Test your website's usability

Are you getting good traffic to your website but not always getting the intended results? High percentages of site visitors who leave before completing tasks could be an indicator of site usability problems. To find out, you can do some web usability testing.

What is web usability testing?

Web usability testing is the process of finding specifics about the quality of user experience at a website. It's an analysis of how well users can use a site for its intended purpose.

What happens when site visitors use (or try to use) a site? Where do they have any difficulty or confusion? Does anything at the site frustrate them, possibly enough to leave? Problems can range from poorly labeled or broken links to a hard-to-use payment system or text that's difficult to read.

Your site may have a quality design that conveys the right image, and you may offer products and prices that attract numerous shoppers. But if those shoppers have any problems using your site to accomplish their tasks, your conversion rate will suffer as a result.

If your site isn't a commercial website, web usability testing can still identify ways for you to improve your site. Is your goal to provide information? Information gathered through testing can help you make the site information more accessible.

How much does web usability testing cost?

You can pay up to thousands of dollars for usability testing consultants and software. Or you can recruit people you know to test your site for you. When web usability testing was first done in the 1990s, usability testing software wasn't available, and website owners were still able to effectively test the usability of their sites.

When should you conduct web usability testing?

Testing your website for usability helps find problems and possible problems before they can affect more people. If your site is new, or isn´t live yet, test it as soon as it's at the point that it can be used. Test it before (to have a point of comparison), during, and after any redevelopments, such as a change in your site design or the shopping cart you use. If your conversion rate has dropped or isn't as high as you'd expected, usability testing can uncover problems at those times too.

Who to recruit as web usability testers

For most websites, testers can be just about anyone who isn't familiar with the site that's being tested. They may be friends, relatives, neighbors, students, and so on. Look for a few testers with varying levels of online experience, and don't ask the same person to be a tester more than once. You need testers who can experience the site as newcomers to it.

If the website is targeted at a specific audience — professionals in the field, seniors, teens, etc. — look for testers who fit that profile. They may notice things relevant to their experience that other people might not. However, testers who aren't from the target audience will still be able to provide valuable feedback.

What to assess when testing your website

The purpose of your website will determine what specifically to look for, but most of the following applies to all websites.

• Do users recognize what type of site they're at when they arrive at the site?
• Is the first impression of the site positive? Do the layout, color scheme, and content together draw users in?
• Are users able to skim and scan the text easily?
• Is the navigation clear for users? Are they able to go to the page they want right away, or do they have to click around or study the navigational text to know which links to click on?
• Are users able to complete whatever task you give them without any difficulty? Can they find prices, options, etc., easily?

Web usability testing steps

Identify your goals. Do you want users to buy your products? Contact you about your services? Sign up for your mailing list?

Prepare pages for your notes. You'll need to record impressions, difficulties, and feedback as your testers work their way through the site. Do you want to work with a blank page for each tester, a column for each web page or task, or another method of organization for your notes?

Establish rapport with each tester. Set up individual testing times and make testers feel welcome. Or better yet, have the testing take place in the testers' homes or workplaces. Set a relaxed tone. Clarify to the testers that they can't make mistakes; the goal is to find out how easy or difficult it is to complete those tasks the way that they choose. The test is a test of the website function, not of their ability.

Explain to each tester what you want. Give them specific tasks to complete, such as to compare items and to order one. Ask them to say what they're noticing and thinking throughout the experience. If necessary, ask open-ended but non-leading questions to elicit more feedback. Avoid using jargon.

Let testers complete the tasks in ways that feel natural to them. Do not offer to help testers with the tasks. If they require help, they've helped you find an area that needs improvement.

Take notes throughout the process. At what points do the testers hesitate, misunderstand something, have to backtrack, spend time searching, or look frustrated? What do they comment on? Record how long each step takes.

Organize your notes after each testing session. Write down anything you didn't have time to write during the test. Label each problem that surfaced according to how critical it is.

Other methods of testing website usability

Having people in front of you work their way through the site provides information beyond what any software program can tell you. However, you can also take some steps to improve your website's usability before (or without) going through usability testing with people.

Run your site through a link checker. You can manually check each page with a link checker, or some programs can be set up to check your site links at set intervals. Broken links, whether internal or external, are a source of frustration for site users.

Check your site in different browsers. Your site may display fine in one browser and look like a mess in others. You may not be able to get your site to look exactly the same in all browsers. But a realistic goal is to make the site presentable and usable no matter which browser people are using.

Check your site at different resolutions. According to July 2006 statistics, at least 17 percent of computers are at an 800X600 resolution. If you can't avoid a horizontal scrollbar for users at those computers, make sure that they can at least view the main content of the site without scrolling horizontally.

View your site through color vision simulators. By using a colorblind web page filter tool such as this one, you can view your web pages the way people with different types of colorblindness see them. This check can help avoid having text against a background that looks fine for people who see colors normally but that makes text difficult or impossible to read for those who are colorblind.

Ask for website feedback in webmaster forums. Some forums have sections where webmasters can post their site links to ask for feedback.

For more information on website usability, see these blog entries:

• On the way to checkout
• How important is website usability?