If you want to learn how to perform a UI/UX analysis of a website you have to continue reading this article. Whether you work as a UI/UX designer, a web developer, or a marketer looking for the necessary knowledge, this article will help you a lot. It is important to have a clear idea of how to analyze our customers' website experience and interface in order to make informed and reasonable decisions. But to achieve this, we must know where to look.
Table of Contents
How to perform a UI/UX analysis of a website
To carry out the analysis of a website we have to take into account 3 very important aspects: Site traffic, visitor behavior metrics and the content of the website as such. This implies that it is necessary to use tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console or SEMRUSH to achieve our objective of understanding user behavior and the effectiveness that is being achieved within the website.
Analyzing our website traffic
To analyze the traffic of our website we simply have to use tools such as Google Analytics, ahref, Ubbersuggest, Similarweb or SEMRUSH to determine how many visitors per month the website receives, from which traffic sources these users come (organic, paid, social, others etc.) and what device exactly they use.
This will allow us to understand if the website has a traffic problem.
For example, if the majority of users enter through mobile devices but the website design is not optimized for mobile devices then it makes sense to make a user interface improvement to prevent web traffic from landing on a broken page. or poor quality and end up bouncing off the site without taking any action.
The metrics of online traffic sources that I recommend you include in your UI/UX analysis of your website are:
Users/Visitors
It is the number of users (also called “visitors”) that a website receives on a monthly basis. This metric is relevant to our web UI/UX analysis. Most websites (at least in LATAM) receive less than 1000 visits per month, because they do not upload new content regularly or do not pay for ads. However, for a blog it is recommended that it receives at least 3000 visits to be able to say that it has a healthy amount of monthly traffic. Obviously, the more traffic our website receives, the better. Take into account that if the website is new and is not being advertised, it will have quite low traffic and this will significantly affect the results.
traffic sources
The traffic sources in GA4 are called “Session Default Channel Group” but it is basically a record about which channels your website traffic comes from. These channels are:
- Organic: Search on Google or any other web search engine.
- Direct: Users typed your URL.
- Referred: Users come from a link on another website.
- Organic video: Users come from a link in a Youtube or Vimeo video.
- Social organic: Los usuarios provienen de las redes sociales.
- Not assigned: No specific channel group is identified
Devices
It is important to analyze what devices users use to enter a website. This metric is quite simple to apply. There are 3 categories of devices that are recognized: Desktop, Mobile and Tablet. Depending on the type of website we will see that one of these categories dominates. If that is the case, it must be optimized for that category if we want to prevent the bounce rate from increasing. For most websites, the dominant metric is Mobile because most users use phones to access a website. Therefore it is important to take into account designing for mobile devices in our UI/UX analysis of the website.
Countries
To analyze the traffic of a website it is necessary to see the geographic data from which the traffic comes. For most companies, if most of the traffic does not come from their own country, that means that it is necessary to work on local SEO and web texts and even open a Google My Business to enhance the presence of the brand at a global level. local. On the other hand, high amounts of traffic in other countries can also mean that there are more opportunities to do business in other locations and the brand should take this into account when it comes to their next marketing campaign.
Page Views
Views by [Page Title] and [Screen Class] over time is a metric that tells us which pages on our website get the most views. The most popular page tends to be the home page, however in the case of websites that have blog posts there tend to be more popular posts that account for most of the website traffic. This metric can be found not only in GA4 but also in Google Search Console with the only difference being that clicks are used to measure the popularity of a page. I personally recommend Google Search Console for this.
Analyzing behavioral metrics
It is important to understand user behavior within our website. This is the fundamental basis of UI/UX design. There are many tools to analyze the behavior of users on a website, but in this particular case I will be using Google Analytics 4 (also called GA4) because it is the most common to extract the necessary data for the analysis.
The user behavior metrics that I personally recommend you include in your UI/UX analysis are:
Interaction rate
An interaction percentage between 60% and 70% is considered healthy. However, this can vary by industry. Interaction rate is understood as the number of sessions (or page views) in which users register multiple actions actively interacting with your website or application.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is the number of users who entered a web page without taking any action and went to another. It is as its name says, they only entered to "bounce" and leave your website. The healthy bounce rate within a site is around 50% or lower.
Average interaction time
According to GA4 itself, it is the "Average interaction time per active user during the selected period". This metric will allow us to understand how much time the user spends within the website interacting. If the time is equal to or less than 20 seconds, then we have a problem with the content or the loading speed of the web. In general, the average time that users spend on a page is 52 seconds, but Google Analytics itself states that the most optimal in terms of average interaction time would be between 2-4 minutes.
Conversiones por (Nombre del evento) a lo largo del tiempo
A conversion event is the action you want your user to take on the web. For example, we can record as a conversion the display of the thank you page that users arrive after being redirected by filling out a contact form or if you are more traditional clicking a button that says "buy". According to GA4 Conversion is “The number of times users have triggered a conversion event”. We have to measure this metric either using Google Analytics or Facebook Ads if you have the tracking pixel installed on your website and you are running a campaign.
