The Google Display Network allows Google Adwords advertisers to place their ads on other peoples websites. Where the advertisement is clicked, Google and the other “partner” website share the advertising revenue. If you want to be a “partner” website then you simply need to sign up to Google Adsense and create a space on your website or mobile app for Google ads to run. Obviously this creates an enormous incentive for website/app owners running Display Network ads to click on the ads running on their own website. Google claim to have a system in place to monitor false clicks.

I’ve always had my suspicions on the Display Network (previously the Content Network) after I ran a small campaign and 99% of the spend went on the Display Network with no resulting conversions. I now always keep it turned off. Previously keeping it turned off was relatively simple. Inside an Adwords account, under “Campaign Settings” you could choose the Search Network and/or the Display Network using a simply tickbox system. You could also choose the devices you ran campaigns. I’d love to show you a graphic of this, but of course it’s now disappeared.

Google have recently changed the Adwords interface and made it harder to turn off the Display Network and choose which devices to advertise on. The default for any new Google Adwords advertiser is that ads will run on both the Google Search Network and the Display Network. For good measure, the default also runs ads on all devices (desktop, laptops, tablets and phones).  As you can see in the image below, under “Networks” there are are two lovely big green ticks that indicate you are advertising on both the Search and Display Network. Previously you could turn off the Display Network advertising at this point:

If you do want to turn off the Display Network, then you need to go to “Search and Display Network”. The option to turn off the Display Network then exists under a grey and somewhat nondescript dropdown box which has a different usability feeling to the rest of the site.

To me this a clear example of Google reducing the usability of Adwords in order to confuse and trap unsuspecting advertisers on the Display Network. The logical place to be able to choose the which network to advertise on is under the “Network” tab. Instead it is tucked away under the “General” tab and presented in a way that doesn’t make it obvious. By also taking the choice of which devices to advertise on into another tab, it gets even trickier for an unsuspecting Advertiser who may end up running a campaign on mobile phones without a website that is even mobile ready.

I believe the result is a large number of Advertisers inadvertantly advertising on the Display Network , on mobile devices which have Apps specifically designed to display Google ads. How many times have you inadvertently pressed a link to an ad in a Mobile App that popped up out of nowhere, or was too close to something you did want to press? Very sneaky Google.

When I contacted Google through their contact form to complain, the very nice lady called me and advised that Google had made these “improvements” as she described them and that she would also pass on my comments about the decrease in usability. She also offered me a $150 credit on my account which she quite quickly increased to $200 when I continued to press the point. That was kind of Google, but overall it is poor form and I’m afraid I’ve lost my love for Google after watching them pull off this nasty little heist.

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Everyone wants to be billing their clients and I’m sure thinking up some good ways to justify this is a major occupation. Well we here at IntuitionHQ have a solution: consider a usability audit of a client’s website that includes a few simple suggestions on how to improve the usability of their website.

So where are the billable hours coming from? Not too many are going to come from the usability testing itself. IntuitionHQ makes usability testing incredibly easy. Within a few minutes you can create a number of tests on the usability of a website and send it to a group of respondents. Results are compiled instantly and you can gain immediate insights from the usability test. Usability testing will highlight your web development skills and is a great marketing opportunity for you to leverage implementing the improvements to your clients website.

Here is our guide to a usability audit that is easy to put together, easy to interpret, will give you billable hours and some great reasons to pick up even more work from your client. Don’t forget that your client and their website visitors are the ultimate beneficiaries, as Amazon’s much fabled $300 million dollar button proves.

Step 1: Spend a few minutes analysing the website

Websites have differing functions. An ecommerce site should make it easy  to register, navigate, and purchase goods and services. A traditional store may need to build a community while it provides simple advice of location and purpose. Most companies want to give customers information to avoid costly call centre calls.

