We all think our websites and blogs are easy to use. The positioning of navigation elements, the words we use for page titles, the widgets in the sidebar … they all make perfect sense. To us.
It’s easy to lose sight of the readers of our blog, who – depending on our niche – might have very different expectations from the ones we have. And the features which make perfect sense to a repeat visitor might confuse someone who’s come to our blog from Digg or StumbleUpon.
Here’s how to get your site “user tested” in order to make it more reader-friendly:
- Find a willing victim who’s never used visited your site or blog before. This might be a friend, a colleague, your spouse or your mum.
- Sit them down in front of a computer (ideally their own machine — or at least set yours up to resemble their’s. For example, they might be used to IE not Firefox.)
- Grab a notepad. Let them go to the site – watch what they look at, what they click on, and so on. Encourage them to talk as much as possible: what are their first impressions, what are they thinking, why are they clicking that link?
- Concentrate on writing down as much as you can – you can go through and organise the notes later. Pay particular attention to:
- Anything that confuses your tester. Eg. “I was about to type a search word in this box but now I realise it’s to put my email address in for updates.” Or, “I’m clicking on this link because I don’t know what it means and I want to find out.”
- Anything that they can’t easily find. Eg. “Where do I go to send you an email?” Or “How can I tell what this blog is about?”
- Anything which they misinterpret or don’t understand. Eg. “I’m clicking this ‘RSS’ link so I can get updates to my email.”
- While testing is underway, resist the urge to jump in and show your tester how to do it. Don’t explain or make excuses (“Yeah, that page still isn’t fully implemented…”) – your other visitors won’t have this benefit.
- Once you feel you’ve got all the useful information you can, or once your tester is bored, ask a few final questions:
- Did you find the site/blog easy to use?
- What would you say that the site/blog is about?
- Would you come back to the site/blog? If not, what put you off?
- How do you think I could make the site/blog better?
You might also want to ask some questions specific to your site/blog’s aims (eg. “Would you subscribe to my blog?” or “Would you buy something from the site?”)
Don’t forget to thank your tester for their time (offering coffee and a cookie is a nice touch).
If you can, try to repeat the process with other testers – look for common themes (such as page titles which everyone finds confusing). Then, and this is the important part of the process, find a few hours to sit down and rework your site to take the feedback into account. Ask the same tester(s) to review it again: do they find it easier to use? Would they be more likely to buy a product or subscribe to your RSS feed now?
I’ve found that getting sites tested in this way can save a lot of wasted time in performing unnecessary tweaks – and can potentially result in much happier visitors. Have you ever tested a website or blog in this way? What were your results like?