assumptions using data
- Reach new ideas/spotting trouble/questioning decisions using data
- Prove the impact of design using data
- Better collaboration with both development and marketing teams
In other words, it became a standard tool in my workflow, like Figma or Adobe Illustrator, and it helped me express my thoughts far more clearly to my team and our clients.
Things are no longer just sleek, great, and minimal.
Checkouts are sleek and converting, CTR is great and growing, the cart is visually minimal while abandonment rates are dropping.
And that’s pretty much the language businesses want to hear. The interface may look nice, but who cares if it doesn’t fulfill its business goals?
So “How Much” Analytics Do Designers Need to Know
Analytics are robust, complex, and sometimes overwhelming. However, designers don’t need to master every aspect of them—only the insights relevant to their work.
The goal is not to become a data scientist but to use analytics effectively to make informed design decisions and offer relevant improvement suggestions.
This naturally depends on what we’re trying to achieve
- Are we optimizing the checkout?
- Are we reducing bounce rates?
- Are we increasing engagement?
Each objective will require a different set of data. Understanding what we’re trying to improve or measure helps us focus only on actionable insights.
Here are the key areas of analytics that eCommerce-focused designers should be comfortable with:
Audiences
Anything related to audiences tells you who your users are, including their age, gender, interests, technology, location, and similar information.
Why it matters
This directly affects your design decisions from the start. For example, if most of your audience is over 50, you probably don’t want a small font size, no matter how sleek it may look.
User Behaviour
User behavior is a broad term in Analytics, as many areas of Analytics revolve around user behavior. However, it is helpful to understand how people navigate key site areas (such as the eCommerce funnel) and where they drop the site.
Why it matters
Instead of searching aimlessly for issues, the shopping funnel and metrics like bounce rates, cart abandonment, and time on the page can give ideas on where people get stuck or how to affect CR. You can spend hundreds of hours optimizing the checkout and never realize the issue may start earlier in the journey.
Custom events
Tracking managers and specialists often set up a set of essential events. These are usually enough to give an overview of the business, but they frequently fall short when we need data for something specific. Custom events are the answer to knowing whether a design is a success or failure.
Why it matters
Design isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about making people do what you want them to do. Setting up custom event tracking will clearly indicate whether users are clicking “the right buttons”—whether they are doing what we expect them to do—and how this affects conversions.
Stepping Outside Analytics for a Level-Up
As designers, we’ll often focus on the visual. But user experience isn’t just about design and appearance. It’s also about how the site works. A visually stunning site means little if customers struggle to navigate it, experience slow load times, or encounter technical issues.
UX is the entire package, including design, functionality, and performance.
Other Tools Designers Can Use for a Holistic UX Analysis
Analytics is a data goldmine, but designers can go beyond it and use other tools that offer deep insights into performance, usability, and technical health.
To name a few:
Hotjar provides heat mapping and session recordings to help us visualize where users click, scroll, and how they navigate throughout their sessions. In addition to these visual tools, it offers options for collecting direct customer feedback through surveys and polls.
PageSpeed Insights analyzes speed and performance, flagging any technical or responsiveness issues. Fixing such issues can dramatically improve user experience.
Google Search Console helps identify broken links, usability issues, and indexing issues that may prevent potential customers from reaching relevant pages.
Alright, Let’s Wrap This Up
Although many tools (such as PageSpeed Insights and GSC) are far beyond the typical scope of design research, integrating them helps designers expand their problem-solving capabilities. Instead of guessing why a design isn’t performing well, these tools offer data-driven insights into real user behavior and technical barriers.
By combining design, performance, and behavioral insights, designers can craft user experiences that are visually appealing, intuitive, fast, and highly functional.
After all, a beautifully designed website is only as effective as its usability, speed, and accessibility.
Want to dive deeper into this topic? Drop us a line—we’re always up for a good chat!
