I don’t know squat about design beyond whether I like it or not. So when a designer puts something up, I monitor it carefully until I have enough data to see how it performs. Sites with more traffic produce faster answers, but it can still take a week or more to know what’s working.

Some data I look at on a new design includes:

• Did the time on the site go up or down?
• Did the bounce rate go up or down? (informational only – not all bounces are bad)
• Did people click through to other pages more or less than before?
• What happened to the number of visitors who saw or clicked on an offer?
• What happened to how far down the page visitors scrolled? (So if the offer is too far down, it’s invisible)
• What were the users actually clicking on? For example, if they were clicking on non-clickable images, turn them into links!

For all data, was it STATISTICALLY significant, rather than positive or negative noise?

Going to the level of button size or color or font is way too deep into the weeds. Test big things first, like layout and copy. But whatever you do, whomever your designer is, learn how to TEST or hire somebody who knows how to look under the hood.