Web Design and Usability

Usability Testing Tools for Website

A number of factors need to be considered when you're planning to build a business website. Great user experience is what motivates customers to visit your site again. First, content wise, it should be useful and valuable to the targeted audience. Make sure that the important details about your business such as product range, prices, operating hours, and contacts are included. Second, it should have a pleasant interface. While every business website may vary in design style, which depends heavily on the brand image and vibe itself, some principles are universal. For example, consistency in page layout and navigation, use of white space, clear and legible typography, and many others.

While ensuring that your website content and interface are well done, one thing that shouldn’t be forgotten is its overall usability. It refers to how users can accomplish what they aim to do by visiting your website, which can be to obtain certain information, make a transaction, or give feedback. Good usability will result in customers satisfaction and lead to their using the website in the future. To check the performance of your website, usability testing can be done. Traditionally, methods such as interview, focus group, and A/B testing are used. If you didn’t have the time and resource to conduct the face-to-face testing, then usability testing tools can be a viable alternative. These tools can be easily found online, and each of them has different functions to suit your needs.

Usability Errors Usually Encountered

By making use various usability testing methods, web designer and developer could gain a more complete perspective of the users’ needs and motivations. However, even after identifying the rooms for improvement, some usability issues probably still left ignored. Here is a list of the common problems:

Compatibility: The customers may access your website from different browsers, so you will want to make sure that it runs well on the common browsers such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. Another type of compatibility is across devices. Sometimes people open a website from their mobile phone, thus it will be beneficial to have a mobile-friendly website.

Confusing process: As much as possible, make things easy for the customers. For example, asking user to create an account just to do simple stuff might be unnecessary. Another thing that should be avoided is complicated step to complete an action. For example, the checkout process in online retail website should be simple and only ask for the necessary user data.

Broken links: The existence of broken links can immediately leave a bad impression. When users click on certain link, they already have an expectation of what is gonna come up. Letting them down will cost a lot, as frustrated users are unlikely to come back.