Usability testing is one of those boring buzz words that makes me start day dreaming about how many five year olds I could beat in a fight. But the fact is, that it’s not only crucial and necessary; it’s actually very fun to do. Seeing people use your site, who have no idea what you do, is very eye opening.

So….

Test the crap out of your site – early and often; it’ll save you dev time and bad product decisions.
It’s hard – err impossible – to look at our own sites and see the issues others see, because we each know our site too damn well.

Building great features, and having a great looking site is not enough; a site can look good and still be very hard to use! You can easily miss fundamental problems that make the site confusing and make users miss your great features.

It is amazing to see how little people use some of the features that we’ve built and why they aren’t using them – they literally just don’t see them!

Statistics testing

You can get a very accurate and analytical idea of how users are spending time on your site by looking at the traffic stats.

1. Embed google analytics in your site – you should be using analytics already.

2. Go to Content-> Top Content in your analytics account.

You should page through to see the top pages people are visiting on your site.

3. Break your pages down into categories.

a. Highly trafficked

b. Moderate

c. Low

d. Never used

You should also use the “Find page containing” feature to filter the results and look at specific pages.

Another feature that works great is “Site Overlay” (under the Content section); this feature shows a visual representation of where people click on each page of your site.

Categorizing the pages will give you an idea of where they fall and where you want them to be; this doesn’t have to be exact; it’s just a general idea of where they fall in your overall site traffic.

4. Once you have a list of the pages you can:

a. Get rid of pages and sections that aren’t adding value and aren’t used.

b. Move important sections to more prominent locations.

c. Move or change links and menu items that are getting lost.

In-person testing

Traffic statistics can tell you what pages are the most popular, but they won’t give you a real user perspective of why those pages are popular, or what users find confusing. People may struggle to even understand fundamentally what the point of your website is, or may be missing great features all together because they don’t know they’re there.

There’s a great chapter in Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug, on usability testing that gives more detail on what I’ve listed below. I highly recommend reading this chapter and the book in general; it has great advice on making websites simple and easy to use.

1. Get 3 to 4 strangers who’ve never used your site before and offer them some cash ($40 or so) to use your site for an hour while you watch.

Don’t worry so much about the demographic of the users – you just need some people who use the web and haven’t used your site. You’re watching how people use your site, not trying to recruit new users.

2. Setup a computer in a private room so there are no interruptions during your session with the user.

3. Get a screen capture program so you can record the user’s behavior for later review.
Camtasia studio ($300) is easy to use and works very well; you can capture the user’s screen activity and audio (to record their comments). If you’re using a mac then give Silverback a try. I can’t personally attest to it’s value, but the reviews are good and the price is great ($50).

4. Explain to the user how the test is going to work.

Tell them:

a. There is no wrong way to use the site and no wrong answers – you simply want to see how they use it.

b. That they should talk out loud as they use the site so you can hear what they’re thinking.

c. Not to get offended if you don’t answer their questions. The point of site testing is to see how the user uses your site and therefore you can’t help them if they’re struggling.

5. Start the testing when they’re ready.
Show them the site first and ask them what they think the purpose of the it is – they should be able to answer this after looking at the home page for a few seconds.

6. Tell them they can click around freely and watch where they go first and what they say.
Encourage them to keep talking out load as they browse the site. Don’t take all their comments to heart, some will be minor and inconsequential, others will be major usability issues that need to be fixed.

7. Create a couple of tasks for the user to complete.
For instance: Ask them to find a photo they like and tag it if you’re running a photo site. It’s up to you to decide what the most important actions are on your site. Leave the tasks as open as possible so the user can pick how they want to complete each one – don’t tell them to tag a photo of a rabbit; tell them to tag a photo they like.

8. After you have enough data from the three users, review it immediately with the team.

Testing Tools

UserTesting.com

Usertesting.com is a great site that shows you a 15 minute video of a tester using your site and answering questions you specify. They charge about $20 per video and it’s been well worth it for us! You give the user a list of tasks to perform and then watch and hear as they click and talk their way through the process. What I like about this site is: a) it’s very easy to sign up and instantly get testers and b) it’s anonymous so it seems as though the users are likely to give honest feedback. I will continue to use this service to test all new major site features.

Feedback Army

Feedback Army is a user feedback or survey site. You get 10 surveys answered for $7. This has worked well for answering very specific questions and getting a larger sampling of the issue. Usability issues tend to be easy to spot as you watch someone use the site, so you only need a few users to hash these out. Questions like: “Do you like our site name? Why? or Why not?” can generate a wide array of answers and it’s good to get a median response by sampling a larger group.

Screen Capture & Recording

As mentioned above, these are good and simple ways to do user testing.

1. Camtasia studio – We have used this software and it works well. ($300)
2. Silverback – This comes highly recommended for mac users ($50).
3. Morae – I haven’t used this, but it looks like it gets the job done ($200)

If you haven’t got specific feedback, in-person, from users before, you’ll be blown away to see how obvious some usability mistakes you’ve made are. People are impatient on the web; they want instant gratification and you need to give it to them.