User Research Definition
User research is useful for businesses because it gives them a complete picture of the impact a design has on their target audience. Understanding the impact of your design allows you to narrow down the user personas and design options for your interface. Once you’ve identified the design your company wants, you can move on to the next phase of building your website and mobile app.
In this article, we outline what user research is, why it’s important, and how to do user research.
Contents
1 What is User Research?
2 Advantages of User Research
2.1 Comparing qualitative and quantitative data
2.2 Consolidating time for design
2.3 Streamlining the evaluation process of previous designs
3 Lack of User Research
3.1 This is not a product review
3.2 This is not a strategy
4 How to do user research?
4.1 1. Identify KPIs that show your design is successful
4.2 2. Selecting and conducting quantitative and qualitative research methods
4.3 3. Compare results with different designs
4.4 4. Select the design you want to continue
What is User Research?
User research or user research is a collection of data related to customer behavior, demand, market analysis, and motivation to buy a product. It also provides a different way that audiences give to the companies they buy from.
User research is generally done by user experience (UX) to find the best designs for their clients’ websites or smartphone applications. Some methods for conducting research include surveys, focus groups, and interviews to record the return on investment (ROI ) on designs you release to the public.
Advantages of User Research
The data received from user research offers a glimpse into the perspective of your target audience. Here are some benefits that outline the importance of user research:
Comparing qualitative and quantitative data
User research applies the methods used in qualitative and quantitative research to assess the quality of research. Qualitative research consists of collecting non-numeric data covering practices such as creating user personas, working with different scenarios and content analysis, whereas quantitative data highlights the numbers behind design impacts such as increased organic traffic and social media traffic. of a design.
User research gives you a plan for not only approaching your data collection, but also for deciding how you plan to evaluate the data you collect to ensure improved performance.
Consolidating time to create designs
User research also helps you find relevant designs that suit your target audience.
You can also spend more time making improvements by finding out if users enjoy their interactions with your content and whether your company or clients get good feedback about the content before looking to expand marketing efforts.
You should get immediate and direct feedback so that their suggestions for improvement are more meaningful to the goals you are trying to achieve.
Streamline the process of evaluating previous designs
When you take the time to evaluate previous designs, you can consider quantitative data to see the exact ROI companies are getting from designs in relation to their marketing and advertising campaigns.
This data can be a key performance indicator (KPI) detailing whether you have achieved success or if you need to make adjustments to the design and functionality of the interface to make it more user-friendly.
Make sure you make this data available to all designers and developers, so you’re all on the same page when making changes.
Lack of User Research
It is also important to understand the weaknesses of user research, such as the following aspects:
This is not a product review
User research is usually focused on the performance of the design implementation rather than the quality of the product, especially if it is produced by the manufacturer. Users may aim to use the website as a channel to talk about products, so it’s a good idea to monitor your email mailbox if a customer decides to contact your company directly.
The only exception to this rule is when a website is considered a “product” which means that your web developer should be extra vigilant with user research methods to increase sales and customer retention rates.
This is not a strategy
The concept of user research does not formulate a design strategy. In contrast, user research provides the tools and resources for you to execute your design in a way that is targeted and meaningful to your audience.
The key here is that you can’t target every audience, but user research helps you figure out if you’re attracting the right people to interact with this design. The functionality of your website should align with the desired impact.
How to do user research?
Here are four steps you can follow to properly conduct user research:
KPIs display measurements that track performance over a specific period. Be sure to record the period of time you measure the KPIs to get accurate results.
Before you proceed with user research, determine which KPIs measure the success of your design. Some KPIs to consider include:
- Website visitors
- mobile traffic
- SEO rankings
- Click-through rates
- Customer retention and satisfaction
2. Selecting and conducting quantitative and qualitative research methods
Choose which method you want to use to measure the success of your KPIs. You want to have a mix of qualitative and quantitative data to see if the numbers match the behavior of your target audience using the interface.
For example, user persona research identifies individuals who frequently visit your website: Anton, 40, is a teacher from Jakarta, married and has two children and uses tools at work and at home to help him rate papers written by his students.
You can create designs that target these personas to see if the number of website visitors (qualitative research) increases over a six-month period. You may need to change your audience to a younger audience if you are trying to increase website traffic.
3. Compare results with different designs
Try to come up with different designs to see if you see a noticeable change in the quantitative results. However, it is very important to select a timeline for the production of the design and the testing phase of the design.
Segmenting your time gives you the ability to study the digital impact of users visiting your website and the journeys they take while navigating the interface.
4. Select the design you want to continue
Again, the qualitative and quantitative results must match and indicate a path for you to proceed. In other words, any increase in quantitative statistics and the number of positive customer reviews from the survey is noteworthy and can be a sign for you to use this design over others.