Whatever the purpose, look for a few obvious things on the website that look a little dated. Usability thinking has come on hugely in the last few years and a website more than 3 years old will need few tweaks. For some really useful insight on how to get started check out these 7 great tips for writing usability questions

Step 2: Develop some easy website usability tests

Did you know that people are much more likely to click on a contact button with a picture of a person on it? This has been widely tested in usability studies and you can prove it to your client with an easy usability test run using IntuitionHQ:

Does the website have a main picture in the website? You can run a quick A/B preference test on whether the current picture is preferred or an alternative:

A simple example we ran was on whether the cat or dog was cuter:

If a website requires a specific task of visitors, then testing how long it takes visitors to accomplish this task compared to an improved design can show how website usability can be improved.

In the example below, the respondents are shown either the website on the left or the right. They are asked where to click to find the blog and IntuitionHQ automatically times how long it takes for respondents to click on the blog button. You can see that the respondents shown the website on the right found the blog button almost twice as fast as those shown the website on the left.

Conclusion

Taking the initiative and proactively using a usability audit on a customer website will provide a great marketing opportunity for you.  You’ll be able to engage them on a range of ways you can improve their website with the benefits sure to follow for their website users.

Related Posts:

• A/B and Preference Testing for Usability
• The Ultimate Usability Resource Roundup: 60 Great Posts
• 12 Website Usability Testing Myths
• Website Usability Test: Gizmodo.com
• Usability testing: What to test

Craig is an incredibly experienced usability expert, he’s vice-president of one of the largest independent search-driven marketing companies in the United States and has headed up some really impressive user experience projects.

So who better to explain usability than Craig.

The interview

Would you give a brief introduction about you?
I’ve been in the online marketing and user experience space for over 15 years now. I started waaaay back in the days before there was a Google, or a Yahoo, or Mobile, and “broadband” meant you had the latest tool, a 56k dial up modem!  I’ve done web marketing, redesign or user experience projects for big and small companies over the years, including Blue Cross, Countrywide Home Loans, Disney, Kodak, Prudential Insurance and many more. I like to say that I’ve become quite good at what I do because I’ve learned from ‘experience,’ in other words I’ve made just about every mistake you could make and have learned what not to do!

As one of only 3,000 CUAs in the world, how did you initially get involved with usability?
Being a Certified Usability Analyst was a big deal for me because way back when I received my CUA there were very few courses focused on usability and user experience design that I could take. Most of the courses back then were PhD tracks, and were either focused on psychology, or on engineering.

HCI* had been around a long time, but with a full-time job I found it difficult to get a Masters and then Doctorate in HCI. I knew I needed education in UX and usability because I learned quickly that website design is far more than just a pretty website with brochureware. To create a successful web experience, you must know who’s trying to use the site, what critical tasks website visitors have, their “mental model” and much more.

All of that coming of course from understanding and applying user research and design best practices. The CUA courses and certification helped provide me that of training. But I fully recognize that the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know! It’s an ever expanding subject.

* Human Computer Interaction

As vice president of Apogee Results you have studied, tested and honed the art of influencing people’s behavior. Which steps would you recommend to bulletproof an UX strategy?
The answer is somewhat simple, yet hard to execute: “know your users.” Strategy comes from identifying goals, both the goals of the business and the goals of the users. Good websites (or applications or devices) meet and hopefully beat users’ expectations and needs.  A successful UX strategy comes from applying those goals and expectations to a design based on:

• Using a unique understanding of who will be interacting with the experience
• Identifying what their tasks and expectations are
• Fully leveraging their mental map
• Evaluating their domain expertise

Good UX strategy fully uses that understanding to deliver an experience that meets, or hopefully beats, those expectations.

On your blog usefulusability.com you address several usability topics.  What do you think is currently a hot trend that UX practitioners should be aware of?
Without a doubt the next hot trend we all must come to grips with when dealing with UX is understanding that “user experience” does not mean just “web site experience” or “mobile experience” or “phone experience” or “store experience.”  Separately, these are all experiences, that’s true, but sadly most companies design each experience in a vacuum, seldom putting together the holistic understanding of how users actually interact with Brands. But put them all together, and they represent the real “user experience,” which can be called the Brand Experience.

