Nowadays, it is a fairly common knowledge that if you want to boost your website conversion rates, the best way forward is to harness the efficiency of usability testing. Web designers are known for seeing their work in a particular way and this usually doesn’t fit in with the expectations of visitors and potential customers. Therefore, it is paramount that in order for a website to work effectively and lead to conversions, the user experience needs to be as good as possible. Here we look at how usability testing tool not only serve that purpose but also are able to increase the chances of your visitors actually buying whatever it is that you are selling.
The bottom line
If you can imagine that you have a website but no matter what you try, visitors never seem to hang around long enough to result in conversions. Not only would this prove to be frustrating, it will soon mean an end to your business. Usability testing tools like Userfeel.com are all about ensuring that your website serves a purpose and encourages those visitors to check out what is on offer. By testing the user experience, it is possible to remove any negative aspect of your website. Remember that your visitors are seeing the website differently to you and that means that it is easy to make wrong decisions during the design process. If used correctly, usability tool allow you an invaluable insight into how those visitors react to your website and this equates to potential success by way of conversions.
How it works
By now you are probably wondering exactly how these tools work? Well, initially, usability tools were designed for business plans and models but it was soon discovered that they could also be applied to websites. The main objective of usability testing is to identify and remove any friction points that will negatively affect the user experience. This is best approached by testing at the design stage and can also be applied to separate parts or pages of your site instead of the whole entity.
Three steps
As with most types of website testing, this process can be broken down into steps or stages:
Step 1 – Planning
- What exactly are you testing? Is it the navigation part or the entire content? Once this has been decided, it is easier to make plans for the actual testing.
- What is the purpose of this testing?
- How many people will help with the testing?
Step 2 – Running the test
- Over the shoulder testing is the most popular way to conduct usability testing. Typically, this involves watching or at least recording live testing and making note son comments made at each step.
Step 3 – Results
- Once the data has been collected, it is best to compare these results with each tester before making any decisions.
- Look at the conclusions and do your best to remove any problems.
These steps will not only help you to improve the conversion rate of your website, the results will also offer you an invaluable insight into the ways that your customers actually see the content and navigation of your business website.
