Usability Testing
Websites with their structure, their technology and their contents are products made by man for man. Usability testing procedures measure how well the intended purpose is accomplished by the interaction of the single components and the access to information.
Several questions are asked. How long does it take, to reach certain information? Do errors occur during and how crucial are they? Is information being remembered and would the site be visited again or recommended.
A good performance in those areas obviously contributes significantly to the satisfaction of a visitor and ultimately leads to an increase in acceptance of the web offering. Good usability thereby adds to the accomplishment of the purpose.
Variety of Procedures
The numerous usability testing procedures mostly differ in the necessity of testing subjects besides the experts and in the development phase they can occur in.
Experts can assess the current state of development with quantitative, heuristic or cognitive methods or subjects from the target audience are used. Log analysis and field observations after the launch of a website top off a comprehensive web evaluation.
As a general rule, testing procedures should take place as early as possible in their respective phase, because ensuing adjustments and changes to the design are less costly this way. Usability testing is an excellent starting point when a re-launch of a website is planned.
Usability Testing at webmotive
webmotive relies on insights from different disciplines of usability research, like web design or linguistic and communication sciences, for the development of sophisticated web solutions.
We offer all common usability testing procedures from expert review to paper prototypes through to eye-tracking with heat-maps for existing or planned sites, evaluate them and submit profound optimization recommendations.
Although we are confident about our own implementations and test internally, you may choose the extent of usability testing and applied procedures throughout the development stages freely of course.
Summary
- Usability testing procedures measure how well the intended purpose is accomplished
- Good usability performance contributes significantly to customer satisfaction and acceptance
- Usability testing procedures differ in utilization of subjects and phase they occur in
