Website Usability—The Art of the Deal

Your website is holding its own game of "Deal or No Deal." You display your offerings online and visitors choose whether they want to buy from you or not. Common reasons visitors will choose "no deal" include:

• I can't find what I'm looking for
• I'm not sure this is the right solution for me
• It's too hard to get what I want

If you want to improve your odds of making a deal, usability testing is the best way to discover any website's deal-breakers.

What is usability testing?

It may have a complicated-sounding name, but usability testing is simply a methodical way of watching people use a website. The person giving the test asks volunteers to perform a series of tasks on the website and then documents the results.

For the best results, you want a usability test to duplicate real-world situations as closely as possible:

• Choose volunteers similar to people in the target audience. If you are selling scuba gear, you might select volunteers with a range of scuba knowledge from interested beginner to expert.
• Define tasks the way that typical visitors would, like "buy the printer that's best for your business" not "put model #90210 in the shopping cart."
• Stay as invisible as possible. Resist the temptation to "help" when volunteers get stuck. Knowing that people cannot complete a task is valuable and quietly observing exactly how they get off track is priceless.

When is usability testing not valuable?

Usability testing reveals operational success or failure of a website. It is not designed to collect opinions. Research has shown that people may be successful in completing tasks on a website, but not particularly like it and vice versa. So, if you want to know whether visitors get a favorable impression of your business through your site or how your brand is coming across, focus groups or surveys would be better tools than usability testing.

Beware just asking around for opinions, though. People are notorious for telling pollsters the answers they think the pollster wants to hear and website "we want your opinion" surveys are no different.

Also, usability testing doesn't necessarily help in determining how to fix what's broken. It's quite possible to do usability testing, uncover a problem, and implement a cure that's worse than the disease.

When should I usability test my website?

The short answer is "early and often." You can go so far as to test a website or a redesign idea that hasn't even been developed yet. A pencil and paper sketch of your proposed home page can yield insight into navigation problems, missing information, or distracting clutter prior to burning (and reburning) expensive development time.

You can also usability test to settle an argument about the right way to present a feature of your website. Testing both options will quickly show which is the better choice. Many smaller-scale tests like this are always preferable to one large one as you gain the ability to refine and re-refine your design, navigation, and content.

One of the hardest lessons to learn about websites is "you are not your target audience." You know far too much about your business and your website to be a fair representation of your typical website visitor. Obtaining objective usability test data can give your website the edge needed to be a deal-maker, rather than a deal-breaker.