We can see that some websites perform the best at Google Analytics and capable of showing a clear insight to the administrators about performance, whereas some other sites pathetically fail in it. There are some questions raised by businesses which are now largely moving on to analytics-based operations as:

  • Is there any direct connection between web design and web analytics?
  • Are conversions based on goals are easy to track?
  • Is it possible to precisely measure content performance?
  • Is it easy to add tracking tools?

 

There are hundreds of things made during the time of web design, and thousands of decisions are made. Many of these decisions have a long-term impact regarding marketing and administration. Studies show that small web design decisions will ultimately have a big impact on web analytics at a later point.

Taking wiser design decisions for better analytics

Further, we will discuss some key aspects of web design decision making to ensure better value regarding analytics.

 

#1. Taking the users to a thank you page

 

– Web design decision: What to do when a user completes a registration form or a query form by sharing their information to be a valuable lead for marketers?

– Analytics insight: Proper goal tracking

Many websites don’t guide the visitors through a thanking page but instead shows a simple thank you message on the form page itself. If there is a separate thanking page, which you can innovatively design it can make the tracking goal much easier.

When it comes to Google Analytics, a “destination goal” can be a conversion metrics to be set. It counts if a user reaches a designed URL, which can be set as the thank you page where the visitor reaches only if they provide all the needed info properly. It is not difficult to create a thank you page, which makes the tracking much simpler.

Add-on tip: Thanking pages need not have to be just for a thank you message, but you can share another valuable message of prompt an action if it is designed innovatively. Keep the visitors moving by offering enough content than making the thank you page a dead end.

 

#2. Integration of email signups

 

– Web Design decision: What to do if a user subscribes to an e-mail newsletter?

– Analytics insight: Again, goal tracking

 

Whether to lead the users to another page once the newsletter subscription is done. This decision also positively or negatively affects the goal tracking regarding analytics. It saves a lot of time for the website and the e-mail provider, so each of the subscribers get into the database properly.

You cannot use the destination goal logic here. The visitor leaves the site, so there is no destination URL set. This way, tracking conversion becomes much difficult and based on the primary analytical logic, it’s counted as a failure, and the user left. So, this design consideration goes beyond the scope of analytics.

Designers need to position the email thank you pages more as an opportunity to let the user sail on and get more from them. However, if you send them off the site, all advantages compromised. As per https://bigdropinc.com/ experts, some key considerations to make inappropriately making this decision are:

  • How frequently you send emails?
  • How much effort is needed to import the subscriber list into the mailing system?
  • What degree of control do you want to gain over the visitor experience and analytics?

 

#3. Blog location

 

– Web design decision: Where is your blog located?

– Analytics insight: Tracking the performance of content

It is important to properly define the location of your blog as in a subdomain, in the directory, or as a unique website? A distinct URL for the blog will make it much easier to track the performance of blog content. On the other hand, this same reason may make the tracking worse too. So, blog location is a decision to be made during web design based on SEO impacts of it.

Analytics related to blog content will be done as a separate account, which draws the time spend on site, traffic sources, etc. On maintaining a subdomain for the blog, filtering for the blog content alone become easier. As a directory; however, analytics become easier. Here, the URL of each post has the wording ‘blog,’ and if you want to get custom analytics for blog content, just type blog in the search box. This is also an ideal approach for SEO as the blog post links can get more value.

#4. Site search

 

– Web design decision: how you position the site search? How is the URL of the search result page planned?

 

– Analytics insight: search term/keyword tracking

When a user accesses the search box on your website to search for a particular entity, they land on a result page. If the key phrases they use to search appears on the address bar of the page show, you have access to some of the most valuable analytics reports. Search term reports on analytics will show all the key phrases visitors used to enter into your search box and the frequency of each for you to identify the best phrases for URL.

The search terms reports on Google Analytics will show all the phrases visitors use to search for by accessing the search tool and grab the phrase out of the URL if analytics can grab it. In Analytics reports, the query parameters will appear following an ampersand sign or question mark, followed by an equal sign and search term.

You have to specify the query parameters while setting up Google Analytics, which turns on the search terms report which can give valuable insights to key search terms. On the other hand, if the search tool is not competent to push search terms into URL, you lose this competitive advantage.

These are not harder tasks while looked after well at the first point itself. Designers need to be mindful of it, and business decision makers or analyzers too need to work with the design and development team to understand how they position it at the best to server analytics purposes. This is applicable even if you do redesign of the website to make the future measurements easier.

 

Author Bio – Barrack Diego is a freelance content writer. He has written many good and informative articles on different categories such as Web Design, SEO and Business. He is very responsible towards his job. He loves to share his knowledge and experience with his friends and colleagues.