Usability Analysis

Yes, we test on LIVE Humans

Here’s the scene…

FADE IN:
WEB USABILITY TESTING ROOM

A group of RANDOM PEOPLE are browsing a single website by desktop, tablet and mobile phones as the TESTER takes notes and tracks eye movements, explaining the process to CLIENT.

TESTER

You’ve paused, you stopped browsing. What are you looking for?

RANDOM PERSON

Sorry, I’m not really a computer person so I just don’t quite get it.

TESTER

No, it’s not your fault. It’s OUR fault and thank you for finding it.

INTERSELLER DESIGNER

Oh okay. I actually see the problem in action, and it makes sense now in the real world.

INTERSELLER DEVELOPER

Yep, that’s an easy change.

CLIENT

And that simple thing will cause sales to rise?

TESTER

Sometimes the little tweak is all it takes, but we don’t know until we test.

Usability Analysis takes away the guesswork that designers and developers and client opinion usually insert into a project. During testing – say, buying a product online – we sometimes find the test Human will need to pause and think about their next move.

Don’t Make Me Think

If it takes a split second to understand your site, viewers will typically tolerate this for a short while. As those split-seconds add up, it’s only a matter of a few more pauses in bewilderment before the viewer starts searching for your competition. Viewers always gravitate to the most simple design because it’s easy on the eyes and brain. That simple design should look easy, but in reality it’s a the hard work of InterSeller’s professional designers and usability testers. And of course our Live Humans.

  • If a navigation bar is difficult to use, viewers leave
  • If a homepage fails to clearly state what you offer and what users can do, viewers leave
  • If viewers get lost on a web site, viewers leave
  • If a web site’s information is hard to read or doesn’t answer key questions, viewers leave

See a pattern here? There’s no such thing as a viewer reading a web site manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other web sites available; leaving your site is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.

How can my business benefit?

With a heuristic evaluation of your site, InterSeller can develop a list of items to change and cause:

  • Increased productivity
  • Increased sales and revenues
  • Decreased support costs
  • Reduced maintenance costs
  • Increased customer satisfaction

So now that we know why we do Usability; how is web Usability done? Some of the services may include:

Heuristic Evaluations:
A Certified Usability Analyst examines the interface and uses recognized usability principles (the “heuristics”). The usability problems are discovered and then categorize and rate by a set of  heuristics.

  • Competitive Analysis
  • Personas
  • User Testing
  • P-E-T (Persuasion, Emotion, Trust)

A word about Quality Assurance

From our perspective, QA is a subset of the overall usability goal—after all, a web site isn’t usable if it isn’t working.

Quality Assurance is an important step in the web site development process and, by all means, should not be skipped. A broken link or a misspelled word may seem like trivial mistakes, but they can greatly undermine the credibility of your web site. You want people who visit your site to feel assured of the quality of the information they find.