What’s a Brand Experience? Think about a person who wishes to purchase a car. She may go to several websites to evaluate prospective car brands. She may go into a showroom to test drive a couple cars. She may ask friends on Facebook or other social sites about their opinions. She may evaluate features of cars on her smart phone multiple times. Eventually she will go to the finalist car lot and interact with the dealer to purchase her car. Given that she has interactions that transcend any single experience, why would we design the user experience she has with the website without consideration of the other critical interactions she will have during her process of purchasing a car?

Good Brands, and good UX designers, understand the holistic nature of user experience and include multiple interaction points in their thought process as they develop their UX strategy. I think that’s the next big thing in UX.

Can you tell us the difference between market segmentation and persona development?
Most marketing organizations in firms have a good sense of creating target markets based on market segmentation. They may use clustering to identify like-groups or set of prospects based on various data. The data is typically not task-specific, it may range from geographic information (all people living in New Zealand) to demographic (all people older than 30 years) to psychographic (all people who intend to purchase in less than 6 months). This data can then create a market segment that marketers can use to try to reach the intended audience (all people living in New Zealand, over age 30, who intend to purchase in less than 6 months).

Personas however are quite different. I like to think of a Persona as a fictional representation of a typical user, in which the common element that defines the Persona is a critical task (or tasks). Personas have names, they have faces, they have a story and a critical task. And Personas have the ability to be used broadly across an enterprise for purposes other than designing a website or mobile user experience. A good Persona, if done well, can be used to make design decisions across the holistic Brand Experience. For more information about Personas see my Useful Usability post on the Forrester report of Personas.

How can two, three, four or even five user profiles represent the entire user community?
This is a common question I receive from developers and those in I.T. I believe they confuse Personas with Use Cases. The most common question is; “If you’ve identified four Personas, does that mean I need four different websites?” The short answer is: Yes, and no.

Yes, in theory it would be great to have a website experience aligned directly to the needs of each Persona. However, often this is not possible from either a business or Brand standpoint.  So, one website has to fill the needs of all Personas.

But how? The answer is by making sure you address at least the initial critical task that each Persona is seeking on your home page and other pertinent pages. One website, if the information architecture and related navigation systems are set up correctly, can handle each of the needs of multiple Personas.

What do you think?

We want to thank Craig again for making time to answer our questions. His ideas on focussing more on the holistic understanding of how users interact with brands are definitely insightful and something we should be aware of as UX designers.

What do you think?  Do you use personas to represent your entire user community?  Feel free to share your opinions in the comments below, on Twitter @IntuitionHQ or at Facebook.com/IntuitionHQ.

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Since Ethan Marcotte published his article in 2011 about responsive web design, we’ve entered a new phase in web design for mobile. Some might see responsive web design as just another trend, but here at IntuitionHQ we believe it’s more than just a trend, we believe responsive web design might just become one of the most important changes to web design in 2012.

But what does responsive web design really mean?  Time to ask an expert in this field – Brad Frost.  We first spoke with Brad a few months ago after reading his posts about responsive design and usability on his blog.

Brad’s a very busy guy, aside from writing for A List Apart and his blog, doing interviews with IntuitionHQ and thenextweb, he’s also one of the speakers at the upcoming Mobilism conference on May 10th in Amsterdam!

We think his views on responsive web design offer great insight on this new trend.  So let’s talk responsive web design.

The interview

Could you give a brief introduction about you?
I’m a mobile web strategist and front-end designer at R/GA in New York. I’ve been focusing on creating mobile-optimized websites for a few years now and spend a great deal of time learning and talking about what goes into good mobile web experiences. I made a website that tries to make sense of this stuff. I’m also a musician (primarily a bass player) and an artist. I live in Brooklyn with my wonderful wife. She’s just as busy as I am.

What is the biggest usability challenge for the mobile web?
I think the biggest challenge for the mobile web is achieving content parity. For a long time the default mentality was that mobile users don’t want everything desktop users want. As a result, important content would get arbitrarily lopped off and mobile users were penalized for how they happened to be accessing the web. The biggest challenge then becomes to deliver a full experience while being mindful of the many constraints the mobile environment creates.

