Every professional who has the abbreviation “UX” (User Experience) in their title specializes in developing and designing user interaction. The successful user experience should be simple and intuitive, evoke positive emotions, and help users buy and use the service, install the program, and perform any other valuable action on the website or application. What is the role of UX analytics in this regard and why the professional user interface design agencies have a UX analyst in the team? Let’s find out.
What a UX Analyst Does
A UX-analyst is engaged in researching user behavior (on the website, desktop, mobile application, any service). As a result of this study, they create an analytical prototype – the interface that will be the most understandable and comfortable to use. In addition, they also ensure that the important elements are located in the areas that best attracts the audience’s attention and that the design corresponds to the characteristics of the target visitors (their gender, age, geographical location, etc.).
Accordingly, the key responsibilities of a UX analyst are:
- Business process analysis
- Contextual analysis
- Studying the target audience
- The hypothesis regarding user behavior, their testing on AA, and A / B tests
- Redesign of the product prototype, taking into account the data obtained during testing
- Development of product promotion strategies
UX analysts work in collaboration with other members of the team and focus groups researching all the sides of the project from a user’s perspective.
The Tools of UX Analytics
UX analytics are extremely important for the development of any product, as it provides the necessary information on exactly how your customers use the released application and whether they are satisfied with the product. This is the most valuable information when you try to improve the user experience or would like to introduce some changes.
It’s hard to say which tool is more suitable for the development of your project. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Choosing the right one can be compared with the choice of baking forms: there is no specific form with the help of which baking would always be easier. So there is no one tool that will give all the necessary information for the development of the product. Most often, a combination of tools is required to conduct high-quality UX analytics. Now let’s talk about some analytics mechanisms that will help analyze and improve the user experience throughout the entire life cycle of the user.
Personas
The method of personas is helpful to evidentiate the behavioral patterns of users.
Each model represents a separate consumer group. Persona is a set of features, needs, motives, and other traits of a potential user. Its description contains information about the gender, age, hobbies, activities, goals, motivating and frustrating factors, and the context of the product’s use.
Use Cases
This is a description of how the user interacts with the system to achieve the goal. A use case is a sequence of steps that the user goes through.
For simplicity’s sake, the script is supplemented with flow prototypes, but this is not necessary. In fact, most of the entire use case is made up of alternative threads that handle the “wrong” events that specify thread branches and loops.
Empathy Maps
An empathy map is a six-field chart: “what they hear,” “what they see,” “what they think and feel,” “what they say or do,” “pains,” and finally “achievements and goals.”
An empathy map can be created for the finished product or done at the research stage to form ideas and further work on the project.
It can be used together with the method of personas or separately. The bottom line is to put yourself in the user’s place to see the product through his eyes.
A / B Testing
After the first prototypes, A / B testing is performed to analyze competitors’ decisions. Before starting testing, they determine a specific goal, take several design options with minimal differences, and offer potential users.
During testing, user behavior is captured in detail and after a certain time or when a statistically significant number of impressions is reached, the numerical indicators of the goal are compared and the appropriate page option is determined. The advantage of the method is the use of objective data.
Final thoughts: Why do you need UX analytics?
Surveys, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, contextual research – all this is carried out to improve the quality of user experience with the product. The goal of UX analytics is to create an intuitive target audience and an easy-to-use product.
UX analytics can show an objective perspective on the product and, in the long run, reduce the amount of work of designers and save the client’s time and money.