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Where can I find statistics about why a certain design layout is better? I keep suggesting changes at work and the department chair rolls them back. I need evidence to show why design trends are moving in a specific direction.

So far I have found these sources: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/following-design-trends/ http://blog.hubspot.com/how-to-use-data-in-marketing-content

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    Trend evidence is basically research. If it's about a visual trend or UI trend, google it?
    – DA01
    Jul 2, 2013 at 21:59
  • Thanks Charles - I googled "ux trend evidence" and found this: nngroup.com/articles/college-students-on-the-web - getting warmer. This is a website for researchers and post-docs - not patients or general public.
    – user33241
    Jul 2, 2013 at 22:10
  • Sorry, I meant google the particular trend you are advocating for. We may need a bit more information here. Can you provide a specific example of what you are aiming for?
    – DA01
    Jul 2, 2013 at 22:21
  • What in that example are you fighting the department chair about?
    – DA01
    Jul 2, 2013 at 23:36
  • Specifically the 3 box layout at the bottom. He basically just wants it to look like the old site - with one left hand box (600 px) and one right side (200 px)
    – user33241
    Jul 3, 2013 at 0:49

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it might be hard to find a definitive answer as to which design layout is best as different layouts work better depending on context, but within a single site you could perform a/b or multivariate testing to find out which of a set of proposed layouts converts more highly, giving a strong business case for the best performing layout.

a/b testing is serving up one of two different things to two sets of users then looking at which one of the two groups of users satisfies business goals more frequently.

multivariate testing is the same but with concurrent tests resulting in a more complex set of results, for example, two a/b tests conducted at the same time would produce four possible outcomes.

both tests will give you statistics

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  • Thanks Colin - I am working on a university development site and can't do any testing right now. I found this which is 'closer' to what I am looking for blog.hubspot.com/how-to-use-data-in-marketing-content
    – user33241
    Jul 2, 2013 at 21:57
  • that sort of testing takes time and effort, or the use of paid tools, but does result in hard data that can help make the case for something in the way that you suggest
    – Toni Leigh
    Jul 2, 2013 at 22:01
  • Once our site is live I can propose something like that - right now I just need our site not to look the 1990s
    – user33241
    Jul 2, 2013 at 22:12
  • could just go and find some gorgeous examples of modern web design, that contain content like yours preferably from successful sites and start from there ? it does depend very strongly on content of course, eg. what works perfectly for a site selling widgets isn't going work well for a site sharing news stories
    – Toni Leigh
    Jul 2, 2013 at 22:17

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