Your website is a business tool right? After all it’s where your customers come to buy your products and services. Or if your site isn’t ecommerce it’s where they’ll at least find out about your offering and forms an integral part of your lead gen and sales funnel. So naturally we obsess about traffic, visibility, search rankings, and other performance metrics. 

But I’d like you to take a step back and be honest: have you ever really stopped to consider exactly why someone is actually on your site? Many businesses lose site of the fact that their site has two masters: the business and its needs, and the customer and their needs. And to serve your customers properly you’ve got to zero in on their intent.

In a world of attention-starved users and overwhelming digital noise, decoding user intent isn’t a ‘nice-to-have’ it’s the foundation of effective experience design. And if your UX isn’t responding to customer intent you’re not just missing opportunities, you’re actively creating friction.

What is customer intent (really)?

Marketers love to talk about signals. But intent is more than a signal. It’s a state of mind. Intent is the meaning behind the action. It’s what drives the action, regardless of the outcome. Which is why, sometimes a user’s actions can seem confusing. When they do you’ve likely missed the intent. 

When someone lands on your site, they’re not just clicking. They’re trying to solve a problem. Make a decision. Get something done. Intent is the emotional and practical ‘why’ behind that action. Great UX understands the true intent and builds an experience around it to truly meet the needs of the customer. And if you meet the needs of your customer you might be pleasantly surprised to see that you also meet the needs of your business. Funny that. 

In this context, user experience isn’t about visual polish or ticking best-practice boxes. It’s about removing friction and creating relevance in the moments that matter. That’s what turns a visit into a conversion.

Four types of intent and what to do about them

In the world of UX, user intent reveals itself through behaviour: Scroll patterns, clicks, time spent. The challenge is recognising what those signals are really telling you and designing around them. You can’t assume that a long time spent on a page means your site is serving your user. They could well be confused and labouring to find what they need. That’s when testing with users, watching screen recordings, or reviewing heatmaps and other behaviours can deliver true insight. 

There are four basic intent ‘buckets’:

Informational intent

The user is looking for information, doing research, and trying to reach a decision. This can be indicated by metrics like long dwell times, deep scrolls on the page, viewing multiple articles/pages, clicking through to FAQ pages and so on. 

You can serve this intent mode by having rich content that answers user questions fast, clear headings to aid skimming and location of key information, smart ‘read more’ suggestions based on the user’s prior journey and site behaviour. It’s all about informing and guiding. 

Navigational intent

This intent mode shows up in branded search terms, internal site searches and direct visits to key pages.

To help users with this intent you need to help them get where they want to go, fast. Use sticky navs, intuitive menus, and predictive search to make their path obvious and smooth.

Transactional intent

You can infer transactional intent by monitoring product page views, keeping a careful eye on cart activity (e.g. people adding an item to cart but not completing the checkout process fully), heatmapping showing up concentration of user activity on CTAs (hovering but not clicking, or clicking through). And of course don’t forget if a page is getting a lot of traffic from transactional searches, like “buy [your product] online” or “places that sell [your product]” that is a clear transactional intent signal. 

Now’s not the time to drop the ball. Pages where you see these intent signals in abundance need to prioritise speed, simplify steps through to purchase, surface trust signals, and have unmissable calls to action. Think urgency nudges, sticky CTAs, and “no-surprise” checkouts.

Local intent

For any business with physical stores or who are trying to serve a specific geographic area local intent signals are essential to both monitor and cater for. Indicators for this can be: mobile usage, geo-location triggers, store locator activity, and local search activity such as “shops that sell [PRODUCT] near me/in [MY TOWN]”.

This is your opportunity to bring the real world into the digital experience. Offer ‘near me’ tools, map integrations, local reviews, and make sure everything works on the move.

Tools that decode intent and deliver impact

Understanding intent shouldn’t be guesswork. The right tools can make the invisible visible and help your UX adapt dynamically.

• Session recording + heatmaps (think Hotjar): See what’s catching attention and what’s being ignored.
• On-site search analysis: What people type into your search bar is intent in its purest form.
• GA4 tracking: Follow the journey from landing page to micro-conversion.
• Feedback widgets + exit pop-ups: Ask the right question at the right time and you’ll get direct feedback that can help you shape your digital experience. 

Then you can begin to implement features that directly align with the customer intent you can see. And with new systems it’s possible to make this dynamic and real time based on user activity:

• Show returning users different homepage modules based on past behaviour.
• Trigger help prompts or live chat when users stall on pricing or delivery info.
• Adapt CTA copy depending on intent “Find out more” for early-stage interest, “Start your free trial” when intent is hot.

The payoff

When UX aligns with intent, everything clicks.

Users feel understood. Journeys feel effortless. Conversions happen more naturally not because you forced them, but because you removed what was in the way.

So the next time you’re tweaking a wireframe, building a product page, or running a CRO test, ask yourself: are we responding to what users really want in this moment?

Because when you design for intent, you design for results.

Want to find out how we can help you drive real business results with intent-driven UX? Contact us today.