A Quick Guide to Website Usability Testing
Once your brand new website has gone through the initial design and wireframing process, you need to make sure that it conforms to your users’ expectations. After all, it’s your potential customers and website visitors who will be using your site for its intended purpose, not you or your web development team.
What Is Usability Testing?
Usability testing is the process by which potential website visitors try out your website, assessing whether or not it meets their needs perfectly. A recent article in Smashing Magazine points out that the usability phase of website design ensures that your website visitors will have the best possible experience when viewing your website, which is important when you have products or services to sell.
With the best will in the world, your WordPress or Drupal design agency can’t be expected to be completely up to speed with every type of commercial enterprise, so it’s particularly important to find out how the intended audience of your website responds to the layout and navigation of your site.
At What Stage Should You Introduce Usability Testing?
Ideally, you should aim to introduce usability testing as frequently as possible during the design process, as this is the best way of ensuring that you give your website visitors the best possible experience. Certainly you need some visitor input at the wireframing stage, as this makes sure that prospective customers will have a seamless experience.
The amount and type of usability testing that your site undergoes will be determined primarily by the size of your site and the type of products or services that you sell. It’s probably best to be guided by your web development team, as most of these types of organisations, including Drupal Design Agency website express, instinctively know at what stage the testing process will be most useful in informing your finished website.
Whether you choose to ask friends and acquaintances to undergo the tests or employ a team of researchers, this is a process that you simply can’t afford to miss out on, as it has so much impact on your finished website and its conversion rate.
Don’t be tempted to leave the testing until the website is all but finished, however, as any problems identified at this point are likely to be much more expensive and time-consuming to put right.