Can you tell us a bit more about responsive web design?
Ethan Marcotte coined the term “responsive web design” and he broke it down to three components: fluid grids, flexible media and media queries.  However it’s evolved into something much bigger than that. It’s become a language with which to talk about designing beyond a singular screen size and context.

Before the term “responsive web design” was around, my colleague Jack Bishop and I were using the term “adaptive web design” as a way to talk about how an experience adapts to device features and browser capabilities. As it turns out, at the same time Aaron Gustafson was writing a book titled Adaptive Web Design, which dives deep into the concepts of progressive enhancement. And that’s what a lot of this is about, just applying those concepts to more contexts.

What does responsive design mean for the future web?
It’s becoming increasingly challenging to create and maintain separate experiences for different contexts. You turn your head for a second and BOOM—there’s fifteen new mobile devices announced—all with different screen sizes, form factors, browsers and more. Because devices, browsers and capabilities are such moving targets, we need to find solid ground to stand on.  That means focusing on creating flexible foundations that provide a good user experience to a number of different contexts. So instead of maintaining multiple websites that all essentially do the same thing, we’re trying to create smarter websites that have the power to go more places.

Looking down the road it becomes even harder to predict what’s coming down the pipes. Technology is constantly building on itself and we have to deal with the breakneck speed of innovation. Anyone who claims to know what the landscape is going to be like in five years is full of it. The fact that the future is so impossible to predict is why it becomes incredibly important to design experiences that are compatible with more scenarios—present and future.

What are some of the pitfalls responsive design is faced with?
There are plenty of pitfalls and challenges that responsive design faces. First, I think that responsive web design is viewed as a panacea for mobile design by a lot of people. It’s not and it never claimed to be. Creating contextually-aware experiences requires a hell of a lot more than just adjusting layout. Sure, it’s a piece of the puzzle, but there’s other things that need addressed. User goals can change dramatically based on context, so serving up a one-size-fits-all experience to mobile users runs the very real risk of not giving the user what they need.

For example, a blog’s content is to make a readable experience for as many screens as possible, but what about an e-commerce website?  A user could be at home on a laptop trying to buy a product, but what about a mobile user? Sure, they could be at home on the couch trying to buy the product too, but they could just as well be at the mall looking at the physical product and are trying to read reviews and compare prices. For that user, the “add to cart” button isn’t as important as quick and easy access to price, ratings and reviews. I feel that these are the things we need to consider when designing adaptive experiences. Ask yourself “Why might this mobile user be visiting this site right now? What are they trying to do and what can I do to help them?”

Another big challenge is performance. I mentioned before how we shouldn’t arbitrarily lop off content for mobile users. Well, responsive design fixes that problem (unless you’re using display: none; to hide content for small screens, which you shouldn’t be doing), but it can create big performance issues. Forcing mobile users to download a ton of scripts, media and content just doesn’t make a good experience. That’s why we advocate mobile-first responsive web design, which entails tackling the constraints of the mobile environment first then build up a core experience from there. Conditionally introduce heavier media and scripts when the scenario can accommodate them, instead of trying to cram a desktop site into a mobile-sized screen.

There’s a lot more challenges to responsive design as well: it’s costs more money to produce up front, it requires rethinking the design process, it’s hard to create truly great mobile experiences without compromising the larger screen experiences and vice-versa, etc.  There’s a lot of challenges, but that’s not a good reason to shy away from adaptive design. We just need to tackle these issues head on and collaborate to figure this stuff out. Because the other options simply don’t scale.

How do you approach the actual design when developing a responsive website?
Get designs into the browser as soon as possible. That’s not to say that you can’t use Photoshop or static wireframes, it’s just that those things don’t paint a realistic picture of how things will adapt.  We’ve traditionally followed a waterfall process, but you simply can’t do that for adaptive experiences.

Typically we map out the experience in wireframes and articulate where the experience will split based on the capabilities of the device/browser (for example, here’s how the carousel looks on non-touch devices, but here’s how the interaction changes when touch gestures are supported).

