Having insights about your website is very important. You can get these insights by seeing your clients using your website or products. Looking at the way they navigate, search or click the links on your site can provide you with information which you may not be able to get through data analysis. This way, you will be able to know about the blind spots in your website. An easy way to see what your users do in specific situations or sessions is to do the user testing.
If you want to do well in terms of SEO and marketing, you have got to know your audience.
What is user testing?
User testing is a kind of user research in which your users will not only give you answers to the questions you ask but they will actually work for your website or your products. This way, you are better able to know what works well for your website and what doesn’t.
Why and when
It is quite important to get user testing insight next to the data extracted from analytics. Some of the outcomes are easy to understand and you will be able to edit them without any trouble. Other insights are complicated, and they may need to thought about, designed and/or developed.
Adding user testing to the process needs to be done at an early stage. For example, you can create a staging website for testing purpose when you are designing the new website or product. A response form the users will help you make valuable modifications in the development of the main website. If you are launching a product, you can design a prototype. This way, you will be able to know about the shortcomings of your product before even it is launched.
One thing worth mentioning here is that user testing can be performed at all stages of the process. You can do the user testing for a product for which you would have done such testing 2 years back. That will help you to know about the current perception about your website.
Types of user testing
- First type to talk about is the live user testing with a moderator. This live user test involves a tester testing your website or product and a moderator noticing the process and results. This test usually requires you to gather tester and moderator in a quiet place, like an office. However, it really depends upon the type of product or service being tested.
- Another type of testing is known as remote user testing with a moderator. In this scenario, the tester will not be at a place where the moderator will be present. However they are connected to each other through a video call. This way is easier because you can find testers from anywhere in the country or even world.
- The third kind of testing is the remote user testing without a moderator. The tester will receive your instructions and do the testing at the time and place of their choice. The major advantage of this approach is that you can easily make many people testing your website or product.Nevertheless, it will not be quite easy for you to collect the outcomes from all of the testers and compile those results.