How to Elevate Your Web Designs with UX Research – Best Practices for Web Designers

Let’s get one thing clear—design is no longer solely about creating visually appealing products or interfaces. It’s more about understanding and fulfilling the needs and expectations of users.

UX research helps you to accomplish this by giving you valuable insights into your target users’ needs, preferences, and pain points. 

Trust us when we say companies are competing like crazy to provide a better user experience. Your competitors are probably out there redefining their user experience right now. But worry not; in this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to conduct UX research that helps you design successful products.

User experience (UX) research is a way of understanding users’ behaviors, needs, and motivations through various qualitative and quantitative methods. It includes techniques such as user interviews, surveys, usability testing, and analytics.

The goal is simple: to figure out what works for users and what doesn’t. With a deep dive into users’ preferences and pain points, it helps designers create more intuitive and user-friendly solutions.

Now that we know what UX research is, let’s dive into the numerous benefits it offers to web designers.

UX research helps designers understand what grabs users’ attention so that they can craft layouts accordingly. Let’s say your UX research indicates that the audience you’re targeting scrolls quickly through product listings and only purchases items that catch their eye in the first few seconds. Then you could prioritize eye-catching thumbnails and ensure your most important products are featured high up on the page.

UX research focuses on understanding diverse user demographics and their needs. You extract a lot of data and use it to implement features that cater to different preferences, making the website usable for everyone. 

For example, when designing a news website, it’s essential to accommodate diverse preferences for long-form articles, summaries, and video content. You’ll also need to integrate accessibility features like adjustable font sizes and high-contrast themes to ensure inclusivity for users with disabilities.

As mentioned above, your website should be accessible to all different kinds of users. Information should be displayed logically and intuitively when these users navigate the website. Creating an intuitive information architecture tailored to your specific case is crucial when designing or redesigning a website.

For instance, if you’re designing a university website, UX research will tell you that you must cater to prospective students, current students, faculty, and alumni. Then, with the right website design tips, you create a logical architecture with different sections and easy navigation for each user.

Optimizing the design and user experience through UX research encourages visitors to take the actions you want, such as purchasing, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. It also helps you understand areas that prevent users from taking these actions.

For example, it might help you see that the CTA buttons are too small and blend in with the background. You could then redesign the buttons to be larger, more visually prominent, and strategically placed near product images. Small changes like this can go a long way to improving conversions.

Similarly, you need to cater to the needs of people with disabilities. Use a website accessibility checker to see if any accessibility issues might hinder the user experience.

Let’s now look at the most critical UX research methods that web designers use to design products that stand out. We’ll cover everything you need to know to conduct user research analysis successfully.

Here are the four major types of UX research methods.

Quantitative UX research aims to gather and analyze numerical data to better understand user behavior, preferences, and interactions with a product or service. The focus is on obtaining measurable insights that can be statistically analyzed and generalized to a larger population.

Qualitative UX research is hyper-focused on extracting descriptive information about a small group of users. Unlike quantitative research, which focuses on numerical data and statistical analysis, qualitative research uses interviews, observations, and contextual inquiries to gain insights into user behavior.

While relying on numbers is crucial, sometimes you must observe users’ actions, interactions, and behaviors when engaging with a product or service. Understand how users naturally behave in specific contexts. Using heat maps to visualize and record user interactions is a great example of behavioral UX research.

Your team can rely on our heat map presentation templates to display your results. After all, you don’t want to miss out on any crucial areas revealed during the research, right?

As important as it is to observe user behavior, it’s also crucial to dive deep into their subjective experiences and opinions. That’s what attitudinal behavior research focuses on. It typically uses surveys, interviews, focus groups, and usability testing.

Now that we have a basic idea of the types of UX research methods, let’s look at nine of the most popular methods in action.

Usability testing focuses on understanding how easy and intuitive it is for users to interact with a product, such as a website, app, or physical device. It helps identify usability problems, such as navigation problems, cluttered interfaces, confusing layouts, or unclear instructions.

The tests can be conducted either in a controlled environment, such as a usability lab, or remotely using usability testing tools. During the test, participants are asked to perform specific tasks while interacting with the product.

Early versions of products or mockups can benefit from user validation. Before you invest time and resources into building the final product, you need to know that the product is worth it. That’s where prototype testing helps designers and developers, giving them time to refine the product without rushing toward the final creation. 

Prototype testing includes various methods like user interviews and feedback sessions. Participants are typically asked to perform tasks or scenarios using the prototype. For instance, let’s say you’re designing a new mobile app to manage personal finances. Before developing a full-fledged app, create a high-fidelity interactive prototype of the app’s key features and functionality. Then use a prototype testing tool to evaluate its usability and accessibility. It will save you time and avoid the extra costs of redesign.  

Every user has a different way of organizing information that makes sense to them. Since how your users think is essential for the design to rock, card sorting is a UX research method you must use.

Present participants with a set of cards, each representing a piece of information, topic, or content item, and ask them to categorize the cards as they see fit. Card sorting insights will help you design the website menu navigation in an intuitive way, so that it makes sense to your users. 

Learn more: If you want to learn more about conducting a UX card sorting workshop, here’s a detailed guide that will help!

You spend hours creating a website’s hierarchical structure, only to realize it leaves users confused and makes them leave the website in seconds. Sounds disappointing, right? Tree testing can help here as it focuses explicitly on whether users can locate the desired information on a website.

