Improving Website Usability
Website usability refers to whether or not people can use a particular website. If people can’t do what you want them to do (buy things, subscribe to things, request a call, etc.), they’ll go somewhere else, which is what makes clear insight into your website’s performance more important than ever.
Questions that website usability answers are: “How well does my website convert visitors into buyers? What are the key decisions that visitors must make on my website? Do I give visitors the information and tools necessary to make those decisions?”
Here’s what can answer those questions.
Website Analytics
Website usability starts with website marketing strategy objectives (i.e. “Increase the number of qualified prospects coming from web search engines”), and what you want your website visitors to do in order for you to reach those objectives (i.e. “See our listing in the top 10 results of a Google search and click on it).
2. Track how many unique visitors you get and how long they stay on your site (including how many pages they view).
3. Track how many visitors perform the actions you want them to (see 1.), and compare this number to your total visitors (see 2). The end result yields your conversion rate. If 15 out of 100 visitors requested more information from you, for example (assuming that’s one of your objectives), your conversion rate for information requests is 15%.
Once you have these key website analytics in place, you can start to evolve your tracking and find trends to exploit. If you notice higher conversion rates on weekends, for instance, spend more on weekend advertising and reduce advertising during the week.
Usability Testing
Usability testing is analyzing how people use a website. Typically, you’d ask a person to do specific things on a site, and then you’d record the activity for later examination. A lot of improvements can be made through usability testing because it reveals behaviors (read, errors) you might not have considered before. To conduct a usability test, follow these 5 steps:
1. Define your objectives. What do you want to accomplish with a usability test? Are there specific areas of your website you want to improve?
2. Recruit up to ten participants. Find people to participate and schedule their use of the website.
3. Script the test. You’ll need an intro script, the test script, and a post-test survey. The intro script is a checklist of things you want to discuss with each participant before they start the test. Make the person feel comfortable giving their opinion and reiterate that any feedback is good feedback. The next part, the test script, is a checklist of the actual things you want the person to do on the site. This is followed by the post-test survey, which asks the person questions.
4. Conduct the test. Here, you can walk the person through the test or simply let the person do whatever they think is right. The way the test is administered really depends on the objectives and the information you want to collect.
5. Report the results. Take the information collected during testing, and create 1 to 4 user profiles that describe the participants, what they needed from the website, what issues they encountered frequently on the site, and what can be changed to help them. This will help you explain the results to others, and you can reuse these profiles later when you are adding or updating areas of your website.
User profiles provide a great way to get everyone thinking about the actual people who visit your website. As you look across your data, what common roles, goals, and actions do you see? Can you detect any patterns? Add a name and a few pictures to those profiles, and you’ll be on your way to creating a more user-focused website experience.
External Resources:
1. A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition
2. Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed
3. Usability Testing Essentials: Ready, Set…Test!
