How You Can Use User Testing to Quickly Find Weaknesses In Your Website

by Adam Fairhead @adamfairhead

What is User Testing?

Check out this UX Cheat Sheet for a list of terminologies.

User Testing is the process of:

• Preparing a set of tasks from your product

• Giving them to a hand-picked group of participants to complete, under your supervision

• Gaining insight into how they use your product, and where their audience's are.

What investment do you need to start User Testing?

Check out this UX Cheat Sheet for a list of terminologies.

All you need for User Testing is time to prepare the test, and the knowledge of what to test. Depending on your approach, the financial investment is negligible. Particularly in light of the results you'll receive from effective testing.

• Option 1: The Fan Club method • Option 2: The SaaS method • Option 3: The Specialist method

Option 1: The Fan Club method

Make use of your product's fans. Some of them will jump at the chance of being able to have a live call with you. You're the owner of one of their favorite products, after all. Just to be able say they did. They'll be happy to tell you their thoughts about your product.

These fans will be able to screen share with you as they use your product.

It's nice to offer a small gift card to your fans as a surprise "thank you" at the end of a test. Just to let them know you appreciate them.

What investment do you need to start User Testing? (1 of 3)

Option 2: The SaaS method

There's two tools I'll cover in this option.

The first is UserTesting.com. These charge $49 per 15-minute video of a single participant using your product. It'll ask participants to complete your testing tasks. It'll then send you the video/audio files of how the test went.

The second is Inspectlet. No test arrangement required: they take recordings of actual site users. Sites like Salesforce and eBay are among Inspectlet's customer base. The downside to this tool is that you don't get to hear from the user directly.

If you're interested in going with Option 2, use both tools together. Neither captures data that is both demographic-specific with audio/video at the same time.

What investment do you need to start User Testing? (2 of 3)

Option 3: The Specialist method

This option involves working with a UX specialist. That specialist will lead your users through the User Testing. While you'll have to pay both the specialist and the participants to do it, you can give them this article's free gift. That'll make sure they really know how to run a successful User Test. This will make sure they're not missing any important business goals.

The best part of this option is that the specialist will have experience conducting these tests. They may be able to extract more information out of each participant than an inexperienced tester would. That'll make your tests more valuable. Particularly if you have an ongoing relationship with a specialist familiar with your product.

What investment do you need to start User Testing? (3 of 3)

How to make sense of your new data

Next, we'll cover how to make sense of your new data.

• Areas of hesitation • Failures • Different flows• Areas ignored • Analytics comparison • Reporting

Areas of hesitation

When your participants were attempting to complete your tasks, were there any points where they paused for a moment? Or had confused facial expressions, wondering where to tap or click next? Pay attention to those moments.

Facial expressions and hesitations can be a helpful insight into what your participants are really thinking. Since they tend to be less talkative in these moments, irrespective of having being asked to communicate their thoughts the whole time, these expressions are invaluable. Hesitations or facial expressions that suggest confusion might be opportunities to bring clarity to your product.

How to make sense of your new data (1 of 6)

Failures

Did any participants fail to complete a task? Watch their recordings carefully, and try to determine where they started going wrong. A failure may be due to one tiny mistake which derailed the whole process.

Think about how how clear such sections of your product are, and if you can make them clearer. Even a minor update could drastically reduce failure rate.

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Different flows

Sometimes, participants will find totally different ways of completing your tasks than you expect. Perhaps this is true of many participants.

If that becomes the case, consider whether your intended path is actually the most intuitive, or if your participants have revealed a better way.

There may be a new user flow to focus on optimizing that you never expected.

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Areas ignored

Did any sections of your product get ignored, that you thought would prove useful for the tasks they were asked to complete? If participants consistently forgo using a particular section of your product, consider whether it need it to exist.

Removing unnecessary features from a product allows for users to focus on features that do help them complete their tasks, with fewer distractions.

How to make sense of your new data (4 of 6)

Analytics comparison

Analytics show what users are doing on your site, but your User Test results give you an insight into why.

Compare participant activity with your analytical data to see how similar they are to each other. Hopefully, there will be similarities and patterns. Your test results may add depth to your analytics.

How to make sense of your new data (5 of 6)

Reporting

Test results can be a real time sink. After you've gone through all those results, you likely won't want to do so again for a while!

It's good practice to get a User Testing Report prepared that summarizes the results of the test, so that you (and others in the business that weren't a part of this process) can absorb the results as efficiently as possible.

How to make sense of your new data (6 of 6)

How to make use of your new data

Ready to apply what you've learned to your product? Great! There's three things you can do with your new data from User Testing. All three will result in a better product for your business.

• Refactoring • Pruning • Pivoting

Refactoring

Focus on the areas of your product your participants hesitated on, and find new ways of presenting those sections of your product. For example, if your product was a commerce site, and your user hesitated when asked to add a product to their cart, it could mean that your Add To Cart button isn't prominent enough.

Fixing up areas in your product that cause people to hesitate will make your product easier to understand.

How to make use of your new data (1 of 3)

Pruning

Any functionality that could have helped your participants - but didn't - is either unhelpful, unclear, or hidden. Every product is unique, so you'll need to discover which of those it is by analyzing your data and matching it up with your analytics.

Pruning away features that aren't important to your users will result in a leaner, simpler product. Unclear or hidden features are good candidates for refactoring.

How to make use of your new data (2 of 3)

Pivoting

Any areas of your product that were used much differently than expected should be looked at with an open mind. It's possible your users are indicating that a small pivot may benefit your product.

By allowing your product to change shape in response to your user's needs, it will become more closely aligned with your audience and what they truly want from a product such as yours.

If your product is a perfect fit for how the audience wants to work, your competitors doesn't stand a chance.

How to make use of your new data (3 of 3)

Building Processes

Some process documents can be reused across many businesses, such as the testing report template included in this article's free gift. Other process documents should be as unique as your business's USP.

Consider making User Testing a part of other processes, such as during beta launches or partial rollouts, to see how your audience responds to the changes you make. The library of reports you'll get from conducting ongoing testing will provide you with an invaluable insight into not only why your product is how it is, but also why it isn't.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully, you now feel equipped to go out there and introduce User Testing into your business. I really hope you do - there's fantastic information trapped inside your users that your business would really benefit from knowing.

Find more about User Testing, and about how to integrate it into your business, at http://fairheadcreative.com/blog/user-testing/