Three times this week, I have been told by teams that they don’t have time to run testing. I can understand this because when most people think of testing, they are thinking of usability testing, which takes a small amount of time and effort to arrange and run.
But, usability testing is not your only option. If I am honest, I am doing less and less usability testing, but instead focusing more on lightweight testing that can be done often and brings more value in getting projects out of the door.
By that, I mean tests that can resolve disagreements between stakeholders about direction, ensure we do not launch something that fails to perform and takes as little time as possible to implement.
With that in mind, I want to share with you the three tests I find myself running in one form or another every few weeks.
Aesthetic Surveys
First up, there are aesthetic surveys. These come in a few different forms, but the aim is to establish if the visual identity is going in the right direction.
At the start of each project, I ask stakeholders what impressions we want to elicit in users about the site and associated products. For example, they might want the site to give an impression of “friendliness and compassion”.
We can then test any design we produce using aesthetic surveys.
My favourite approach is to show users any new design we have been working on and compare it to the competition. We show all designs as thumbnails (because we are only interested in the feel, not the details of the content) and ask participants to select the design they feel is most friendly and compassionate. If they select our design, we know we are heading in the right direction.
When there is no competition to compare to, an alternative approach shows the new design and asks participants to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 how strongly they agree with the statement “this site feels friendly and compassionate”.
In either case, you can get results back in a couple of hours and be more confident in your design direction. Not to mention avoiding arguments over what colour blue to go with.
5-Second Tests
The next test I run regularly is a 5-second test. This one aims to establish whether the page’s visual hierarchy is correct and whether critical messaging communicates what we hope it will.
The premise is simple. You show users the new design for 5-seconds and then hide it. We put this limit in place because most users will have made up their mind about a site within a few seconds.
You can then ask one of a couple of questions depending on what you want to know.
If you are interested in the visual hierarchy, you ask them to list what they saw on the page. The idea here is to check that they spotted critical content and calls to action.
Alternatively, you can ask them what the site offers. That is a great way to ensure you have communicated what the site is about in the clearest possible way.
First Click Tests
The final test I love is the first click test. This test is based on a prominent usability study that found if a user gets their first click correct when trying to complete a task, their chance of success increases from 46% to 87%.
Running the first-click test could not be simpler. You show a design to a participant and ask them where on the design they would click to complete the task.
Typically, this test is run as a survey that records the user clicks on the screen and displays the results as a heat map.
Making Testing Happen
I love these three tests because they are easy to set up, run, and analyse results.
- All three tests can be ready to go in less than 15 minutes each.
- They are all surveys, which means testing can be done remotely and requires no additional time on your part to run.
- You can run these tests for free on your own or using a tool like Maze or Usability Hub.
- For all tests you can normally get results in under an hour.
- You can use almost anybody to take part in first-click and 5-second surveys as demographics will rarely have a large impact on results.
- For aesthetic surveys, you can use the inbuilt recruitment tools of apps like Maze or Usability Hub to find the right kind of participants if you need to.
- Both aesthetic and first-click surveys allow you to understand the results instantly. No complicated analysis is required.
- For the 5-second test, if you use Usability Hub, they will show you a word cloud to make it easier to interpret the results fast.
In short, you can get invaluable results in less than 2 hours without spending a cent if you have access to participants via social media or email. Alternatively, you can get participants for as little as 2-3 dollars per person. As a maximum, you will only need 20 people to prevent outliers skewing results. However, in most cases, you can identify trends with considerably fewer people.
With testing this easy, there really is no reason not to do it. Even if you don’t care about creating a site your audience loves, it will still save you hours of discussions over the right direction, not to mention endless iterations!
If you are still not convinced, drop me an email and I will talk you around, I promise!