From there we’ll create a working prototype while the visual design team is in Photoshop creating the general look and feel. By the time the visual team has the look and feel in a good spot, the prototype team has the basic site architecture built. The prototype team starts implementing the look and feel while the visual team moves forward with the rest of the design. From there it becomes a series of iterations and back-and-forth between all the designers. The visual team is one step ahead of the prototype team, who’s focused on implementing the previous round of visual designs. It’s not this cut-and-dry though, because the prototype greatly influences the visual design and lots of things often need revisited. It’s all about back-and-forth.

Three things make a responsive process work: collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. It requires everyone being on board with the approach, tackling problems and being willing to revisit designs in order to make them work. This is much different than the traditional waterfall process, where developers working at the end of the line are left with a lot of the burden of figuring out how to make static designs work.

Does responsive design influence content?
Absolutely. All of a sudden, our content needs to be relevant to a whole lot more contexts. We need to be a lot more considerate about how we handle content hierarchy, media and interactions across a ton of screens and scenarios.

Are images still legible on mobile screens? Is there text in the images and is it still readable? Is the image a landscape image whose subject matter becomes tiny on a small screen? Data visualization is currently a hot trend right now, and whenever I fire up these massive JPEGS on my phone I can barely make out any of the text and charts.

Sara Wachter-Boettcher beautifully articulated the challenges of content hierarchy in her post Responsive-ready content. She demonstrates how it’s natural to want to throw sidebar content underneath the main page info, but that it doesn’t necessarily make sense in all circumstances. How layout breaks can very much influence how the user receives the information, so we need to be thoughtful with regards to content hierarchy.

I think the best way to deal with all of this is again to start mobile-first and make sure that all the content on the page is relevant. The less moving parts we have to deal with, the better. Mobile is a great excuse to clean house and gut the bullshit. We have a tendency to fill space with something, anything, if we have the chance. Thankfully we don’t have that luxury on these mobile screens so we’re forced to make some hard decisions. Once that exercise is done, then think of how to take advantage of extra space as it becomes available.

As one of the undersigned on Future friendly, can you tell us a bit more about the idea behind the site?
The idea behind the site is that the future is unpredictable, so we need to be more considerate of this change as we create web experiences. We shouldn’t bemoan the fact that there’s more connected devices we need to care about, but rather we should embrace this diversity and use it as an opportunity to reach more people.

The fact that no one knows what’s around the corner is why the site is intentionally ambiguous. When we all of came together, we realized that there’s no silver bullet to these problems.  We gave some ways people can think differently in order to become more future friendly, but again, these aren’t prescriptive solutions. It was made more to capture a notion than to say “do this or else!” Ultimately, it’s just there to get people to be considerate and to get more brains working on these hard issues.

Any favorite sites or resources you’d like to share with us?
There’s no shortage of great resources out there, and I’ve been doing what I can to collect them on my Mobile Web Best Practices resources site. I also think Twitter is such an invaluable tool for all this. There’s tons of wonderful people willing to share their experience, thoughts and resources. The collective conversation and collaboration that happens on a daily basis is essential to making sense of these really big challenges. It’s really exciting to listen and participate.

What do you think?

Our thanks go to Brad for his time and insights.  We will be keeping an eye out for his upcoming speaking event at Mobilism.

We believe responsive design is a new and exciting trend we all need to be aware of.  With the growth of different mobile devices, we can no longer design for just one or two different mobile devices.

What do you think about responsive design?  Do you have any interesting insights to share? Feel free to let us know what you think about responsive design in the comments below, on Twitter @IntuitionHQ or at Facebook.com/IntuitionHQ.

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Usability preference testing is when two images/wireframes/screenshots are shown side by side, and users are asked to make a choice on which one they prefer based on the test criteria that you set for them – generally along the lines of a ‘which design do you prefer?’.

