Testing, testing one, two, three (and four)
The web is all about the user. With choice at their fingertips, if your site doesn’t easily fulfil their aims, supply the answers they need or engage with joy, then don’t expect them to hang around. But how do you know what your site visitors want? It’s simple. You ask them and you test them. Here are four ways to get started today.
"Testing, testing, testing that’s all user experience folk bang on about". "It’ll add time to the project", says the long in the tooth project manager. "It’s too expensive", says the lunch-account abusing CEO. "What do customers know about design, I’m the expert around here" says the deluded creative.
To answer these oft-heard misconceptions I would suggest you get testing straightaway. There’s nothing like demonstrating you can get great insight from as little as a couple of hours testing to prove the point. So ditch a project meeting and test instead. Use the four tools below and the bill will come to less than a couple of rounds of latte-crappe-frappuccinos for the design team. That should win over the CEO. And as for expert designers, if a user can’t fathom your designs what expertise are you demonstrating?
Rapid prototyping. Sitting somewhere between paper prototyping and a wire-framing sits balsamiq mock-ups. It’s a $79 (free trial available) drawing tool featuring a library of common web elements. With its easy to use interface, it enables you to explore different designs in minutes. These on-screen sketches can then be tested, adjusted and re-tested without making a large dent in the design or code budget.
On-screen video capture. Want to see, hear and share with your project stakeholders what customers do on your site? Then you must take a look at Silverback from Clearleft. For a miserly $49.95 (free trial available) you get to capture a user’s mouse movement and clicks, alongside screen in screen footage and audio of them in action. This offers sophisticated guerrilla testing that should inform all design phases. Currently available for any Mac with iSight, but a PC version is coming soon.
A/B testing. Unlike any other medium, the web offers the ability to get live data on user behaviour and to rapidly adjust designs to get better results. By putting multiple designs in front of users, along with software to collate the results, you get quantitative findings on which designs are working best. Now you could do this with complex multi-variant testing applications such as Omniture or Maxymiser, or alternatively dip your toe in the testing water with the free, but powerful Google website optimizer tool.
Online surveys. If you want to know what customers think, then ask. Online surveys are a simple way to test opinion on your site. Of course, you need to think about the questions and analyse the responses, but getting a survey online couldn’t be easier or cheaper. Get a free survey online within minutes with Survey Monkey or 4Q from Avinash Kaushik (he of ‘Web analytics: an hour a day’ fame).
Now of course there are times when you would ideally run more comprehensive tests, use more extensive facilities and therefore spend more money. However stop using time and cost as barriers to getting customer insight. With your competitors only a click away isn’t it time you got testing?
Tags: ucd, user centered design, user testing
