Here at the Obsidian Lab, we’re obsessed with UX-led Conversion Optimisation for E-commerce. That means we find ways in which our clients businesses are underserving their customers and help them fix those problems through an experiment-driven design process. Identifying the problems all starts with something called design research.
Why bother with research?
If you’re building something without any research, you’re likely working from a lot of assumptions. And we know what they say about assumption being the mother of all fu$%…. Assumptions are insulting to people. They mean you didn’t bother to try and learn the truth. Instead, we believe you should replace assumption with insight. Understand the context of customer interactions. Build mental models of how they see the world. Identify the real problems they need solving. When you embed wrong assumptions in a design, you can alienate people before they have a chance to hear what you have to offer. You want to welcome your intended users instead of pushing them away. Research is how we do this. Using different types of research, we can discover what truly matters to people.
How does this improve conversion?
To turn a visitor into a customer, you have provide a service to your users that is more attractive to them than your competitors. The better you know your customers, the better you can offer them services they need or will value. Once you understand where you services aren’t meeting your customers’ needs, you can design ways to improve your business offering. With the right research, you’ll have a stronger basis for decision making across the board.
The easier you make life for your customers, the better you’ll do as a business. This research is the crucial first step in designing your way to higher conversion.
Can I optimize my site without research?
Design research is a way to improve the chance that you start your experiments with a valid hypothesis, if you don’t yet know enough about your customer. The more you know, the faster you can design and build your way to growth. While research isn’t essential, it’s an effective way to improve your chances of success.
Data analysis, and gut instinct from experience can also lead to useful optimization experiments too. Ideally, you combine all your sources of information to create a strong grounding of where to start your experimentation.
And remember, neither research or data will ever get you a perfect answer, but they gets you closer to the truth than just using your opinion and guesswork.