Preference testing is really useful for testing a range of different things: it can help you to better understand conventions in design (as shown in our ‘The User Experience and Psychology of Colour’ article on Spyre Studios), for example looking at preferences across cultures and understanding how small differences can affect your users. As with A/B usability tests, there is a huge range of different aspects you could test in this way, from colour palettes to navigation wording.

IntuitionHQ makes it simple to set up a preference usability test.  Here’s a step by step guide:

Step 1 – Write your test

Follow steps 1 and 2 from our IntuitionHQ quick guide post in order to set up your test. Once you are presented with the first ‘Question for task’ screen enter a question worded to direct the user to click the screenshot they prefer for example:

Q.  Click on the image of the buttons you prefer.

Then upload a screenshot that displays each design side by side, in this example the screenshot and question are testing wording preferences on the buttons:

In this case the testers would be familiar with the site and the process the buttons represent. Using a preference test gives an idea of what works for users and helps confirm initial thoughts on design and structure.

Step 2: Interpreting results

As with other types of usability testing with IntuitionHQ, view the results on each question/task by clicking ‘replies’ in the Project Overview:

Your results will show you where the majority of participants have clicked and therefore which design was preferred by participants.  You’ll also be able to see the average length of time participants took to respond. A lengthy average response time can indicate a couple of potential issues – either your question was confusing or the differences between designs were indistinct. Either way it’s definitely an indication that something hasn’t been clear to participants.

With the rise and rise of mobile use and mobile applications, preference testing isn’t just for websites, consider testing your apps as well, here’s an example of a popular social networking site and how IntuitionHQ could be used to test user preference in navigation:

Q. Which navigation layout do you prefer?

Consulting users on their preference can be useful to either confirm the usability of your site or highlight areas in which there are problems. Once you have the results of your test you can decide if one route is more appropriate than another or make further changes and re test. Preference testing gives you an insight into what the user finds most effective.

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A/B Testing is a method for testing variations in live sites; you can have two different variations of a text, button or other element and find out which one works best. You can easily create an A/B test using IntuitionHQ, this post gives you a step by step process to set up a test.

A/B testing is achieved by sending roughly 50% of the sites traffic to the different variations (either A or B – not both) and seeing which one works best by analysing the results. Whatever ideas you have to test, whatever variations you can think of, just upload them, set a task, and see which one works best. The great thing about this is you don’t need to make changes to your live site, and it’s easy to add multiple tasks to test different variations.

How to set up an A/B test

Step 1: Select A/B test 

Follow steps 1 and 2 from our IntuitionHQ quick guide post, then when you are presented with the first Question for task screen, select the link in red, ‘Click here to make an A/B test with two screenshots’:

Step 2: Upload two screenshots

You will then be presented with one question field and upload options for two screenshots, A and B:

Enter your question, for example ’Learn more about our project management approach. Upload the two screenshots.  When your participants take the test 50% of users will see the first screenshot and the question and the other 50% will see the second screenshot and question.

Step 3: Preview your A/B questions

To view the questions with both screenshots present go to Project Overview – Tasks and click on the number adjacent to either A or B under the Replies column.

You’ll then be able to see your question with both screenshots displaying side by side.

Step 4: Interpreting the results of an A/B test

To view your results go to the published project in your dashboard and click on the number under the Replies column:

From the results – we can see that on screenshot A, 25 of the participants clicked on the ‘working with Boost’ navigation, whereas on screenshot B only 21 participants clicked the alternative navigation item -’agile’.  This A/B test result indicates that ‘working with Boost’ works better as a navigation item than ‘agile’.

Following the steps above allows you to set up an A/B test to test variations within your site design. We hope you’ve found this quick guide useful and we’d be grateful for any feedback you have on creating an A/B test with IntuitionHQ.  You can comment via the comment box below or email us on info@intuitionHQ.com

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A free plan allows you to have 1 live test at any given time, view results from 10 participants and have unlimited questions.  To increase the number of participants and live tests check out our other great plans.

We’re changing from Pay per test to free plans for the following reasons:

• we believe the monthly pricing gives us the chance to provide a better service for all our users.
• monthly pricing is perfect for users who run lots of tests.
• it makes it easier for us to plan for future development when we have a clear view of our users and their IntuitionHQ plans.

