Flynnsights // May 31, 2022

Better Insights Create Better Websites

Using Research To Maximize Your Website Update

Michelle Furibondo

Associate Director of CX

Whether you’re considering updating your website for ecommerce, aesthetic, or functional reasons (or a combination of any or all of them), there’s one big step that should be a foundational part of every project: research.

The data and insights you gain will allow you to create an optimized website that your users will find more useful and easy-to-use—ultimately driving more traffic and enhancing the customer experience and satisfaction with your brand.

Backed by research and the insights it provides, you and your team will be able to:

Understand user motivations
Learn your users’ needs and wants for your site
Evaluate existing features and potential enhancements
Determine which content to migrate from your current site
Create firm requirements for the new site that help formalize your plan

At Flynn, we typically perform three kinds of research to create a comprehensive view of what our client’s customers want out of a website, how they behave on the current site, and which content they find most engaging.

Primary research (data, comments, and other feedback you gather directly from your audience)
Internal research (analysis of data that you already have in-house, such as web analytics)
Competitive research (comparing your website with those of your competitors)

Primary Research

Conducting primary research with your current customers—and, ideally, prospective customers—will help you understand who they are and what they need and want from your website—as well as what they’re not currently getting.

You’ll get insights about what’s working well, what needs improving, and what’s missing. Research can reveal things as broad as general online behaviors and motivations, or as specific as how users perceive certain aspects of your site’s content or functionality. It can also highlight top reasons visitors use the website, key functionality and features users say they need, or what they feel needs to be made easier.

Internal Research

While internal research should definitely include analytics, don’t overlook the importance of a comprehensive cataloging of your existing site, and website-related comments received by your call center and other customer service channels.

Digging into your web analytics will reveal insights into your site’s performance such as page views, time spent on page, and typical navigation paths. You may find new nuggets of information that focus your attention on specific pages. If your goal is to drive revenue growth through your site, you’ll want to study your analytics to optimize pages along the path to purchase, or introduce new functionality to reduce customer effort.

Cataloging all your current website content, including pages, functionality, and tools, is also essential. Organizing your current content will help you complete a “gap analysis” that highlights what’s missing.

If your goal is to reduce customer care costs, take a close look at your call center data to understand why customers are calling rather than using the website. If they’re consistently looking for the same type of information or other content that’s not on your site, make plans to add it. If they’re trying to complete a task that’s taking too much time and causing frustration, investigate new functionality, or even a new platform that will make it easier for them.

Competitive Research

Researching your competitors’ websites will reveal opportunities to differentiate your site and reveal if you’re missing content or functionality that’s considered “table stakes” in your category. It’s also extremely helpful to look at sites outside of your category that have a great user experience (UX) to understand what’s possible in terms of features, content, and navigation.

The Quest For Better Never Ends

Since technology and what customers need and expect are constantly changing (often at a breakneck pace), improving your website can’t be a one-time project. Between major updates, you need to be constantly reviewing your site metrics and implementing incremental improvements. Ongoing voice of the customer (VOC) collection can help you keep your ear to the ground and identify customer pain points early, before they become major problems. And ongoing competitive research will help ensure that you don’t lag behind your competitors in terms of content, functionality, and ease of use.

The Help You Need

While optimizing your website is (or at least should be) a job that’s never done, it’s also something you don’t have to face alone—let Flynn help! From research to planning, design to development, we can help you every step of the way—just like we’ve done for dozens of clients and sites big and small. So give us a call or send us an email to start a conversation about how we can help you.

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