Usability is a massive problem for many online business owners, marketers and web designers – not least as they can be so blind to it. So, how can you spot and fix those usability issues with your website that could be stifling your business’s growth?
That’s a broad subject to attempt to cover in one blog post – but what we can do is deliver some key insights.
Usability tests can be instrumental in improving your website
If you were able to watch a random person – or maybe a not-so-random person, such as a member of your target audience – use your website for the first time, do you think they’d find what they were looking for straight away? Or do you think they would struggle to find what they want, scratch your heads and then leave your site?
All too often, marketers and designers suffer from what is known as ‘the curse of knowledge’. By that, we mean that they’re so close to, and informed about, their own website that they can barely imagine what it must be like to be someone without any of that knowledge, trying to use their site for the first time.
Such a phenomenon only makes it all the more crucial to take steps to ensure that your site can be used by even the busiest, laziest and most drunken idiots. If you are successful in accomplishing this, you can bet that even a lot of sober and hard-working geniuses will appreciate the benefits in the form of a much more usable website.
Only usability tests can be truly depended on to help you to achieve this, as only they – rather than your own intuition – will really show you where you’re going right and wrong with the usability of your site.
How can you recruit people for your website usability tests?
It might seem the obvious thing to recruit individuals from your online business’s target demographic – for example, those looking to buy or sell a house if you’re an estate agent, or the kind of people who may wish to volunteer for your charity.
However, they aren’t necessarily the only valid people on which to test your website. You could also speak to your existing customers about participating in usability testing, or even directly invite people via your site. Even a completely random person could provide useful insights that you may not have gained if you had only tested your site on one person or a single group of people.
Usability is undoubtedly a tricky subject for even the most conscientious of online business owners, marketers and designers – after all, the most usable sites are often defined by what they don’t have, as much as what they do have.
Creating a truly usable site can be an extremely difficult endeavour when you are attempting to do this on your own, so don’t hesitate to talk to Piranha Designs about our acclaimed custom web design services that really can make all of the difference.
