Having an appeal is vital. Recent studies have shown that aesthetics bring credibility, which means providing the best user experience is key. To achieve this, you must carry out at least one usability test of your website.
This article will explain what a usability test is and how it is done.
What are usability tests?
Usability testing is a series of actions to evaluate the ease of use of your website from the perspective of the end user.
This test involves a group of representatives to give feedback on the quality of your website. The more difficulties encountered, the more improvements are needed.
Not only that, most people come to your website for specific needs, like booking a ticket or searching for information. They often spend a very limited amount of time doing such things. If your website doesn’t meet those needs quickly and easily, they will move on to another website that will.
Focusing on providing the best user experience, usability testing should cover all development processes of website creation. To break it down, the test should be performed:
- Before making any design decisions.
- When you need more information in the middle of the development process
- When there are conflicting opinions about the design
- When you need to evaluate things after launch
In short, usability tests are performed at the brainstorming, prototyping, and evaluation stages.
Within each stage of the test, the participants can be accompanied by experts, called UX researchers and UX designers, who will be responsible for the entire testing process.
Depending on the type of test, there may also be unmoderated tests. (We’ll talk a bit more about usability test types later.)
In general, usability tests are designed to ask participants to perform certain tasks and take note of the findings.
For example, you can ask a participant to book a cheaper one-way flight from New York JFK International Airport to London Heathrow International Airport on a specific date, and then tell you how easy the process is.
There are basic parameters to evaluate in a usability test. Researchers can not only collect the results easily, but also improve the accuracy of the results.
Easy to use
If your website is well designed, there will be many participants who will complete the given task without any difficulty.
Efficiency
The less time it takes to complete a task, the better your design will be.
Mistakes
Without a doubt, your web developers will fix bugs before finishing a project. However, if during the test, grammatical errors or design anomalies are found, the participants will help you detect them.
Satisfaction
If your participants can finish the tasks but have complaints, you should improve the satisfaction levels.
What are the common types of usability testing?
There are many types of usability tests, but we would like to mention three of which are the most relevant.
Usability test in person or internally
This type of usability testing is done on-site, moderated, and observed by researchers.
While the participants could be your employees, hired to perform such tests, it would be better to use a fresh set of eyes to get unbiased results.
There are some popular techniques for this type of web usability testing:
- Eye tracking: to know where participants look on a single page
- Classification: ideal for building structures and navigation or labeling
- A/B tests: great for comparing two designs
Unmoderated remote usability testing
This type of usability testing is not on-site or moderated by researchers to eliminate any issues that may occur.
With this method, you can use your own online tools and reach as many participants as you need from all over the world. Not only can you get the results faster, but this test will also be the most convenient for the participants.
There are many online services that can help you perform such tests. For eye tracking, you can try or which will collect data from what people see through webcams.
For card sorting test types, it’s to learn how participants would organize your content. And for A/B tests, you can try and to run the test.
Moderate remote usability testing
This type of usability testing is something in between the types of in-person and unmoderated remote testing.
The biggest benefit of running this type of test is that you can get high-quality results quickly while keeping your participants comfortable.
If you don’t have the best tools for remote testing, you may find unclear results for certain points. On the other hand, in-person tests may take longer to get results.
For this type of usability testing, you can try or which is more advanced.
These three types of usability testing methods have their own pros and cons, so you need to choose the best types for your website.
Now, let’s continue with how to do a usability test of your website.
6 steps to carry out usability tests of a website
There are six steps to perform usability tests on a website.
1. Determine what to measure
As a starting point, you should clearly indicate what you want to achieve with the tests and what part of the website is the target.
For example, do you just want to know how users will successfully book a ticket? Or do you want to discover how a new design could help the user experience?
While it is always recommended to take one test at a time, the most important thing is to define your goal clearly so that you can measure the test well.
2. Identify the best method
As we mentioned earlier, the method you use for usability testing is crucial.
If you want to run a series of tests involving the same people, you can test in person on the site. But, if you want fast results but still high quality with participants from all over the world, you can use moderate remote usability testing.
For example, with loopback, you can create a link for participants to access. You can then ask them to install the app and start testing. While you can let them do whatever they want during the session, you still have control over which parts to test or which actions to take.
3. Create a task scenario and set your success rate
The task scenario is somewhat similar to what we mentioned earlier about booking a cheaper one-way flight on a certain date.
Once you set the stage, you need to determine your success rate.
Suppose you can include the ease of finding the right booking page as an indicator. You can determine if all four fields must be correct all the time or if you can tolerate errors in one of the fields.
Also, you may want to include time limits for the booking process as an indicator of success.
4. Find the participants
The usability tests you carry out must be effective and efficient. Therefore, finding the right participants is a very important factor.
Usually, five participants they are ideal for each test session: it is easily managed and does not cost much if you use third-party services. However, the stages of development and the testing method determine how many participants are needed.
For the initial development stage, you can use the hallway method where you can choose random people to test your website. However, with this method, you may not need to study the ideal user first.
On the other hand, in the later development stage, choosing participants who are close to your user persona can lead to more accurate results. The user personality it’s anything that actual users of your products reflect, including their features, needs, and goals.
5. Take the test
While you can use random participants, you should not use random techniques for a single session.
That said, when testing, you should make it consistent in terms of task and order, even for unmoderated remote users. Passing clear and concise instructions to the participants is helpful.
You can tell how long the test will last, how they should comment on their findings, and what the purpose of the test is.
6. Analyze and report your findings
Depending on the type of test, you can summarize the results and organize the reports according to your goals. You can analyze the results by thematic or correlational analysis.
If you test alone, you can create a customer journey map. This is important to get memorable information. In addition, it allows you to get a user perspective on the matter.
Another method is to use spreadsheets to rank things like pros and cons, major and minor issues, normal and critical issues, etc. This will make it easier to plan any improvements to the website.
If you use third-party services, you can choose what kind of results they will get from them.
conclusion
Web usability tests are important for your business to get the best designed website possible that is focused on the end user.
There are three types of usability tests that you can choose from depending on your needs and goals. Namely, in person or at home, remote moderated and remote unmoderated usability testing.
After choosing a method, you can perform a usability test using these six steps:
- Determine what to measure
- Identify the best method
- Create the task scenario and set the success rate
- Find the participants
- take the test
- Analyze and report your findings
Now yes, there should be no excuse for a bad customer experience on your site!
Deyi is a digital marketing enthusiast, with a background in web design, content creation, copywriting, and SEO. She is part of ‘s SEO & Localization team. In her free time, she likes to develop projects, read a book or watch a good movie.
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