Website Usability Testing

Website Usability Testing

There are many reasons to build a website but if your customers are finding it difficult to use you may be confusing, annoying or worse, losing them faster than you can get them there. Whether it’s buying a product or simply looking up contact details nothing will drive a customer away faster than a website they can’t use or don’t understand. Once that customer has gone chances are they won’t be back, so first impressions count.

Website usability testing in the form of either a simple usability review or a usability test workshop can tell you a lot about how customers use your site and why they leave. Being able to see your website through their eyes provides invaluable information that you can use to enhance your online presence and make sure your company succeeds online.

If you’re a company engaging in ecommerce a staggering statistic to consider is that website usability testing has shown the average ecommerce site could increase sales by 79% with a usability redesign (source: Jakob Nielsen). This could be the difference between staying in business and going out of business.

Here at Punkyduck we provide different levels of website usability testing to suit your company’s needs and budgets. Ensuring that when customers visit your site they don’t go away empty handed.

Website Usability Review

A website usability review allows members of our qualified team to review your website and record areas that could be improved. Armed with this report we can work with your company to prioritise and fix these issues. Driven by years of user interface design and aided by best practice guidelines Punkyduck can provide invaluable advice for improving your website and helping customers fulfil their objectives.

A website usability review consists of:

1. Initial discussion to see what the objectives of your website are
2. Review undertaken by one or more of our qualified team
3. Findings reviewed in-house
4. Report compiled
5. Report presented with recommendations
6. Prioritisation of work
7. Assistance with work

This low cost option is a good starting point for any company wishing to make their business succeed online.

To talk to us about website usability reviews, website usability testing and how we can help your business contact us on 0845 0 347 374 or email us at usability@punkyduck.com

Usability Test Workshops

In conjunction with you and representatives of your company Punkyduck can perform a review of the objectives for your website, whether this is selling products and services or just providing users with information. From this a set of scenarios is drawn up to test and observe user behaviour whilst attempting to accomplish these.

Often the tasks that you consider are clear and simple to perform are the ones that users have the most difficulty with. Your familiarisation with the website can stop you from seeing the problems that they face.

We recruit relevant candidates for the test workshops from a given criteria of age, occupation and any other demograpghic required and then question and monitor their behaviour while they run through the scenarios. In addition to questioning we can use eye tracking tools to monitor what users see as it's often found what the they tell you they are doing isn't what they are actually doing. Once a review has taken place we produce a report highlighting issues and providing recommendations backed up by the data from the eye tracking tools. We can then work with you to help implement these changes and test they are having the desired effect

Usability sessions help to identify the main issues encountered on your website and provide a list of recommendations your company can use to maximise the potential of your website. Some of the reporting outputs from the eye tracking tools are explained in Usability Reporting.

A usability test workshop usually consists of:

1. Initial discussion to see what the objectives of your website are
2. Participants criteria agreed
3. Scenarios drafted and then reviewed with your company
4. Scenarios finalised, timescales worked out and participant schedules calculated
5. Participants located
6. Usability workshop conducted in our usability lab
7. Recordings and eye tracking output analysed
8. Reports compiled
9. Report presented with recommendations
10. Prioritisation of work
11. Assistance with work
12. Retesting of changes

To talk to us about usability test workshops and how we can help your business contact us on 0845 0 347 374 or email us at usability@punkyduck.com