Three Reasons Why You Should Be Running User Tests

Are users spending significant time on your site but are still abandoning their cart? Do you know how many clicks it takes for a user to add a product to their cart? Are you confident that you have provided all the information a user would need to convert on your site?

Whether you are in the midst of a website redesign or want to get buy-in for change, running user tests allows you to gather real-time data from real users interacting with your site/product. There’s nothing like watching a visitor struggle on your site to light the fire of change!

Even if you are an absolute beginner, here are three reasons why you should be running user tests on your site now:

1. Identify areas of friction and why users are leaving your site

By running user tests, you can have real users interact with parts of your site that you may have concerns about. For example, if you noticed a high percentage of users are leaving your site after landing on a category page, you can run a test focused primarily on your category pages and have users try to move from the category pages to the next step in the funnel to identify any issues that users may be running into.

Once you identify the areas of friction, you can either make the changes immediately or run A/B tests to gather quantifiable data to ensure those changes will lead to more conversions.

2. Confirm whether or not users understand your site, your product/service, and your core value propositions

Are you confident that your site is designed to target all the audiences that you intended it for? Is there content missing from the site that can better clarify the purpose of the product?

It is never too early to start running user tests, even if you are still in the developing stages of your site, you can still gather users’ initial reaction to your site to see if they understand what you’re trying to do. Still at the design stage? You can set up user tests for your mockups as well. Run tests on different audiences to gather initial reactions that can validate your site and can help you make the necessary changes to target the right audiences.

3. Improve the overall user experience

Even if you don’t think there is anything wrong with your site, running user tests with a set of new eyes can help identify minor errors on the site (e.g. broken links, grammatical errors). Having good UX is important because it helps the user find the information they need and to complete tasks on your site. UX is also a significant factor in SEO (search engine optimization) ranking. If users can’t accomplish their intended task, it can hurt your organic rankings. Further, having poor UX can lower your quality score for paid search, resulting in having to pay a higher cost-per-click.

You should always be looking to improve your site and the overall UX to ensure that users coming to your site will have a positive experience. Strong UX can mean higher conversion rates, more returning users, improved Organic search performance, and better paid search visibility at a lower cost .

Looking to Get Started with User Testing?

At Wheelhouse DMG, we’ve used user testing and other forms of UX research and testing to help clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to local businesses. If you’re looking for a partner in getting your user testing work off the ground, or just want some basic advice on platforms, test design, etc., reach out to us and let us know how we might be able to help!