Sessions with interaction per user
A "session" is considered as a screen, that is, when someone opens a page within the web. For example, if a user goes to the home page, then goes to the services page and finally goes to the contact page, we can say that he has done 3 sessions. The average number of healthy sessions is 1.4 sessions on average. However, according to the article written by Littledata (2022) the top 20% of websites report an average of 1.6 sessions per user, while the top 10% of websites in the world report a whopping 1.9 sessions per user on average.
Analyzing website content
Content is probably the #1 priority for any UI/UX designer who wants to do a UI/UX analysis of a website. The content is characterized by being everything that appears in the so-called "front end", that is, what the end user sees and with which, ultimately, he interacts.
Unlike the "back end" that focuses on the databases, code and CMS that is being used, the "front end" is vital to the survival and profitability of the site. The content of a website must be focused on the needs of the user, their skills and serve as a "digital office" that helps us meet the commercial objectives behind the brand.
Unpersuasive texts, generic images, confusing navigation and excessive load times are some of the typical tumors in any user experience on a website.
The aspects of content that I recommend you include in your UI/UX analysis are:
Usability
The first aspect to analyze within the website is usability, that is, how easy it is to use the site to meet its objective. If the goal of the site is to capture leads through a contact form, but strangely the form does not load, then we have a usability problem. Take the time to actually use the website and explore all its pages, how many buttons it has and its features. You will be amazed at all the shortcomings you can discover just by putting yourself in the user's shoes. You can also perform usability tests on real users and observe their behavior on the web. This is very important when doing a UI/UX analysis of a website.
Aesthetics
According to The Aesthetic-Usability Effect. People tend to be more tolerant of minor usability issues in a product or service when the design is aesthetically pleasing. This means that investing in the visual section of the web will help us to significantly improve the user experience and consequently the results. Graphically analyzes the images, icons, layout, typography and coherence in their use on the website. Graphic design is a key discipline to do this. Carrying out an observation guide is quite useful to determine what aspects can be improved.
Don't forget to read my article The 8 Principles of UI Design: Introduction to UI Design
Texts
Reading the texts of the website will allow us to better understand how users feel, what they understand about them and catch misspellings along the way.
Analyzing the texts is a key process in the UI/UX analysis of a website. If the copy isn't persuasive or convincing enough to a market segment, but is instead written vaguely and generally, then it's time to implement new copy.
Images
Analyzing the images implies determining if their weight and intention is adequate to accompany the texts of the website. For example, if we see an image of a happy woman jumping rope accompanied by a text that says "Economic psychologists in Guatemala City" we may find ourselves with an image that should be replaced by something more relatable or coherent with the text, such as two people talking in a doctor's office, instead of just a smile. It assumes that users will typically only read titles and quickly scan images to understand the context of that section and make a decision on whether or not it's worth reading.
Technology
Investigate what technology was used to create the website, if it was done with clean code or a CMS (Like WordPress) or maybe it was done on a third-party provider that has a different domain name from the brand like Wix, Shopify or Google Sites. Find out what technology was used to create the site and determine if this is a factor in its performance. This is particularly useful when learning how to perform a UI/UX analysis of a website.
How to perform a UI/UX analysis of a website
Summarizing. To analyze the interface and user experience of a website, it is important to work on logic and empathy. It is necessary to collect data related to the sources of traffic to our website, the metrics of its behavior and the content of the web, intelligently analyzing its data in order to determine possible points of improvement and recommendations that are understandable by the marketing team and the development team in charge of the project. Finally, it is advisable to carry out usability tests with real users to determine how they are really using the website and make adjustments based on this.
References
- Dabner, D. (2022). Diseño gráfico. Fundamentos y prácticas (2018) (6.ª ed., pp. 142–184). Barcelona: BLUME.
- Klipfolio, & Arora, P. (2022, 12 octubre). Sessions per User. MetricHQ. Recuperado 6 de abril de 2023, de https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/sessions-per-user/
- Yablonski, Y. J. (s. f.). Aesthetic-Usability Effect. lawsofux.com. https://lawsofux.com/aesthetic-usability-effect/
- Littledata. (2022, 27 agosto). What is the average sessions per user? lp.littledata.io. https://lp.littledata.io/average/sessions-per-user
- Oliver Puente
- April 8, 2023
- 10:15 pm
Oliver Puente
Introducción al Diseño Web: Más que un simple gráfico
Diseño Web: La combinación de estética y funcionalidad El diseño web no es solo cuestión de crear algo visualmente atractivo;
Cómo Crear Landing Pages que Multiplican tus Ventas
Por qué las Landing Pages Son La Clave Para Multiplicar Tus Conversiones El mejor vendedor de toda tu vida. No
How to Increase Your Conversion Rate Without Spending on Advertising
¿Cansad@ de invertir en publicidad y que no funcione? No te preocupes más, descubre en este artículo que es tasa
How to use Figma Auto Layout (Complete step-by-step guide)
El auto layout en Figma llegó para quedarse, y si quieres ser un diseñador UI/UX profesional, es necesario aprender cuándo
SEO Analysis: I analyzed +100 websites, this is what I learned🔎✅
El análisis SEO es una herramienta esencial para cualquier sitio web que aspire a obtener una mayor visibilidad en los
UX Tutorial for Beginners – Step by Step Guide (FREE)
UX Tutorial para principiantes: En este artículo te ayudará a empezar tu camino como diseñador UX o analista UX incluso
