What if you could redesign your website with proven data? What if – before you ever began designing your new site – you knew the type of content your target audience wanted most, as well as what headlines, navigation menus and even colors would lead them deeper into your site to convert to a specific goal? Even better, what if that type of data were easily at your fingertips?

The traditional approach to web design is fading. Rather than relying solely on intuition, today’s webmasters work together with marketers to determine the content and look of a website. How? Through data-driven design, also known as growth design, designers and marketers blend website analytics with design elements to shape the customer journey of your website visitors. Here are three data-driven approaches used to design your website for growth.

Heat maps. Though they come in many forms, heat maps are simply a visual representation of data tracking how your visitors spend their time on your website. Powered by algorithms, you might choose to track mouse movements on a page, where your visitors are clicking, or even a predictive approach to estimate how the human eye scans each page. Whatever you choose to track, areas where your visitors spend the most time moving, clicking or scanning will be shown as visual hotbeds of activity.

Influence of color. Understanding how color, even down to their shades of vibrancy, impact the customer journey can be impactful. For example, you might utilize an A/B test to gain insights on whether a green purchase button performs better than a blue or red one. Similarly, you might use an A/B test to understand if visitors spend more time on a bright or dark version of a particular page, or if a sidebar feature finds more use when displayed with more contrast.

Smart content. Also known as dynamic content, smart content changes depending on information known about visitors. For example, a smart header might recognize new visitors and welcome them to the page, as well as suggest a next course of action like signing up for an account or viewing a new blog or sale. Alternatively, returning visitors might be welcomed back to the page, while still provided a next step, such as returning to the last product viewed but not purchased.

Through a combination of quantitative (or numerical) and qualitative (gained by observation) data, data-driven design helps you understand not just which parts of your website are most successful, but also why they’re successful. Such information can then be used to guide the design and content of your website, helping you influence your target audience in a more focused and measurable way than ever before.

Cam Elliott, a marketing strategist at RedRover Sales & Marketing Strategy, is a marketing enthusiast with a passion for industry trends, developing strategies from digital to traditional marketing and everything in-between. Learn more at www.redrovercompany.com.