Usability testing is crucial for evaluating and improving the overall user experience of your website. At TrendyMinds, we perform usability testing to understand how users interact with your site, identify improvement areas, and create a user-centered design that makes navigation easier and achieves your business objectives. Types of Website Usability Testing There are several usability testing methods, each with its own purpose and approach. Moderated Usability Testing: In this method, a moderator guides participants through specific tasks (such as making a purchase) while observing their behavior and collecting feedback. The moderator can ask questions, provide instructions, and gather insights into the user experience. This type of testing, while more time intensive, allows for an in-depth understanding of user interactions and provides the opportunity to clarify any uncertainties.Unmoderated Usability Testing: Unmoderated testing involves providing participants with tasks or scenarios to complete independently, typically through an online platform or usability testing software. The platform records users' interactions and may prompt them to provide feedback or answer specific questions. Unmoderated testing usually offers more flexibility and scalability than moderated user testing since it can reach more participants; however, it may provide less detailed qualitative data than moderated testing.In-Person Usability Testing: In-person usability testing involves bringing participants to a designated space to interact with a product or website under researchers' observation. Researchers observe participants' facial expressions, body language, and immediate reactions. This approach is particularly beneficial when detailed and nuanced feedback, along with real-time observations, is essential for evaluating the usability of a product or service.Remote Usability Testing: Remote usability testing allows participants to test a website or prototype from their location, eliminating the need for in-person sessions. This method often involves screen-sharing or remote collaboration tools to observe users' actions and gather real-time feedback. Remote testing provides convenience, allows for a geographically diverse participant pool, and can be more cost-effective than in-person testing.Guerrilla Usability Testing: Guerrilla usability testing involves approaching people in a public space and asking them to test a website or prototype quickly. This method can generate rapid feedback and insights from diverse participants who may not be familiar with the website. It is a low-cost method to gather initial impressions and identify glaring usability issues. Types of Website Usability Testing Feedback Once you’ve decided on a type (or types) of usability testing, you can start gathering and organizing feedback. There are two main types of usability testing feedback. Qualitative Usability Testing Feedback: Qualitative feedback gathers subjective, descriptive, and detailed insights about users' experiences, opinions, and perceptions. It aims to understand the "why" behind user behavior and preferences. Qualitative feedback provides rich, nuanced information that uncovers underlying motivations, emotions, and usability issues. Quantitative Usability Testing Feedback: Quantitative feedback gathers objective, numerical, and measurable data about users' behavior, performance, and preferences. It aims to quantify the "what" and "how many" aspects of user interactions. Quantitative feedback provides statistical data that helps assess performance, identify trends, and measure the effectiveness of design changes. Analyzing and Applying Feedback from Usability Testing Analyzing and applying feedback is crucial in improving a website's usability and overall user experience. To help you more effectively decipher and act on usability testing feedback, here's one possible approach: Compile and organize feedback: Gather all the feedback and data collected during the usability testing sessions. This feedback may include observations, user comments, task completion rates, and time taken to complete tasks. Once you have this information, you should organize it in a structured manner, such as creating a spreadsheet with clear column headers, to make it easier to filter and sort.Identify common themes and patterns: Review the feedback to identify common themes, patterns, and recurring issues. Look for specific usability problems, areas where users struggled, or frequent suggestions for improvement. (Note: This is one reason why structuring your feedback to be easily filtered or sorted is so important.) Next, categorize the feedback based on the nature of the problems, such as navigation, clarity of instructions, visual design, or interaction difficulties. This step helps you gain an overall understanding of the main usability challenges faced by users.  Prioritize and categorize issues: Prioritize the problems into high-priority, medium-priority, and low-priority categories based on their impact on usability, frequency of occurrence, and alignment with the project goals. This task may be somewhat subjective, depending on your website and goals. In general, however, high-priority issues significantly hinder user experience or prevent users from achieving their goals. Medium- and low-priority issues may still require attention but can usually be addressed later.Analyze root causes: For each identified issue, analyze the underlying causes. Look beyond the surface-level symptoms, and identify the factors contributing to the problem. This analysis can involve reviewing user behavior and task completion paths and considering potential design or functionality constraints. Understanding the root causes helps you develop practical solutions rather than just addressing the symptoms.Implement changes and gather feedback: Based on the identified issues and their root causes, brainstorm possible solutions or design changes. You can then implement the proposed solutions or design changes as prototypes