The success of a website depends heavily on its user experience and appealing website design. These are among the most crucial elements to increase the conversion rate and trustworthiness of your website.
The majority of visitors come to your website to fulfill certain needs, such as making a reservation or gathering information. Potential clients will go to another website if yours can’t promptly and simply satisfy their expectations.
A bad user experience on eCommerce websites can cause over 90% of online buyers to never use them again.
The usability of a website must be tested in order to provide users with an efficient and gratifying experience.
Testing a website will assist in evaluating its usability, effectiveness, and user happiness and find any faults that may have gone unnoticed.
In-depth explanations of website usability testing, typical testing techniques, and more are provided in this article.
What Are the Typical Usability Testing Techniques?
Many usability testing techniques are available based on your objectives and measurements. Let’s examine seven popular techniques, their advantages, and appropriate times to employ them.
In-Person or In-House Usability Testing:
On-site testing is done for this kind of usability. Researchers can supervise and moderate the test, giving directions to each participant and scoring it.
To carry out the test, qualified researchers must be hired. It may be necessary to recruit frequent travelers as your participants if you’re evaluating a website for purchasing airline tickets.
Also, you can use test participants who are your workers. Yet, because they are probably already accustomed to the layout of your website, it can result in biased results.
It is advised to use a usability testing lab for internal testing. This minimises the variability in test results brought on by outside factors by ensuring that all testing sessions use the same tools and surroundings.
Nevertheless, this approach requires more funding and can only accommodate a smaller number of participants every session. It is therefore perfect for obtaining in-depth data, researching how users interact with the website, and identifying any potential usability concerns.
Unmoderated Remote Usability Testing:
Unmoderated remote usability testing takes place in an uncontrolled setting without a moderator. Instead, participants can use their own device to complete the test anywhere.
This test costs a lot less even though it doesn’t produce a thorough result like a moderated internal exam.
The participants are reached via online technologies in this manner. Maze is a great remote usability testing programme for task-based tests, while Gazepoint or RealEye let you run eye-tracking tests remotely.
The benefit of this approach is that participants are more likely to complete the exam in a setting that closely resembles real-world usage.
This approach should be used following a moderated website testing exercise. The reason for this is that the moderated testing may produce important discoveries or hypotheses, and you must now test a bigger sample size to confirm them.
Remote Usability Testing With Moderation:
This approach combines in-person testing with unmoderated remote testing. The participants in this test may be in their own surroundings, but a moderator will be instructing and monitoring them.
When you are concerned that results from unmoderated usability tests would be ambiguous, you might wish to employ this technique.
You need skilled moderators to interact with the participants because this kind of user testing necessitates moderating and monitoring participants remotely. You’ll also need the right tool to communicate with the users.
Lookback is among the greatest online resources for moderated remote user testing. It enables you to take notes, moderate the participants in real time dialogues, and transmit links to the usability assessments.
Guerilla Testing:
The most basic type of user testing is guerilla testing. By showing your prototype to unrelated individuals in a public setting, like a cafe, it collects feedback. It is a simple and inexpensive way to test out new concepts.
Paper prototyping, a procedure that involves creating paper versions of your digital product, may also be used in this strategy. It can be made more quickly and for less money than a working prototype site.
Due to the lack of waiting for responses from qualified participants, guerilla testing is also time-efficient.
Also, because guerilla testing entails using random individuals, they might not be true users of the website specialty. The participants may not all be travellers, for instance, if you’re testing a website for ordering tickets.
Testing For Phone Interviews:
In a phone interview, participants are questioned by a researcher or given instructions on how to complete a task as part of a usability testing technique. Then, the participants provide feedback on the test item.
This approach helps you reach people and collect information from more diverse geographic areas, giving you a greater perspective on any potential problems with the site.
In addition, conducting a phone interview after unmoderated remote testing is an excellent idea. In this manner, you learn the justification for the participants’ test-related judgements.
Card Sorting Testing:
The virtual cards used in this internet testing technique represent several sorts of page content. The participants are then instructed to rearrange and group these cards. You then enquire as to the logical justification for their choices.
The test demonstrates how people perceive the layout of the website and, consequently, how they will utilise it to navigate. It aids website designers in structuring their work, helping them make choices based on the outcomes of usability testing.
Testing for Recording Sessions:
Screen recording is used in this technique to analyse how users interact with the website. The videos assist researchers in learning how user testers utilise the website, what features catch their attention, and whether they encounter any problems or misunderstanding as they explore it.
Conclusion:
Testing your website’s usability is an excellent approach to see how simple it is for users to use it. It’s also a terrific approach to gather customer feedback for enhancing the functioning and aesthetics of the website.
Depending on the needs and testing objectives, a variety of website usability testing techniques are available. These are guerilla, phone interview, card sorting, in-person or in-house, unmoderated remote, moderated remote, guerrilla, and recording session testing.
There are numerous professional web design experts who are well-versed with all kinds of useability testing whom you can employ to create web designs that one can conduct user testing on.