Your customers are the most important people to consider when you are looking to design or redesign your website. No matter how beautifully designed it may be, a website cannot fulfil its function without an understanding of how your desired customers will use it. Branding, responsiveness and speed are all imperative, but they must work in partnership with a user-friendliness based around how your customers navigate the website.

Analytics tools – the most popular of which is Google Analytics - can provide you with a substantial amount of data about your customer’s habits when they enter your website. They will be able to tell you what devices they are accessing it on, what their language is, and even what route they have navigated through your website. Most people will be aware of analytics tools, but many will not know how to implement this data into their online business strategy. Doing so can create a better experience for them which consequently, of course, drives traffic, conversions and sales.

For instance, if your customer’s data suggests that there are certain pages most commonly visited on your website, your design should ensure these are positioned in easily accessible places. Potential customers need not spend precious seconds (most users bounce off a website in mere seconds if they think it is not useful) scrolling through your site to find a specific page. It should immediately be presented to them. It is worth remembering this for the mobile version of your site as well as the desktop version if your customers frequently visit via a smartphone or tablet.

If your website includes a search bar this may also present an opportunity to understand your customers’ habits and tailor your website in order to better meet their requirements. Most analytics tools will be able to inform you of queries typed into your site’s search bar. From this, you will be able to determine not only what your customers are often looking for but what they are struggling to find. If there is a noticeable trend, your data may suggest that certain pages are not being given enough attention to customers. Perhaps these are pages that should be more visible and prominent in your design.

As well as what your customers are doing on your website, it is equally important to know what your customers are not doing. Many businesses that operate online and regularly review their website data will have, at some point, experienced an unbalance in the correlation between traffic and sales. However, examining it may give you an idea of how to restore this balance. It can tell you where calls to action need emboldening. It may suggest that the content on your page, such as text, images or video, is lacking. It will, in short, tell you everything you need to know about what needs fixing when considering a website redesign.