or wireframes. Test the prototypes internally or conduct additional usability testing sessions to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed solutions. Once the design changes have been finalized based on the iterative process, implement them in the actual website or application. After deploying the changes, monitoring user behavior and gathering additional user feedback are essential. Overcoming Usability Testing Challenges Considerations for identifying and engaging testers Identifying and engaging potential users for usability testing requires a thoughtful and targeted approach. Here are some steps to help you identify and engage potential users effectively: Define your target audience: First, you’ll need to define your target audience for the website or application. Use brand personas, if available, to determine the demographics, user characteristics, and specific requirements that personas deem relevant to the product or service.Choose recruitment channels: Determine the most appropriate channels to reach your target audience. Consider both online and offline channels likely to reach your desired user groups. Examples include online communities, forums, social media platforms, professional networks, local interest groups, and academic institutions. If you are conducting a remote usability test, many online testing platforms offer recruitment as part of their product, making this an effective option to find testers quickly.Develop screening criteria: Screening criteria ensure the participants selected for usability testing match your target audience. These criteria can include specific demographic characteristics, experience with similar products, or any other relevant factors. Dealing with contradictory or ambiguous results Dealing with contradictory or ambiguous usability testing results can take significant time and effort. Here are some strategies to help you navigate such situations effectively: Review testing methodology: Review the usability testing methodology and assess factors such as the sample size, participant characteristics, testing environment, task scenarios, and other variables that could have influenced the results. Identifying potential biases or limitations in the testing process can provide insights into why contradictory or ambiguous results may have emerged.Triangulate with other data: Consider triangulating usability testing results with other data sources. Sources may include analytics data, user feedback from other channels (such as customer support or user surveys), or user interviews. By examining multiple data sources, you can understand the user experience more fully and identify patterns that may help resolve contradictory findings.Investigate underlying causes: Dig deeper to investigate the underlying causes of contradictory or ambiguous results. Analyze the data to identify factors influencing participants' behavior or responses. Look for outliers or exceptional cases that may explain why some participants had differing experiences. Consider contextual factors, individual preferences, or variations in user goals that might have influenced the results.Consider different perspectives: Engage with your team or stakeholders to gather different views on the contradictory or ambiguous results. Encourage open discussions and diverse viewpoints to understand the findings better. Individual team members may bring unique insights or interpretations based on their expertise or experience, helping to illuminate potential explanations for the contradictory results.Iterate and retest: If contradictory or ambiguous results persist, consider iterating and retesting specific elements or scenarios. Modify the design, functionality, or content based on the insights gained from the testing results, and conduct further usability testing to validate the effectiveness of the changes. Iterative testing can enhance the design and uncover additional insights that may resolve inconsistencies. Hylant Insurance: A User Testing Case Study When Hylant approached us, the insurance company was maintaining multiple websites geared toward different audiences (commercial and personal buyers). They knew they needed to consolidate these sites into one that provided helpful, trusted information to clients and prospects. Usability testing was a crucial part of our research to uncover how to improve Hylant’s website and identify what we could learn from their competitors. Our approach included conducting unmoderated remote usability testing with ten users based on Hylant's target audience and screening questions to gauge users' familiarity with the insurance industry. Once we identified our testers, we asked users to complete 14 questions and tasks to inform our strategy for the new website. Our testing revealed that users thought Hylant only operated in the niche area of employee benefits, not the more extensive range of solutions the company actually offers. This feedback led to improved messaging on the homepage and informed the navigation on the new site. Additional tasks we had users do reveal that many users had difficulty navigating the site and couldn't figure out how to get a quote online. Asking users to accomplish the same tasks on competitor's sites revealed other ways we could improve Hylant’s website, including improving the visibility of the site search tool, creating more prominent CTAs, and using white space more effectively to improve the user experience. View the full Hylant case study. Conclusion While many people might assume that usability testing is only an upfront piece of research before website design and development, it’s so important to make it an ongoing component of the design and development lifecycle. Continuously gathering user feedback and making iterative improvements based on that feedback will help you create and maintain a user-centered website with optimal usability well into the future. If you have questions about usability testing and other services we provide, contact us for more information.