What is UX research: a comprehensive guide for business owners

Have you ever wondered why people leave your site? Are your customers facing barriers that you never noticed? What prevents them from completing their order?

User experience (UX) research will help you get answers to these questions, identify website issues, and turn them into competitive advantages. In this article, we will dive into the definition of UX research, explore its principles and methods, and show how it can transform your business.

What is UX research in simple words

User experience research — the process of collecting information about the needs, expectations, and pains of your target audience and their interaction with your web product. 

Such research aims to understand how people interact with your website, app, or service and find ways to make this experience more smooth and comfortable.

The user experience analysis may be used for:

• improving existing websites or apps;
• implementing new features into your web product;
• launching new products.

Why is UX research important?

What happens when you open a website and can’t find a relevant product quickly? In all likelihood, you will get irritated and leave the source. The same can happen with your target audience if your website doesn’t offer a smooth and interactive customer experience.

UX research can help you avoid this, as it helps you gain valuable insights about user interaction with your site, identify problem areas, and turn them into growth points. 

As a business owner, thanks to UX analysis, you will:

• Understand customer’s needs;
• Ensure advanced customer experience;
• Boost website conversion;
• Increase customer loyalty;
• Improve your UX strategy based on data, not guesswork.

UX research methods: the best ways to understand your customers

The UX research method is a way to obtain data on customers’ behavior, preferences, and problems needed for website analysis and improvement.

In this section, we'll look at the most effective research methods so you can choose the ones that might work best for your business.

5 most common UX research methods:

1. Interviews: one-on-one sessions/meetings with the business owners/representatives, users/customers.

This method helps UX researchers understand the customer's needs and pain points and your business’s unique features and values. For example, when designing a website for the luxury store Symbol, Turum-burum visited its physical store to learn more about customer behavior and define the reasons customers decide to buy exactly from this store.

These insights were then used to highlight the store’s strengths via the website’s UX/UI design, leading to a 76% conversion increase.

2. Surveys: a collection of quantitative data on user preferences and habits. 

At Turum-burum, we find questionnaires one of the most popular and effective survey methods. Thus, for the Intertop website, we collected feedback using an exit-intent pop-up. When users closed a browser tab, they received the pop-up asking, ‘Why are you leaving the checkout?’. 

Out of 444 respondents, 48.6% stated that they left the page because they were unable to complete their order.

So, we worked out all the steps of the sales funnel in detail and reduced it to two steps for registered users, and three for new ones. 

3. Usability Testing: checking how users interact with the product/UX upgrades to identify usability issues.

Usability testing helps you see how real users react and what they think, so you can be sure the proposed changes work well for them and improve their customer experience.

To do this, the specialists carefully select a focus group and ask it to complete tasks typical for real website users.

It can be a test of small changes — like choosing the design of the ‘Add to shopping cart’ button, or an evaluation of the whole interface before its launch.

4. A/B Testing: comparing different design variations to define which one performs better.

At Turum-burum, we usually conduct this type of testing to check the UX/UI hypothesis and see how implemented changes influence KPIs. For example, for Infoshina we identified key interface issues via UX audit and developed hypotheses on how to turn pains into gains.

For product card optimization, we placed the panel with the ‘Buy Button’ at the bottom of the page and conducted A/B testing to check the effectiveness of this solution.

This approach helps business owners take well-informed decisions based on data, insights, and statistics, leading to greater business efficiency.

5. Analytics Review: using data to understand user behavior patterns.

Intuition is not the best option to rely on when developing a client-oriented web product. To truly understand your users, it’s crucial to dive into analytics using tools like Google Analytics 4 (provided the GA4 settings are correct).

Thanks to analytical tools like that, you can get a wide scope of useful insights, including:

• business conversion rate;
• the number of unique users who visit your website in a day/week/month;
• customer engagement rate;
• traffic sources;
• bounce rate;
• user retention rate, and so on. 

Apart from this, we recommend using heat and scroll maps, which visually show where users usually click, how far they scroll, and which sections of website pages they interact with the most. To do this, you can use such tools as Hotjar or Clarity.

These insights, when combined with analytics, will give you a better understanding of users' behavior and allow you to make informed decisions to improve the customer experience and optimize business conversion rates.

For that reason, Turum-burum specialists always conduct deep analytical research during UX audits of the web product. During this stage, we identify key usability issues and work out ways to solve them. Then we present business owners with a table with the identified areas for improvement, their priorities, and recommendations accompanied by real-life examples. 

UX research process: key stages

What does the UX research process look like? Let’s consider the key UX research stages below:

1. Setting the research goals

A clear goal helps you focus on what matters most. To do this, identify your key areas of interest, such as:

• Do users understand the registration process?
• Where do they encounter obstacles on their way to purchase?
• Why aren’t customers buying a specific product category?

By answering these questions, you can choose the right UX research strategy tailored to your needs.

2. Defining UX research methods

In Turum-burum, we recommend combining different methods to get comprehensive and deep insights. For example, while working on the Samsung Experience Store we collected data about the website’s customers, conducted offline interviews with Samsung store employees to observe how the business interacts with users online and offline, and combined it with analytical insights. 

This helped us create detailed buyer personas and better understand the store’s target audience. And when you know your customer’s needs and preferences, it becomes much easier to meet their expectations.

3. Preparing test scenario

By scenario, we mean a list of tasks that users will perform during the test. 

These tasks must be realistic and may include:

• Finding relevant products and adding them to a shopping cart.
• Playing around with filters for quick product search.
• Navigating to specific website pages.

4. Analyzing test results

During this step, a UX researcher collects and analyzes the data to identify weak areas of the website and turn them into opportunities for business growth.

We recommend creating a customer journey map at this stage—a visual tool that reveals what customers experience, think, and do at each step of their interaction with your website. It will help you visualize your findings and make well-informed decisions. 

5. Making interface adjustments 

Based on the research findings, you can determine how to enhance your product — by refining the design, reorganizing the page structure, or introducing new features to improve website usability and meet user needs. As a result, you can increase customer loyalty and business conversion rate.

Conclusion, or why do you need a UX research plan?

UX research is essential for understanding the needs, behaviors, and pains of your customers. And as you already see from this article, UX research is a complex process consisting of numerous steps and things to think of. 

For that reason, you should clearly understand your business goals and work out a detailed research plan with the chosen specialist. This plan should outline the key objectives, research methods, target audience, and the specific questions you want to answer. By doing so, you ensure that your research is focused, actionable, and aligned with your overall strategy.