Jan 6, 20214 min read

Is Your Website Steering Blindly?

It is not possible to determine if a web design is effective without knowing how visitors navigate your website. Without this data, it is impossible to determine if the site’s goal for each page is working. Each page should serve a clear purpose or it shouldn’t be there. Improving the effectiveness of a design will also accomplish a greater return on your web design investment. The methods outlined below will help in determining what is the most effective web design for each of your pages goals. These are:

A/B Testing.
Bounce rate.
Google page tools.

A/B Testing

A/B is a very important tool in fine-tuning a website design. Unfortunately, many self-designed websites completely miss this opportunity. It is also not possible if the design software doesn’t even have this feature made available. Every website must have A/B testing or the design is steering blindly in any direction.

If a web page design’s task is to obtain simple sign-ups or leads, the page will have some sort of contact form. How that lead is obtained can be fine-tuned in several ways. Should the contact form be towards the top of the page? Do visitors want to read information first and then sign up farther down the page? Would an unobtrusive pop-up work and would a time-delayed popup work better? Even small details such as wording, color or button size can change results for the better or worse. Comparing one design to another get these results.

Depending on the number of visitors, a good A/B test should last long enough to get a good number of uniquevisitors. Depending on how the A/B test was setup it will show which design had one or more of the following:

The lowest bounce rate
The highest number of clicks
The best Call to Action results

Once a design is discovered to have better results it too can be adjusted to increase the web designs effectiveness. Did the second A/B test improve the results further still? If not go back to the first revision.

It is also important to note, however, that A/B testing should not be a feature to test out indefinitely. You could be doing a tad more harm than good by driving away a certain number of visitors if a design does not work at all. Don’t get greedy and obsess with tweaking a section layout indefinitely.

What is also important to note, is that third-party A/B testing does not work. People are paid a few cents to visit a page and click. The more they do and the quicker, the more they get paid. That is problem number one. They are not interested in your product or maybe even know what it is. They will also visit the site and navigate in the way they think they should. That is problem number two. So the results can be very skewed. That is not in your best interest at all in determining a successful A/B result. Your visitors should be those who are genuinely interested in your website.

Bounce Rate

This is a more common feature found in even basic analytic software on the website or remotely. It isn’t a feature available only via a web designer’s services. Bounce rate shows if visitors are visiting the site and leaving right away; hence bouncing off again right away.

Is the traffic from a good source and improving sales or leads? Is this source from advertising and is the bounce rate high? Then that certainly shows you the traffic source is no good. This is especially true if you are paying for this traffic like advertising.

Working with A/B testing may help improve your bounce rate, however. Your visitors may be expecting a different message or objective. If they were expecting that free offer as the first thing they see it should be farther up the page. Visitors are impatient and Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest etc. is always not too far away to distract them.

A high bounce rate can be a very costly lesson if not discovered soon and kept watch. Bounce rates can change and they do not always remain constant. Some sources for advertising can start off well but gradually increase the bounce rate. The reason being, their traffic can change just like yours. With the ever-evolving Internet, traffic patterns change and many outside factors can influence this. Most of which are out of your control, unfortunately. A steady reliable traffic source is worth holding on to instead of having to start over again with another source of good quality traffic.

Google Page Tools

As mentioned previously, some website tools are available for free from various sources. They are not only available via a web hosting provider or designer. Testing other factors besides the visual aspect of a website is key to online success

Page speed and mobile friendliness are essential to use before performing any bounce and A/B testing. Otherwise, all the results mentioned earlier will be void. This is because if the page speed is very slow or your website is not mobile friendly, visitors are going to leave right away. This is because the website will not look good on their smartphone. It will also cause them to leave if they have to wait too long for a site to load.

If visitors are leaving because of these issues, then A/B website testing is nearly pointless. This will also apply to the bounce rate. Hopefully, noticing a high bounce rate will reveal this exact issue. Checking these results will help make your website perform better. This is especially crucial in a highly competitive industry.

Discovering how visitors navigate and interact with your site helps determine if a website design is successful. Otherwise, you simply will not know if a page layout is designed to reach that particular pages goal.

What is the goal for each of your pages? Is that being met and if not, use A/B testing to help reach or improve this goal.

A/B testing along with bounce rate statistics will help in determining what is the most effective web design for your website. Many good web design services will determine this.