Does Your Site Really Work For Your Users?

Are you puzzled over analytics that show high traffic coming into your site but low conversions

? Have you eliminated product and pricing issues? If the answer is yes, you may have usability issues that are difficult for you to see because you have become way too Internet savvy to realize that your website is not as simple to use as you think it is.

Some ecommerce business owners shudder at the notion of testing because it often means hiring consultants and spending money that they really do not have. You can relax because that is not what we are suggesting here at all. Of course, you can hire some razzle dazzle folks who will charge to go through your site with a fine toothed comb and discover everything that is wrong then offer to fix it for yet another fee but you may not need to do that. Instead, you simply need to find some people who are far less savvy than you, maybe even less savvy than your usual customers and who have less sophisticated computer setups than you do. These people can help you discover usability problems very quickly.

You probably do not have to look all that far to find the right testers. Ask among your neighbors, people in your church or your children, friends, parents to find people who are not all that comfortable with computers. Arrange to go to the homes of several people that you have identified. Now watch them work with your site.

First, ask them to go to your site. Look at how the site shows up on their computer. Is the page resized? If so, are the most important function buttons still located in prominent, visible places? Has all of the font translated correctly? How long did it take to load?

Next, ask them to do the things that you want any visitor to your site to do. For example, ask your tester to sign up for your newsletter. Watch to see how easy or hard it is for that person to do so. Ask them to search for something. Watch the results and watch the tester to see if they feel confident finding things on your site.

Finally, ask them to make a purchase. (You can cancel the transaction later or give them a credit card number to use.) Once the purchase has been completed, ask them how easy or not easy they thought the process was. Ask how it compares to other sites they use. Ask if they have any suggestions for changes to the site. Ask if the pricing was reasonable, if the shipping rate was acceptable and so on. Ask them to go to their email to be sure that the purchase confirmation email you always send actually arrived in the time frame it was supposed to arrive.

This kind of usability testing is invaluable and it really does not have to cost anything except a little time and possibly a neighborly gossip along with a cup of tea.

by: Jane Dawson

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