Let’s just say that you
created a website for your product or business. Large or small. At this point
you are completely aware and informative about your product or services. You
are now know too much to be able to tell if the product is usable to the people
that don’t know as much as you do about the product. And you also can’t be
guessing either so that’s why Usability testing is essential to the
development. (Barnum, C. 2011). Usability is the way customer looks
at the site and the way he or she uses with ease and its value to him or her. Then
once he or she finds their experience satisfactory after using the site, the
site has a greater chance to be successful in the future. (Roberts,M,&Zahay,2013.page.378).
So how do you know if the usability of your site is effective? This is where
usability testing comes in. Usability testing plays an important role in the
web development process (Roberts,M,&Zahay,2013,page.378).
Which is one of the others perspective I will discuss and also examine the
methodology of usability testing.
Usability testing is not conventional marketing research.
Even though it may incorporate focus group research techniques into the testing
process. It is more similar to the testing done by direct marketers than to the
marketing research survey approach which commonly used by mass media marketers.
The testing is mainly focus on to see how user-friendly the website is and if
it meet up with the client’s expectation. These tests are being performed by
marketers and not technician. (Roberts, M, &Zahay, 2013, page.379).
Performing usability testing is very beneficial because it lets the design team
and the development team identify the errors or problems before the codes are
implemented in the website. The result of the tests will let you see if the
visitors are able to complete a certain tasks on the web site successfully.
Measuring how long it take to completing
the task, how satisfy the visitors feel about
the website and also to identify the changes
that are being required to improve the user performance and what need to
analyze the performance to see if it meets the objectives and requirements.(Usability
testing.2015). There are three stages of usability testing that I will go over
briefly.
The earliest stage is the concept testing stage. The
stage reflects none of the actual site programming. In the progression of this stage,
there will be a couple of concept boards to be shown and critique to see if the
concept is reasonable and also how easy
it is would be to use. (Roberts, M, &Zahay, 2013, page.379).
Concept tests are very useful and are done to prevent major flagrant design
flaws and to give the designers an example of what the customer’s thoughts and expectations
of the design concepts (Roberts, M, &Zahay, 2013, page.379).
This can be done very quickly in a focus group and since it requires only the
development of concept boards, it is also low cost and very cheap. (Roberts,M,&Zahay,2013.page.379).
Prototype testing is the second stage of usability
testing. At this stage of development, there are some parts of the website is
working but the web site design is now complete. Testing a prototype gives the
designers a chance to get reaction and feedbacks on how the site is presented, the
appearances of the site, the consistency, and see if the site will correlate
with the customer want’s and expectations.
Conducting the prototype testing early lets you seek errors and make corrections
and changes sooner which can reduce production time and cost of the site. Early
testing also mean that a lot of the site is not operating and the test will be
somewhat fake. The marketers must carefully choose the tradeoff between early
and more complete testing (Roberts,M,&Zahay,2013page.379).
The last stage of the usability process is full usability
testing. At this point of stage, the website is fully working. The majority of
the website is functioning and is uploaded to a web server. But at this point
it is not live to the public yet. The main focus and objective of performing a usability
test is to observe and study the tasks that is given to the tester to simulate
what a potential customer would want to do while he or she is using the website
and expect to do on the website (Roberts, M, &Zahay, 2013, page.379).
Testing stages are very crucial in the development
stages. Because this is the stage before your website, product, or services
gets out to the public. Also first impressions are very important. If your
website is not on par with the customer expectations the first time, they will
never come back again. That’s why you need to test to see consistency and
effectiveness. Good luck with your usability testing experiences.
References
Usability Testing. (n.d.). Retrieved June 8, 2015, from http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/usability-testing.html
Roberts, M., & Zahay, D. (2013). Usability testing. In Internet
marketing: Integrating online and offline strategies (3rd ed., p. 378,379).
Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
Barnum, C. (2011). Usability testing essentials ready, set-- test! (p. 9).
Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann.
http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzM0NDk4OF9fQU41?sid=7750bd74-0bc9-48e6-94f7-105ca636d095@sessionmgr111&vid=1&format=EB&lpid=lp_v&rid=0
