Why all the testing?
Usability testing shouldn’t just be an idea flying around that your company might or might not try – it’s imperative. There’s a good reason why companies behind successful products do it: usability testing is the key to optimized user experience. It can contribute to increased conversion, and eventually improve your brand’s perception. Everyone loves an easy to use, intuitive website.
Data in itself is not enough
You might think that using analytics is enough. It is definitely useful, however, while used alone, analytics reports don’t have actionable points to move forward with. You need to see the human experience behind the data, so you can figure out exactly where and how to spend your resources.
Let’s say you see a high bounce rate on one of your pages. The data shows black-and-white that there is an issue. But what is it? Setting up a usability test with a couple of people from your target audience might just give you the answer.
As a business, you obviously want people to use or buy your product or service instead of any competitor’s, and in order to achieve that, you need intelligence.
Put yourself in the customers’ shoes
People buy services or products because they want to achieve something. There’s always an underlying goal; a reason behind the product. You need to make sure that visitors to your website are faced with a streamlined, intuitive and convincing conversion funnel, with little to no disruptions.
You need to understand where they struggle, get confused or become frustrated. It is crucial to find out what would make the user experience better, and what can help them convince to choose you instead of another website.
If you find the answers to these questions, it will help you to create a better and more relevant website for your customers.
There are also some great additional tools out there that can be combined with usability testing in order to achieve optimal results. Recorded user sessions and heatmaps, for instance, can give you ideas on what to focus on during usability testing.