Now test your website

Once your website has been fully populated, it’s a satisfying moment: you know the site back to front, you know it’s great, you’re pretty confident all the forms and other functionality are solid. We’ve tested things, you’ve tested things. It works.

it’s time to unleash REAL PEOPLE on it.

Why is user testing necessary? I’ve tested that everything works

Real people will be the ones using your dear sweet innocent site. And they won’t be as indulgent or as forgiving of snags as you are!

• Normal users won’t tell you if they can’t find what they need, or if the content you’ve provided doesn’t help them – they’ll just get frustrated and leave the site when something doesn’t work properly, and then tell people you have a terrible website. User testers will tell you if something isn’t right.
• When you know the site well, testing isn’t 100% effective. Websites are complex things and we can only test so much. Real people do inexplicable things and can break stuff you never even dreamed would be a problem. Some snags will only occur when someone tries to do something you didn’t intend for them to do. Find out what those things are and fix them.
• It’s better to fix snags before your customers see your site: For two months after you have been trained to edit the site, we will fix any snags you find in the site (N.B. this is limited to functionality covered by our proposal). Any fixes after that time will be covered by your monthly maintenance time, or we may have to quote you separately for the work. So this population phase gives you time to go over everything and make sure it’s working as intended, and the best way to do this is – yes, you guessed it! – user testing.

What do I need to do?

1. Find your testers

These may be your staff, your friends or family, mates down the pub, or in some cases, people you have recruited and paid to test your site.

Have a look at your site What is the site for? What do people need to do on your site? What do YOU want people to do on your site? What kind of people will be your main users? (You should have this information from when we asked you to think about it for the design process).

What are the pathways your users will need to go on to do the things they need or want to do?

2. Create tasks

These tasks should be simple and not go into any detail because you want to see how they do it and if they have any problems. Try not to give them any clues as to how they might go about their task.

Example 1: GP website

• You are a patient wanting to make an appointment/reorder a prescription.
• You are a prospective patient wanting to find out more about the practice and then register.
• You want to have physiotherapy: what do you need to do?

Example 2: e-learning portal.

• You are looking for an online course which covers the subjects you are interested in. Find a relevant course and apply for it.
• You want to find resources on [insert a specific topic].

Example 3: Parent Carer Forum

• You are a parent of a child with special needs. What on the site interests you, and will you join the forum as a member?
• You are a policymaker hoping to get information about special needs in your area. What kind of information can you find on the site?

3. Set the testers loose on your site!

Here are a couple of good pages to help you give instructions to your user testers about what they need to tell you about