STRATEGIES

Improve Your Site with Usability Testing

Find out how to make it easy for your customers to find what they're looking for

Note: This article originally appeared in the Yahoo! Small Business newsletter, Insights. A wide variety of other informative articles is available in Yahoo!'s Small Business resources page.

Is using your web site a breeze or more of a brain-tease?

If your web site is easy to use, your customers will continue to come back and, ultimately, do business with you. If not, well, you can figure out the rest.

Here's a step-by-step guide to testing your site to ensure that your customers can find what they're looking for:

Preliminary Checks
You may have already performed a series of simple tests prior to launching your web site. If you have not put your site through the list below, you are past due! Even if you did complete the tests, time, site growth and multiple people working on the site can often lead to accidental errors that can give your viewers a negative impression of your business.

So before making major usability decisions about your web site, complete the following preliminary check list:

• Broken Links: Broken links are on the top of the list of frustrating things to encounter when visiting a web site. When your audience clicks a broken link, it's like taking them to a dead end. You can download free online link validators, like the W3C Link Checker, or purchase services and software to help find broken links.



• Spell Check: This seems like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised how many popular sites are packed with misspellings, often in prime locations like links and page headers. The obvious answer is to make sure that content is proofed and spell-checked in a word processing program before a page is published. But, if you have loads of pages that are already live, try Spelling Checker to sniff out misspellings. This is a very basic tool that tends to pull in bits of HTML code, but it is effective in a pinch.



• Browser and Platform Compatibility Testing: Coding errors or alignment problems can cause web sites to look bizarre in different browsers and platforms unless you test, adjust and correct your site accordingly. The best way to check a site for browser compatibility is to have multiple browsers and browser versions (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, Safari for Mac) installed on several computers, and view the web site on each browser. Look for interface shifts, layout problems or errors that may inhibit your viewer's experience. To platform test, simply compare your web site on different computer operating systems, such as PC and Mac.

Navigation and Nomenclature
The Internet is fun, but getting lost or overwhelmed is not. Unknowingly, you can put your viewers through that experience by not labeling your web site's navigation properly.

The big secret to labeling navigation is simplicity. Stay away from industry-only or vague language. Make it easy for your viewers to quickly grasp the meaning of the navigation labels and go where they need to be.

An Example of Keeping It Simple: You own an online winter apparel store, and one of your web site's global navigation categories is "Scarves." It's tempting to call the category something snazzy like "It's a Wrap!" Avoid this temptation and keep the navigation label 100% clear, so you don't give your visitors the chance to get lost. By keeping your navigational nomenclature simple and to the point, you will help your visitors quickly and easily find what they are looking for.

Basic A/B Testing
Applying A/B testing to your web site can be as complicated or simplified as you need it to be--it's up to you and the goals you have in mind. An example of how to set up a basic A/B test is to first select a page within the site that contains a definitive call to action like a product page with a "Click to Buy" button or a service description page that has a "Download Our Free Brochure" call-to-action.

Using the "Download Our Free Brochure" service page example, you would create a duplicate of the original page, which will act as your prototype. Make the usability changes to the prototype and keep the original intact. The modifications to the page can be small, like changing the color of the "Download a Free Brochure" button. Larger modifications may include copy changes, the number of columns used on the page, tweaking the label on the download button, or revising supporting imagery.

Before you begin a live test, consider using a tracking application like Marketing Console, so you can easily monitor your traffic. Then, measure traffic on the original page and note how many times the free brochure is downloaded. Monitor the original page over a period of time, such as two or three weeks.

Next, swap the original with the prototype page and monitor it over the same amount of time. You should begin to see trends that you can use to make usability decisions. Keep in mind outside variables that may alter whether or not your audience is online more or less and affect the test results, such as seasonality and major global events.

Getting your audience to where they want to go easily doesn't have to involve tons of principles and web design ideologies. Just think like your audience. Ask yourself "what are they looking for?" and give it to them—simply and clearly.