So you’ve decided to start your own website. You’ve found a host, you’ve chosen a theme, and you’ve started adding your content. But how can you tell if the site will work for your target audience? It’s time for usability testing!

For more on usability, let’s hear from an expert. Steve Krug has been a usability consultant for 20+ years. In 2018, he gave a talk on the subject (titled Usability Testing with Steve Krug), hosted by the User Experience Community of Practice on DigitalGov University.

What even is Usability Testing?

In his talk, Krug explains that usability testing is watching people try to use what you create, while thinking out loud. The site doesn’t have to be finished. In fact, it’s better to do a little usability testing earlier on, than to do a lot more later in the process.

[It]’s one thing you can do that will produce consistent and significant improvement in your users’ experience.

Steve Krug

The video shows how this process can be easy, inexpensive, and relatively quick. All you need is a volunteer, a couple of rooms, and some screen recording software, and you too can do your own usability testing!

What does all this have to do with me?

• Have you ever struggled to find what you were looking for on a website?
• Have you ever been so frustrated trying to do something on a site that you just gave up?
• Do you want to make sure that doesn’t happen to your followers?

If you’ve spent any time online, you can probably recall an experience like the above. A negative experience like this can turn users off from your blog. It may even stop you from attracting the followers you want.

On a personal note:

Even I’ve had some recent experience with usability testing. In a different class, we were given two different websites – one belonging to an Ivy-League school, and the other belonging to a junior college – and asked to compare different aspects, such as financial aid. Just navigating each website revealed several points of friction. Even using the site for the Ivy league school wasn’t perfectly smooth. It really drove home the point that just about everyone can benefit from usability testing.

Final thoughts

After watching Krug’s video, I came away with more information about usability testing and its benefits. I even gained some insight into my own recent experience. I was inspired to try it out myself! But I still had some questions about how to recruit testers. Krug says that you should get people from your target demographic, but also include some who don’t fall into this category. How can we pull in good candidates? He says companies who promise to recruit people for this purpose aren’t reliable, so what should we do instead? Maybe it depends on what your target demographic is … or perhaps more details are included in one of his books.

What site can you think of that could benefit from usability testing?

This chapter is a revised version of a blog post titled “Why YOU Should be Doing Usability Testing” on Writing References.