Website usability

Website usability is a notion related to efficiency, productivity and convenience of using a website.

We often forget that how our users see the site differs a lot from what the creators or the support see.

Sometimes it’s necessary to get an outside point of view to find some typical problems:

  • Inconvenient navigation,
  • Illogical structure,
  • Failed layout of elements on a page.

All these problems have a straight and dramatic effect on the indicator of website conversion. However, usability is not limited to pages hierarchy, attractive layout and logically designed interface. Correctly formulated and presented information also makes a constituent part of the success.

Well-organized presentation of the information has a positive influence not only on the website’s visitors, but also works to attract new ones. Putting it into our users’ language, you make the task for search engines easier, and the engines in their turn will be able to show your pages to the people interested in them.

What helps us understand the current state of your website’s usability and the direction of development? Here usability testing comes to help.

Usability testing in its turn falls into these categories:

  • Research, at the stage of development,
  • Evaluation, in real time usage,
  • Comparison, which supposes looking at two or more objects of testing and comparing them by the given data.

As we can see, testing can be conducted at any stage of the website’s life cycle, and it is highly recommended to organise such tests regularly, especially if you work in an active highly competitive sphere.

Testing can be conducted with the following methods:

  • Hall-test, a type of marketing research where a group of randomly picked people, not trained for this test, is observed in their interplay with the object;
  • Remote testing, observing people from different countries and time zones reacting on the object;
  • Method of expert evaluation, review of the object by a field-specific expert;
  • Paper prototyping, simply drafting by hand on a whiteboard, blank paper or printed pattern. It can help save time and money, if such testing is conducted before the development itself;
  • Inquiries and questionnaires, allowing to collect answers for directly formulated questions and present the data in a structured way;
  • “DIY”, supposing that a tester creates a true to life testing blueprint and follows it as a user;
  • Controllable experiment, thorough accumulation and comparison of the data collected from two users’ interaction with two specified objects with defined differences;
  • Automated research, barely using instruments of testing automation, which usually fall into certain patterns.

Having modified your site to conform with expectations of your target audience, you ensure yourself with their loyalty and raise the conversion rate.

Are you ready to start? Contact us.