Website Usability Testing

Search engine marketing plays a very significant role in improving the volume of quality traffic to your website but if the site is difficult to use, does not clearly state what the company offers and if it’s easy to get lost on the website, people are just going to leave! This could affect the number of visitors coming back to your website. On the other hand, if your website is easy to use, it is equally important to have relevant content on it to make sure users find what they are looking for as both these factors complement each other.

According to Jakob Nielsen, an expert on Usability , the main 5 quality attributes are:

• Learnability: Can users easily accomplish fundamental tasks the first time they come across the design?
• Efficiency: How quickly can users perform tasks once they’ve got accustomed to the design?
• Memorability: How easily can users re-establish proficiency when returning to the design after a period of time?
• Errors: How many errors do users make and how do they recover from it?
• Satisfaction: How satisfying is it to use the design?

How to improve Website Usability

User testing could be the most basic and useful way to check website usability . Here, you could invite customers or individuals outside your department to interact with the design by performing key tasks. Observe what the users do, where they succeed & what difficulties they come across with the user interface. Use this feedback to make necessary changes. Generally, testing 5 users should be enough to identify design problems with your website.

How to work on Website Usability

Here are a few steps to check usability at different stages of the design process:

• Test the old design to identify the good parts and avoid the bad ones
• Test your competitor’s designs.
• Make paper prototypes of one or more design ideas and test them.
• Refine the best design ideas and test them through multiple iterations.
• Inspect these designs relative to usability guidelines.
• Once you finalise your design, implement it.
• There are always a few usability issues that creep in during implementation.

It is generally recommended to assign 10% of your design budget to website usability . Companies should look to conduct frequent studies that will help improve user experience.

• No Related Post