4 Things You Should Know About Website Usability Testing

4 Things You Should Know About Website Usability Testing What is Website Usability Testing and why do you need to be paying more attention to it? If you run a website, find out now!

Building a new website requires you to consider many factors…

Factors like your website has to be compatible with other browsers to ensure you get a wide audience or more clicks. Moreover, it has to contain the right information and that information has to be presented in just the right way to maximize conversions.

Website usability testing is an absolutely critical component during a websites’ evaluation. Website usability testing is the key to unleashing your websites ability to achieve results.

What is Website Usability Testing?

Usability testing is the process of assessing the success of a product when it goes to the market by testing it on users. The usability testing involves physically watching the users navigate your product, service or site while you take notes.

Website usability testing is the evaluation of a website by testing it on users. Usability testing can be done on various levels of product development. Ultimately, website usability testing will uncover a variety of areas to focus on for improvement in terms of converting your audience.

This process could look like selecting a targeted group of users to test websites while someone observes as they take notes. The objective is to achieve efficiency, satisfaction, memorability and have minimum errors.

Website usability testing seeks to define how quickly users can complete tasks on the website to achieve efficiency. Consequently, users should be able to achieve maximum satisfaction by using the website. The errors should be minimal and easy to correct. Through the website usability testing, you’re going to see where your customers struggle in your conversion funnel.

1. Website Usability Issues

Making a website into a conversion platform requires much work such as multivariate testing, exit surveys, site design and moving content from one platform to another.

As you can imagine, it requires a LOT of coordination to pull this off. Most of the usability issues in websites are technical.

Here are some common usability issues:

• No Contact Link

Having no contact information on your website makes it extremely difficult for users who want to reach you. Additionally, the lack of contact information creates mistrust and users eventually lose interest in the website.

• Disorganized Website

If you have a cluttered website or with too much content makes the user lose interest in losing the prospects to your website. The website usability issue is done away with by having a website that is easy to navigate and well organization of content. Additionally, the content should be customer specific and easy to find.

• Web Page Lag

Most website users expect a webpage to load fast. A website that lags may lead to users logging out, going to the previous page or trying competing website. You lose a customer in the long run. It is essential to consider the size of your page to reduce the slow pace of the page.

• Browser Compatibility

The website should be compatible in all browsers from Firefox to Chrome. If navigation of a browser is only limited to one site, then you are limiting your audience. You should check if your site is compatible across all browsers.

• Long Forms

It takes time for users to fill the registration forms creating a barricade. Users take more time to fill the forms hence making it tedious. It is essential for users to reduce the size of sign up forms and as short as possible.

2. Website Usability Factors

There are website usability factors that you should consider to make your website usable for your specific audience and achieve specific goals. These characteristics are critical in rendering your site usable.

• Efficient

Efficiency is how fast a user can complete a task on the website. To make the website more efficient, you need to have the layout, visual and navigation that is easy to use depending on the device of the user. Also, shortcuts help achieve efficiency.

• Effectiveness

The effectiveness of website usability helps reduce error by ensuring the accuracy of data in the site. Also, the language choice for web content should be easy to understand for the user. The usability of the website will eventually increase due to understanding the language used.

• Engagement

Website usability factor occurs in a scenario whereby a user finds the content of your website very interesting. The goal is to have an explicit interaction with the user through proper page layout and great visual elements.

• Error minimisation

When designing a web page, you should reduce the errors such that it has high error tolerance. The error tolerance helps the user achieve their tasks more efficiently by making navigation elements more clear.

• Learnability

The users should be able to learn with ease how to navigate through the website. Likewise, the user should be able to cope easily in case a new development was to arise on the website.

3. Website User Testing Participants

The selection of proper user testing participants is a major factor since the data you want from them should be accurate. It is best to narrow the selection of proper user participants to mostly the users of the website. The best number in a usability test should be around five, but this number can go up depending on the organizations’ rules.

Besides, the selection of appropriate user testing participants should factor in the experience or knowledge of the domain rather than considering the age or sex of the participants. You have to remove bias when choosing your usability participants for effective results.

4. Using Focus Groups for Usability Testing

The use of focus groups entails six to eight representative of the target group together with an instructor where they voice their attitudes, opinions and feelings about the website.

Focus groups are ideally beneficial since you can gather opinions and ideas that can help you improve your website. Additionally, to run a focus group is very cheap especially with a huge number of people.

Conclusion

A site has to be usable for internet users to be able to use it. Moreover, the site has to ensure that it is effective, efficient, engaging and has error tolerance. Consequently, the number of users will be able to increase on a website due to its ability to have a clear interaction with the user. Website usability is set to meet a customer’s needs and wants as much it can hence it’s a customer service tool.

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by Chris London of Pixel Productions Inc. The Everything Design Company