Your website makes sense to you, but does it make sense to your visitors?
If you have been working on a website for months or years, it is easy to find your way around it. You know the website inside and out, you understand the workings of it and you like it that way. Maybe you are comfortable with it and don’t want to change. It’s easy to say put yourself in the visitors shoes, but not so easy to do.
This is where usability testing comes in.
Website testing is more than just making sure it looks the same across browsers and validating the code. Part of it is making sure the user experience is worthwhile and enjoyable.
Have a few people who have never seen your site before to look at it. If it is an eCommerce site, have them look around as a potential buyer.
- Is it easy to navigate?
- Is it clear what the website is about?
- Is the checkout process simple enough?
- Does the website appear professional and trustworthy?
- Is the website fast enough to keep impatient people from leaving?
The best time to test the usability is BEFORE the website goes live.
The sooner you find usability issues, the easier it will be to change them. If you wait until the end of the project, too much work has been vested to easily make changes. Even if the changes are easy, there will be too much resistance from those who have spent the most time working on it. No doubt there is some big unveiling planned, maybe a grand reopening of sorts where the whole world will be ooh-ing and aah-ing over the new website and throwing money at your PayPal account to be among the first to make a purchase from your dashing new website. You might think that having people look at the website before it goes live will lessen the grand unavailing, but having a confusing website would lessen the user experience far more.
How do you test for usability?
First of all, DO NOT tell them what you are testing for. Do not tell them what the site is or what it’s about. If you need to explain, the website has already failed. What works for me is to have three or so computers with users set up in a room so I can see over everybody’s shoulder. Have them go to a website and do something there. Maybe buy something, maybe find some information, maybe leave a comment. What ever the task, the trick is DO NOT HELP. Just watch. Take note of which browsers people use, if they search for something, what words they type in if they do search, which buttons or links they click on, how many times they hit the back button and any other detail you can glean.
After you have taken the most common problems each test user encountered, fix them then test again.
What if the website testers are not your typical visitor? It’s best to try to find testers who are within your target audience, but not always possible. Like Steve Krug says, “recruit loosely and grade on a curve.”
