How to boost your website via usability testing online?

Usability testing online can significantly improve your website's performance and customer comfort. By finding out and addressing usability issues, you will create an intuitive and efficient web experience for online clients. Learn how to leverage online tools and methods to boost your website's usability below!

Usability testing online: definition and benefits

Online usability testing evaluates how online customers interact with web products such as websites, apps, or software. It includes tracing and analyzing user behavior while navigating the website pages. 

Engaging clients early in the design process allows you to find out potential usability drawbacks or potential growth points, ensuring the design is focused on user requirements and preferences.

Such customer research and analysis helped us create a new design for the Samsung Experience Store in Ukraine that emphasizes the company’s strengths and provides a high-quality user experience for online clients.

Traditional usability testing requires much time, effort, and a deep understanding of the project. You need to define the target audience, find at least five people to conduct the test, pay them, prepare for the interview, etc. And if you don’t have enough experience, the risks of failing are very high.

Luckily, nowadays we don’t necessarily have to manage everything by ourselves and can delegate some tasks to digital progress. 

Among other advantages of applying usability testing online tools you can find:

• Access to Diverse User Groups: Online tests allow you to reach a broader and more diverse attendee base, which can lead to more representative and reliable results.

• Flexible Scheduling: Online usability testing offers flexibility in scheduling sessions, allowing tests to be conducted at times that suit both respondents and business owners. 

• Data-Driven Decisions: The data collected from online usability testing tools, including video recordings, heats, and surveys, can guide informed decision-making and decrease the so-called “human factor”. 

• Speed and Efficiency: Online tests are often quicker to set up and conduct. Test results can be collected and analyzed more efficiently, allowing you to add fast adjustments to your web product.

However, you should also be aware of the challenges you can face while condensing online usability tests, including:

• Undisclosed indicators and difficult-to-understand data;
• Lack of explanations and tips for fixing errors;
• Inconvenient navigation on the chosen website usability checker;
• The limited capabilities of free versions often limit the number of checks, depth of analysis or access to certain functions;
• Restrictions on data export;
• Not all SEO services can easily integrate with other analytics tools or marketing platforms, making automating processes difficult.

All of this is worth remembering when choosing online usability checker for your project. 

How does a usability checker work?

A usability checker is a tool or method for evaluating the efficiency and convenience with which customers use a web product, such as a site, application, or software. The primary goal of a usability checker is to ensure that a product is intuitive and easy to use for its target audience. That’s typically achieved through different testing approaches, such as user testing, heuristic evaluations, and surveys.

During a usability check, the user experience is assessed based on numerous factors, including:

• UI design;
• Navigation;
• Information architecture;
• Overall functionality. 

Applying a website usability checker, you can identify such website issues as confusing navigation, unclear labels, or inefficient workflows, providing valuable feedback for UX/UI designers and developers to make the web product better.

Tools for usability testing online will help you develop client-oriented, intuitive, and accessible e-commerce by focusing on user needs and requirements. This will increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, engagement rate, and optimize business conversion.

Online usability checkers come in various forms, each designed to evaluate different aspects of user interaction and experience. Here are some types of them:

1. Usability contrast checker:

• assesses the visual contrast between text and its background on a web product, such as a website or application. 
• help you create a more inclusive and client-oriented experience for all users.

2. Heats:

• visually represent where users click, scroll, and hover on a webpage.
• help detect areas of interest, confusion, or neglect and provide insight into user interactions.

3. Session Recordings Programs:

• record user sessions on your website or app, capturing their movements, clicks, and other interactions.
• offer a detailed report on how users navigate and use your product.

4. Surveys and Feedback Forms:

• allow you to get direct feedback from users about their experience with your product.
• help you gather opinions, preferences, and suggestions for improvement.

5. A/B Testing Tools:

• allow you to compare two versions of a webpage or feature to determine which one performs better.
• helps optimize design decisions, content, and functionality based on user preferences.

Note: A/B testing allowed Turum-burum team to check UX/UI hypothesis and find the best usability decisions for the Infoshina website. Thanks to this, we increased the micro conversion of the transition from the Product Item Card to the cart by 13,26%.

These types of usability testing online tools provide valuable insights into different aspects of user interaction and experience. By using a combination of these tools, you can optimize your digital product for a better user experience and greater overall success.

Top 5 usability testing online tools

Regular independent technical audits are an important step in maintaining your website's efficiency. The recommended frequency of such SEO analysis depends on a website's size, content changes, search engine algorithms, or even the frequency of revision of your business goals. 

Now you know much about the theoretical side of online usability audits but what about practice? Below, we will consider four of the most popular and efficient usability testing online tools and their peculiarities.

1. Google Analytics

This is the most popular tool that you simply can't do without already when launching a website. It allows you to track key metrics of user behavior on the site, set events and goals for specific business tasks, customize custom reports, create segments to build and optimize funnel steps. Google Analytics is the first thing you should take into account when tracking changes in website design, comparing metrics "before" and "after" the redesign, as well as to identify usability problems.

2. Crazy Egg

It is a click-based website usability checker tool with four main functions:

• Heat , which records where each visitor clicks on a page of the site.
• A Scroll  that shows how far down the page each visitor typically scrolls.
• "Overlay" breaks down the number of clicks on each page element.
• "Confetti" provides details about visitor sources, search queries, etc.

3. Hotjar

Allows you to collect high-quality feedback: from feedback forms to heat s, scroll s and thermal imagery. It can be used as an additional tool to Google Analytics to build and optimize the sales funnel.

One of the main advantages of the service is easy integration. GTM even has a separate Hotjar tag; you only need to enter your ID to get started. Immediately after integration, the tool starts collecting data.

4. Userlytics

It is an online tool for remote usability testing. It is designed to record user interaction with a website, mobile application or prototype. This usability analysis tool uses picture-in-picture remote testing software that provides audio comments and facial expressions of users, which gives a complete picture of visitors' reactions in real-time.

5. Clarity

This online usability checker is a completely free tool for obtaining data about user behavior on a website. It has a number of advantages over similar services:

1. Easy to install

2. Does not contain any restrictions:

• on the number of analyzed pages (unlike, for example, the free Hotjar tariff);
• on the number of sites per account;
• the number of sessions and users.

3. Data analysis starts immediately after installation;

4. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms are involved in the analysis.

Why is it important to use a mobile usability issues checker?

Nowadays, people appreciate the opportunity to view, compare, and buy things on the move. Your business will suffer if you provide a high-quality user experience only for desktop customers. 

Since mobile phones have small screens, most desktop versions don’t automatically adapt to them. As a result, we face long page loading times, grained images, and system bugs. Such things usually irritate customers, so they leave the website and switch to the competitor's business.

For that reason using a mobile usability issues checker for websites, especially e-commerce, is essential to ensure an optimal user experience and maintain a competitive edge in today's digital landscape. 

By applying a mobile usability issues checker for your websites, you can get:

• Improved User Experience;
• Increased Engagement and Retention;
• Higher Conversion Rates;
• Decreased Bounce Rates;
• Enhanced Accessibility;
• Data-Driven Insights;

Usability testing online: drawing the line

Usability testing online tools allow business owners and UX specialists to identify drawbacks of usability, improve user experience, and enhance navigation and design, increasing user comfort and the company’s conversion. 

Now you know a lot about usability testing tools, and how you will use this information is up to you. While some people are still skeptical about checking the website’s usability, others use them to deliver better services and gain more profit.

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