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Building
a better web site Usability Testing |
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Usability Testing - Test for things like ease of navigation, broken links, dithering. *
Project must be near completion Problems usually appear in the deepest levels of the site. Be sure your site is well planned and can be easily navigated at all levels. A common problem is that a user can get stuck at the end of what he thought was a navigation path. The optimum time to have your site tested for usability is when you have your site close to completion. Testing in stages may not provide an accurate evaluation. A site should not go live until it has been tested, as you want to know the problems beforehand, so as not to lose your customer base because of problems they encountered with your site that you could have corrected before the site was made available for their use. The logic behind getting non-technical inexperienced persons, perhaps unfamiliar with the site or the Internet, is that if a user of this level can successfully use your site, then it is more than likely an effectively designed site. A site should always be tested by the one who created it, but the one who created it should not be the last word on its usability. The reason for this is that if you created the site yourself then you would naturally be familiar with how to move around it, and what may seem easy and obvious to you may not be to someone who has had no exposure to your site. It
is also a good idea to recruit varying levels of users to test your site
and provide feedback. However, it is the novice that will be the true
test of whether or not your site can be easily understood and used.
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