Website Usability
Online experiences are becoming increasingly important. Many brick-and-mortar customers are researching products online before visiting stores, and e-commerce continues to grow rapidly as a percentage of total retail sales.
In fact, many services, communications, and interactions with customers exist entirely online. This introduces interesting challenges for developing online pages and tools that deliver a pleasant user experience.
Usability testing can discover if your website’s content is interesting and “on target”; how well it communicates the brand and its services; how easy or difficult it is to navigate and what navigation can be improved; and what words or images can be misunderstood or misleading. Usability Testing can be conducted:
- Online. In website usability testing, respondents are asked to share their screen with a moderator, and then are sent through a series of use-case scenarios. A use-case scenario is typically a series of tasks that defines the online experience with a webpage or series of webpages. Examples of use-case scenarios include shopping for a particular item or browsing webpages for specified types of information. As respondents complete a use-case scenario, the moderator asks each respondent to talk out loud about what they’re doing and why—while also observing what links and pages the respondent is viewing. The approach tends to be largely observational, although the moderator may ask questions at certain moments during or after completion of use-case scenarios.
- In-Person. In-person website usability is conducted in much the same way as the online approach, but respondents are invited to a central location to complete use-case scenarios with a moderator present in the room. The moderator can view and track what links and pages the respondents are viewing, while asking questions along the way.
Experienced Qualitative Consultants
Decision Analyst has over 45 years of qualitative research experience and is a leader in developing innovative qualitative techniques. Our experienced moderators can recommend the qualitative technique best suited to your research needs.
For more information on our Qualitative Research services, please contact Clay Dethloff, Senior Vice President, Qualitative Research, by emailing him at cdethlo@decisionanalyst.com, or by calling 1-800-ANALYSIS (262-5974) or 1-817-640-6166.