The transition to a free plan does not require any action from our Pay per Test users and will have no effect on previous paid tests.

We are committed to keeping our users happy so if you have any questions, comments or feedback about IntuitionHQ, feel free to let us know in the comments below, on Twitter @IntuitionHQ or at Facebook.com/IntuitionHQ.

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The scenario

You’ve met with your  client and their stakeholders and everyone has agreed what your site design needs to achieve. Armed with this information you have produced a design that you believe fulfills all requirements. Your client circulates your design to the highest level of stakeholder only to find that the person at the top of the chain doesn’t like it. You then spend additional time iterating the design until the senior stakeholder is happy. A process that should have been straightforward has now taken way longer than expected.

What could you have done differently?

• socialise your design
• an IntuitionHQ usability test on your wireframes
• your graphic design

Socialising your design
Socialise your design, get your design out there at every opportunity you can. According to Wikipedia, the mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them, so expose the highest level stakeholders to the design right from the outset.

Start with wireframes
Try starting right from the wireframe stage. Expose your wireframes to your senior stakeholders by creating a test in IntuitionHQ. This involves stakeholders right from the start and lets them contribute to the design process by providing structured feedback.

A usability test on your wireframes also allows your senior stakeholder to start becoming familiar with the design as it evolves. You might like to produce an A-B test or a preference test  using IntuitionHQ. In an A-B test 50% of your testers see one design and 50% the another so that you can use test results to gauge which design works best. In a preference test two versions of a design or aspects of a design are presented side by side  and the tester is asked to click on their preference.  A preference test can enable your testers/stakeholders to have a direct input to the design direction.

Graphic design
Similarly once you have your graphic design make sure you expose it to the senior stakeholder as early and often as possible. Often people will become distracted by surface features (like colour) when feeding back on a design. If you’ve exposed your site design including navigation and layout as early and often as possible you’ll find your senior stakeholder will be engaged in how the design works for the user rather than becoming bogged down by personal colour preferences or particular graphic aspects. Think about displaying your design on a wall in the office, and have it present at each meeting during the design phase.

So get your design out there:

• start early, expose it often
• have the stakeholder involved in testing
• have stakeholders think about what the design needs to achieve rather than about colours and other design elements
• present the design at each stage

We’ve found the design process and design approval is a far smoother task when we involve the senior stakeholder early and often.

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• Simple Usability/UX Checklist
• The Godaddy UX (Fail) – Results
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By running tests on your design work with real users as it’s in progress, you get instant feedback on where they’re succeeding and where they’re failing – information you can use to guide the next stage of design. Making usability testing a part of the project process means you can find out whether the design works or not before launch.

Usability results from testing an established website can ensure your design is continuing to serve the needs of users or can highlight the need for any site enhancements.  Results can also be very useful at the outset of a redesign in order to help inform requirements.

We suggest you take the following steps to provide 10 hours of usability testing to your client:

• Show your clients the value of usability testing
• Create a usability test with IntuitionHQ
• Report on test results

Step 1: Showing clients the value of usability testing

The results of usability testing can provide valuable insights into the user experience on your client’s site at various stages, from the inception of a new website to post launch and beyond. Here are some suggestions for when and how usability testing can provide valuable feedback:

As a part of the design process
Usability testing before the design is finalised and passed over to the developer can help spot potentially expensive oversights and mistakes before they’re built. It’s also an easy way for your clients to engage with the design process. They can share tests with stakeholders and key audiences just by sending out a link, and understand the results at a glance. It’s cost and time efficient for them and for you.

When a client is considering a redesign/refresh
Usability consultancy based on your client’s current design will help to inform design decisions and concepts for a redesign/refresh prior to the start of design work. This a great starting point for the requirements gathering phase of a project using real life user feedback.

