Usability Testing

Usability testing with picture-in-picture

Usability testing is often regarded as the ‘gold standard’ of usability research as it records and reveals the real issues that people have when interacting with a website. Good analytics interpretation can tell you what your customers are doing, but usability testing can tell you why – enabling you to target improvements.

Conducted in one-to-one moderated sessions in our specialist lab with client observation facilities, usability testing delivers rich, detailed insights into the user experience.

Watching real customers interacting with your site is always compelling, and often surprising. It’s a great way to break through preconceptions and develop consensus around optimisation solutions.

Usability testing needs to be carefully planned and moderated to cover all relevant points of investigation whilst allowing users to behave naturally, without being led.

Professional recruitment

We use a quality, professional recruitment approach to deliver and test with the demographic/segment(s) of your real customers. This is a key point of strength for us over our competitors – we don’t simply use lists and we screen out people who have attended research sessions before.

In order to gain the needed insights, testing sessions focus on highly realistic, uninterrupted journeys which fit the recruited user’s profile and situation.

Unique moderating approach

Our usability lab (testing room) with eye-tracking, user & moderator

We always undertake usability testing using two experienced usability consultants, where one acts as lead moderator interfacing with the user while the second consultant monitors each session remotely, to capture user quotes and analyse users’ words and actions in real time. This aspect of our approach also sets us apart from our competitors. Both consultants are then involved in analysing the findings to maximise objectivity and expert interpretation and our reports are focused on actionable recommendations. We don’t just tell you your sites’ shortcomings but we tell you how to correct them.

Morae recording is integrated into our facilities. Morae is the industry standard usability testing software suite. It enables recording of the test PC screen, all user actions (mouse/keyboard) and screen/page changes, video and audio for ‘picture-in-picture’ session analysis (and client copies or edited highlights). The support consultant captures all notes and quotes in Morae, enabling these to be aligned with the test recordings and compiled rapidly post-test.

Where possible, the structure of the testing session (and resulting script) will be planned to maximise the ability of Morae to help speed the alignment of the findings and therefore the analysis of key trends. This enables data collation and analysis to be conducted at maximum efficiency.

All our testing incorporates real time eye tracking as standard.

Comparison Testing

For clients needing to compare the usability of their site with a number of competitors, RedEye optimum.web has a comparison methodology. It is not uncommon for this methodology to be used to help create competitive advantage in the online environment by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of competitors and addressing those accordingly.

• Read more about comparison testing.