Tylivia Web Design®

Usability Testing

 

How many times have you found yourself extremely frustrated when happening upon a website that confuses the heck out of you? You are looking for something, but have no idea where to click or links are not clearly defined? I know I have...and the first thing I do is type in a different URL. This is where we as designers have to create pages that are user friendly. Neat designs, graphics, flash, etc...are great when impressing your peers, but really is not that purposeful when trying to sell a product in a highly competitive market.

This brings us to thinking about "web site usability".

Web Site Usability: is the process of creating a sensible and consistent web site navigation structure that does not require any extra thought by the user.

The main reason visitors to your site leave are due to scanning the home page and not finding what they need within a gig a-second! We as designers, need to remember that the users don't really care about the design, graphics, etc... This is a pretty harsh statement, but statistics consistently show that the average Joe does not care how pretty or cool a website is. Joe just wants to retrieve the information he was looking for...and doesn't want to think about it.

So how do you know if your web site is "user friendly"? Try, having a friend, family member, or co-worker who is not a web guru and have them try to navigate your site. Watch how they click through the site when looking for something specific. Take notes and count how many clicks it takes to find what they were looking for. Note how much time they spend on each page. Make sure not to moan and groan or give them hints. These are the people who will give you the best idea of how to create a better navigation structure. If you ask your IT or web cohorts, they probably will not have a hard time surfing through your site.

Some key points to ponder when setting up your site's navigation structure:

• Keep it simple.
• Use one word buttons/links
• If you are using a graphic button, bevel it...make it look like a button!
• Use underlined hyperlinks
• Remember: usability is more important than graphical creativity.
• Keep each page consistent
• Place a name of the page in a large font to allow visitors to know they made the right click.
• Keep verbiage short and to the point! Don't overindulge with big words or descriptions.
• Make it obvious what's clickable.
• Break-up pages into clearly defined areas.
• Keep the noise down. Don't bombard your visitors with information overload and useless animations.
• Always remember that visitors "scan" pages...make sure that your "call to actions" stand out..
  
  

Listen, this is not to say that you should never use stunning graphics or animation ...I'm just saying that make sure your design decisions are equivalent to the purpose of your site. If you're designing for a rock band, then go crazy with a flash intro, tons of graphics, etc...but this is totally inappropriate for a site that is offering research information or selling products.

In any case, just make sure that you are not losing potential clients because you didn't pay attention to your site's usability!

Usability Testing:

We test using anonymous subjects. We watch and record, carefully, what they click, why they clicked it, and what they expect to see when they click it.

We ask them to "think out loud" when browsing the site or web page. We record every pertinent statements, mouse movements, etc. We than give them a post test survey giving us answers to what they liked, disliked ...everything for look and feel to the copy material and everything in between.

We also scan the web pages for navigational and layout issues, however, we also make sure that your web pages are coded properly and is cross-platform for all browsers and accessibility.

If you are interested in Usability Testing for your website or an on-site seminar,, contact us for more information.

--Harry Kerstetter - You can visit his blog at www.useabilityguy.com