User Research, UX research These are two ways of saying the same thing: research into a user's experience on our website. That is, their behavior, their motivations, and their needs.
When we want to increase the conversion of a website, research into the user experience is essential, User Research is a key factor for success. Thanks to this research, we will get to know our users better, we will discover what they expect from our website and we will be able to adapt the navigation, texts and structure to what the user is expecting. This is especially critical in e-commerce.
The conversion rate for a business with products worth between €1 and €100 should be around 3%, for products between €100 and €500 between 1% and 3%. For products over €500 it is usually around 0.5%. If this is not the case for your e-commerce and you are above, congratulations! You did it! I am really happy! I have clients with 8% and 9% conversion rates, I know it can be done. If you are below, you should do some research on user experience, you should learn more about user research you are in the right place.
How can you investigate the behavior of your users? That is,
How to do user research?
These are the main techniques:
Eyetracking: consists of tracking the user's gaze and seeing what they read, what they don't read, what they focus on, what they click on, what word makes them decide to continue reading or click the button to add the product to the shopping cart, etc.
You will find more articles I have written about Eyetracking here: Eyetracking.
A/B Testing: It consists of making several copies of different pages of your website and testing which of them converts more users. Google has a tool to carry out this type of tests called Google Optimizer and it's free. It used to be called Google Experiments, so you may have heard of it.
Cart sorting: This technique is used to test the best information architecture for a website. It consists of testing a group of users by giving them a series of cards with the products you want to sell or the different sections of your website. They must group them by category and give the category a name… you are shocked when you see the differences between your way of organizing things and theirs… This technique will help you define the structure of the website, decide what you will put on the home page and how you should label the navigation categories of your website and those of your products.
You can also do focus groups …but it is expensive and the results are not the most reliable…
There is a technique that I always explain in class and that is very funny to the students, but that is as real as life itself and that I have used many times: Using your mother as a beta tester.
Yes, as you heard. Your mother will always tell you the truth, she is not a heavy internet user but she knows how to navigate and since she uses Whatsapp and has registered on Facebook, there is no one who can stop her. If your mother does not understand what your website is about… your website is wrong. If your mother cannot find your contact information… your website is wrong. If your mother cannot make a purchase or subscribe to your newsletter, your website is wrong. And do not forget to let your mother try the mobile version of your website… if she does not understand it, then it is wrong. On a mobile version it is not enough to go through the Google test, you need to pass the “mom beta tester” test. I’m telling you this with a very serious face. Trust me… you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble.
When should you apply user research?
You can do this during all 3 stages of website creation.
- During the preliminary investigation: he cart sorting It is ideal to start with.
- Research in the process: the mockups of the website can be tested with eyetracking and thus only the versions that have been best understood by the user go into production.
- Real user research: When the website is already online, you can make eyetracking and you can do A/B testing…or as I said… you let your mother try it.
What are the differences between User Research and Usability?
They are two sides of the same coin: user research It's about analyzing the user, usability, it's about analyzing the website to see if we can get users to do what we want them to do.
I hope this article has been useful and now you know a little more about What is user research and what is it for?If you have conversion problems, contact me and we will analyze together how we can help you from Alpha Quadrant.
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