Site tracking statistics analysis
Analysis of site tracking statistics can highlight issues in navigation and general usability. For example analysis of top searches may reveal that some navigation items need to be more prominent on the site. Usability testing results can inform the nature of the changes and testing of proposed changes can confirm the effectiveness of changes prior to any work taking place.

Website feedback surveys
Incorporation of an IntuitionHQ usability test during a period of user consultation such as a feedback survey provides feedback on site structure and design, highlighting any potential issues.

Step 2: Creating a test

Assess site aims 
Sit down with your client and establish both their aims and their user’s aims for the website. These may have changed since the last time your client considered them. Check ‘What to test‘ for ideas on what you should focus on during this discussion. The conclusions from this meeting will help inform the areas of the site to focus on while writing tasks in IntuitionHQ.

Write your usability test using IntuitionHQ
Here’s a quick guide to setting up a test in IntuitionHQ.

Using the conclusions drawn from meeting your client, gather your screenshots and write tasks that correlate to your client and user’s aims for the website. For some really useful insight on how to get started check out these 7 great tips for writing usability questions.

Step 3: Report on test results

Produce a usability report
Produce a usability/user experience report for your client using test result screenshots and drawing conclusions from the tester interactions shown in test results. Make recommendations based on your conclusions. Recommendations can include changes in navigation, design changes and possibly new functionality. Here’s a Usability results example report, produced using IntuitionHQ test results, to get you started.

In terms of value to your client the usability testing you provide will pay for itself by increasing user productivity on their site. The easier a site is to use, the faster a visitor can complete the task they came to do, and the happier they’ll be. Happy customers are repeat customers.

Using IntuitionHQ to carry out usability testing is simple and provides great value to your client, so why not get started!

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We use the following ways to recruit users for usability testing:

• social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
• emailing internal networks and client’s email subscriber lists
• linking from existing websites
• using a web based recruiting tool

Ideally you’ll want testers to include:

• potential site users
• project stakeholders
• project team members

You’ll want as many testers as you can muster in order to gather useful results.

Finding testers

Chances are you already have access to a wide range of users and potential users through various web based networks, it’s just a matter of identifying your networks and publicising your IntuitionHQ test url through them.

Social media channels
If you are part of an internal project team, utilise your company’s social network streams. Your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn followers will probably already be familiar with your company/website and it’s a great chance to involve them directly in testing a site they either already use or will use in the future.

Likewise if you’re a designer or user experience expert you’ve probably developed some substantial networks either on your personal social media streams or through your company’s streams. Usability testing is a great opportunity to utilise this access to a wide network of people to test your website design and structure.

IntuitionHQ gives you the opportunity to publicise your finished test and encourage users in the wider world outside your organisation to participate in testing by including an option to publish on Facebook and Twitter when you publish your test. Your Facebook and Twitter accounts can be linked to your account via the account billing tab in IntuitionHQ, under ‘Connect to Social networks’.

We’ve included the ability to post directly to the more popular social networking sites within IntuitionHQ. Don’t forget to use any other networks you have access to, for example you could publish the test as a link on your LinkedIn profile or perhaps within an industry forum you participate in.

By email
Copy and paste the url for your test from IntuitionHQ and send an email to your project stakeholders, project team members and your other colleagues inviting them to participate in the usability test. Use you or your client’s email subscriber lists to make the test available to a wider audience of users. You won’t need to include instructions, other than ‘click here’, IntuitionHQ takes care of all that.

Linking from your own sites
You could also link to your test url from your website, intranet or blog. By linking from your existing website you can keep your users involved with a redesign process by allowing them to test designs and navigation changes prior to implementation.

Web based tools
There are a number of sites that provide tools to help you recruit users. Ethnio allows you to create a ‘screener’ to help you recruit users via your website or blog.

The screener will appear on your site when users hit the homepage.  In the example below the screener has been edited to include a link to an IntuitionHQ test.

Participation in a usability test is a great way of familiarising your users with a proposed new design prior to it’s launch, helping ensure that your design works for real life users.  It’s also a good way to engage your project stakeholders in the design process.

We hope you’ve found our tips for recruiting users helpful, good luck with your testing!

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