Let’s say you’re tasked with redesigning an eCommerce website’s navigation structure. The current structure doesn’t make it easy enough to find products quickly on the site. Before you launch the new structure, create a text-based outline of the website’s content hierarchy, representing categories and subcategories in a tree-like structure.

Present your participants with this hierarchy and ask them to find specific items. Your team can then track the participants’ navigation paths, success rates, and time taken to complete each task. It will give a clear idea of any confusion or difficulty locating specific items. Make sure you redesign the website based on the given responses.

We understand how convenient it is to give out a questionnaire and collect data from a broad audience. But nothing beats the connection you create and the answers you get from one-on-one conversations.

User interviews are a qualitative UX research method focusing on individual user needs, attitudes, and opinions on a specific topic or product.

Open-ended questions are essential here to dive deep into users’ perspectives. 

Many researchers also like to conduct empathy interviews. These are interviews that study another person’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations to understand their needs and choices better. The idea here is to know your users so well that you design a product that fits their requirements.

You need to study every user action, from mouse movements, clicks, and scrolls to keystrokes, as they navigate the website or use the app. Session recordings help you gain insights into how users are interacting with the app or website.

You can create a visual representation of the user journey, showing the paths users take and identifying key touchpoints, drop-off points, and areas of improvement in the user experience. Session recordings can also help you find any bugs or errors users encounter while using the app or website. Then, you can efficiently study the underlying issue and find a solution.

Gone are the days when you could launch what you consider a brilliant idea in the market. With so many ideas floating around, concept testing becomes relevant as it helps study the viability and appeal of a new product or idea before it is fully developed or launched. The goal is to gather feedback from potential customers to see if they accept the proposed concept.

Create a group of potential customers and present a description, prototype, or visual representation of the product or idea. Ask them to provide feedback based on their perceptions and preferences. Their feedback will help you understand whether your idea truly is differentiated from what’s already in the market.

Visual representations always make it easier to understand the information being presented. Heat maps are a great way to visualize user interactions with a website or digital interface. Let’s look at a few types of heat maps that designers often use:

Heat maps often use color gradients to indicate the intensity of actions. For example, if your featured sections get the most clicks, they’ll be highlighted in hotter colors like red or orange. Similarly, cooler colors, such as blue, will be used if your contact section gets the least clicks. That indicates that you must improve your contact section for better visibility and more clicks.

A/B testing or split testing focuses on comparing two versions of a webpage, email, app feature, or other digital asset to determine which performs better among users.

When it comes to UX research, it can help you make the right choice when you can’t decide between different versions of designs, layouts, or even CTA buttons.

To conduct A/B testing, create two versions of a digital asset with a key difference, and then show each version to different user groups simultaneously, gathering data on metrics like clicks and conversions. After a predetermined testing period, compare their performance to select the more effective version for implementation.

The discovery phase involves gathering insights and information to understand the project, goals, target audience, and user needs. During this phase, you can conduct one-on-one interviews with potential users to understand their behaviors, preferences, and pain points.

Also, invest in conducting quantitative surveys to extract information about demographics and psychographics. At the same time, keep up with market research to ensure you don’t miss out on upcoming trends, shifts in preferences, or competitor offerings.

Next, you must reach your target audience with engaging content formats, including textual, visual, and multimedia elements. Before you move on to creating content, go for a content audit to see the performance of your existing content.

As you create content, try different versions and conduct A/B testing to determine which content resonates better with your audience.

Wireframing is the process of creating low-fidelity prototypes that give a basic idea of the layout and structure of the website or application. As you develop these prototypes, invite users and conduct usability and concept testing to get feedback on navigation, information hierarchy, and interaction patterns. You can also use tree testing to check the effectiveness of your information architecture, and try this free wireframe app to sketch and test ideas quickly.  

As the design transitions into development, you can conduct usability testing on the website’s interactive prototypes or beta versions. This testing focuses on identifying usability issues, technical glitches, and areas for improvement in the user interface and functionality.

Before the official launch, conduct comprehensive usability testing to ensure that the website or application meets user expectations and performs as intended. Session recordings work great here as you can gain valuable insights into how users interact with the website or app prototype. What better way to test your prototypes than to get real-time information on their usage, right?

After addressing any issues identified during pre-launch testing, the website or application is launched to the public. Monitor user behavior and gather feedback through analytics tools, surveys, and feedback forms to help you understand user reactions and make further refinements.

The web design process is iterative, and ongoing testing and optimization are essential for continuous improvement. Use A/B testing to try out different design elements, features, or content variations to optimize the user experience and achieve the outcomes you want.

Let’s end our discussion on UX research with some quick tips you can implement:

When it comes to recruiting participants for your UX research, diversity is vital. Ensure you’re not just reaching out to the same group of people every time. Try to cast a wider net to get a more representative sample of your target audience. Remember to clearly outline who you’re looking for to ensure you’re bringing in the right folks.

Now, let’s talk about bias. It’s a sneaky thing that can creep into our research without us even realizing it. Try to stay as neutral as possible in your questions and interactions to combat this. Avoid leading participants to specific answers, and keep an open mind.

Pilot tests of research protocols and materials are crucial to identify and address any issues before full-scale implementation. Gather feedback from pilot participants to refine your research procedures and ensure effectiveness.

Now that you’ve got some top-notch UX research practices under your belt, it’s time to dive into experimentation and really get to know your users. Keep gathering feedback along the way and improve your approach. This will ensure you always deliver the best possible experience for your audience.

When you’re ready to put your research into practice, be sure to check out Envato to explore and download a wide range of creative assets to help you build amazing designs.