What’s your tipping point for making your website more member and customer-focused? Is it:
- I finally got tired of hearing (pick one) membership/marketing/convention staff complain about the calls they get from people who need help finding things on our site
- Our registration and product sales are down, but our site traffic is up. I noticed the abandon rate on the store pages is spiking
- I finally got approval for a website redesign
Why not be proactive and practice ongoing no cost/low cost usability assessments of your organization’s websites? There are many tools and techniques available that don’t require big budgets or a big time investment. Two are described here.
Google Analytics
If you haven’t heard, the folks at Google offer a free web site analytics tool. Simply add a small amount of code to your website templates or pages, and the data gathering begins. If your organization doesn’t use Google, it’s a good bet there is some other site analytics software running on your site. Use the data. You can learn a lot about your site visitors including:
- Are users getting to your site through direct traffic, referring sites or search engines?
Possible result: information on where to focus your partnership development and advertising dollars
- What keywords users are entering to find your site and, from your own search analytics, what terms they are using on the site itself?
Possible result: data to help you evaluate the navigation terminology and site organization
- What paths are users taking as they navigate your site and at what point do they leave the site?
Possible result: identification of registration or online store processes that could be improved
Google Analytics is constantly adding new features. The latest, Advanced Segment, allows you to evaluate different segments of your audience. For example, you can compare New Visitor vs. Returning Visitor behavior. You can also create your own customized reports from more than 100 different metrics. This enables you to tailor your reporting to specific department interests or to seasonal activities such as the release of research reports or event marketing. Once any Google Analytics report is setup, you can schedule it to be regularly emailed to the appropriate managers.
Five Second Page Test
A five second page test gives you the opportunity to test if users understand what a web site page is for. This free tool, at www.fivesecondtest.com, allows you to upload a .jpg image, ask a question of a group of users, email them the link, then get a report on their responses.
The Five Second Test could be used to test if the message you are trying to convey is immediately evident. For example, if you create a page to promote a fundraising activity you will want to know if the user will understand how to make a contribution. You can create and upload an image of the page, circulate it to a group of your potential users, and ask the question, “What is the main message of this page?” or, “What could you do after visiting this page? How would you do it?” If the page is successfully written and designed, the test participant should be able to accurately describe the important elements they saw on the page.
It is probably not a good idea to use this technique to evaluate the organization of your home page or other pages heavy on navigation. Typically, these pages serve many audiences and many functions so it would be difficult for a user to hone in on just one element in such a brief scan. One way that this test may be helpful for a home page evaluation is if you are successful in conveying a certain image or business focus for the organization or product. The online version is limited in what users can type and submit. Consider doing five second tests with printed mockups or slides and ask the user to write down their responses. You can then have a more detailed discussion about their impressions.
Comprehensive usability testing and user research certainly has its place. But remember that it is not necessary to wait for a ‘redesign’ to make changes to your site. Incremental site improvements based on your ongoing user assessments will make your members and customers happy, and make your website management role more productive.
Dina Lewis, CAE, is president of Distilled Logic, LLC, and consults with associations and non-profits on Web site usability and content strategy. You may reach Dina at dina@distilledlogic.net or follow her on Twitter @dinalew.
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