Is your website usable?
User testing, user experience (UX) and user centred design (UCD) are interchangable words that all relate to the same outcome; they provide you with clear actionable insights gleaned from your users that you would never know unless you either had a crystal ball – or you got to survey each and every one of them individually. While we can’t survey every single user who visits your website, we can run robust user testing with a smaller valid sample base.
Why bother with user testing?
Just as doctors test their medicines before releasing to the public, we should also test our websites to ensure our customers will approve of the changes we are proposing. After all, who would go ahead with a plan if user testing revealed that our customers didn’t like – or even hated – our proposed changes? Incredibly, this happens all too often. Many so called ‘gurus’ in marketing, IT, management or external agencies make decisions based on their own limited knowledge, old ideas and personal preferences instead of asking the people who matter most - their customers.
A more intelligent approach to enable rational decision making is to start by asking our customers what they want. Failure to do so results in a poor user experience. In this age of technology there’s simply no justification for not being informed by user testing. There are a few tried and true ways to conduct professional usability testing.
What methods of user testing do we use?
This depends on your requirements. As no two testing requirements are alike, so too, we build each test from scratch. As a guide, if you are a large corporation and you want to implement a radical change to your website’s navigation – we may recommend taking a quantitative approach to user testing where we may survey many users (100+) to gauge the reaction from a larger sample base of your targeted users. We would first qualify the users to ensure they match your key customer profiles. On other occasions we may recommend a qualitative approach to user testing if you wanted to know at a more personal level what your customers say about your website, and hear how they comment on it in open discussion sessions. We could also track their eye movements to learn which design best catches their eye. All of these methods can employ accurate analytics or path analysis to provide you with supporting numbers for reporting. So in summary our methods are;
- Quantitative Online Surveys(larger numbers, 100+ particpants)
- Qualitative Usability Testing (small groups or one on one sessions)
- Eye Tracking
- Click Tracking and/or Path Analysis
Getting started
Metaweb is a Brisbane based web consultancy that can supply you with the tools to build better websites, software, products or services based on real data from usability testing of your direct customers – or target market. Armed with this knowledge which we explain in our our expert reports, its an easy sell to enable executive management to sign off on your project – and to guarantee the project proceeds with few surprises. Contact Metaweb to discuss your Usabilty Testing requirements today.
