Do you regularly observe your customers actually using your products and services?
Usability testing involves observing your customers actually using your website (or prototypes) and seeing whether your products (or intended product direction) meets your customers’ needs and provides a compelling customer experience for them. Sometimes research participants are given tasks to accomplish and other times they surf on their own. Usability testing is the only way to directly observe and assess whether your product is easy-to-use and whether it provides a satisfying customer experience that will lead to success both for your users and for your business objectives.
Our Usability Testing service enables you to observe your actual customer experience and identify what is working and opportunities for improvement. If you want your customers to have a compelling customer experience, then your website must be effective in ALL of these Core Elements of the User Experience:
- Visual Design – is the site design effective? Does it support user needs and business goals?
- User Interface – This is what most of us think of as “UI” – the interface features and widget level components like menus, radio buttons, drop-downs, AJAX, sorting and filtering options, search, category and product detail pages, and so forth. Success of the UI depends on whether the widget level components and the overall interaction of them provides an effective and useful experience for your customers?
- Navigation – can customers move around the site from where they are to another place they want to go? Does the site help them to seamlessly explore the site and deepen their engagement with your product, brand and services?
- Information Architecture – is the information organized in a way that makes sense to the customers? Are the menus and content organized in a clear way that is consistent with users’ mental models?
- User Needs vs. Site Objectives (aka “Business Model”) – for a site to have long term success, it must offer a compelling customer experience while also having a successful business model. And because user experience is a constantly moving target, this experience must also be compelling relative to your competition as well. Does your site support user needs in the context of the business model? Is the site experience sufficiently compelling and engaging to lead to captivated loyal customers who make repeated visits, spend more time on the site, and are net promoters of the site and company?
Data always beats guesswork
Stop speculating and start getting objective scientific data to help your company obtain a competitive advantage. It sounds obvious, but if if your customers aren’t successful when they use your product, your product won’t be successful.
We’re here to help. Our team has spent the last decade observing customers using consumer products. We observe your customers and help you fix and improve your products – it’s that simple!
If you find yourself wanting to improve your customer experience and taking your website to the next level, then…
