User testing

User testing is often regarded as the 'gold standard' of usability research as it records and reveals the real issues that people have when interacting with a digital interface.

However, it's worth noting that users rarely experience all the usability problems within a site. Therefore, any quality approach to user testing must incorporate an element of expert consulting to produce the best overall result.

For this reason it can be a high risk strategy to ask a conventional market research company to undertake true usability or user experience testing without the input of an experienced HCI consultant.

All optimum.web's user testing incorporates a large element of expert consulting to deliver best value for money to its clients.

The process followed for all our user-based evaluations is as follows:

Overall, this approach to usability research delivers the most comprehensive assessment of site usability. It provides a detailed understanding of mission critical issues within a site and often produces a number of 'quick hit' results for an immediate return on investment.

Compared with the expert approach to usability research, user testing requires more time and budget but this is always reflected in the quality of the final recommendations.

Comparison Testing

For clients needing to compare the usability of their site with a number of competitors, optimum.web has a comparison methodology. It is not uncommon for this methodology to be used to help create competitive advantage in the online environment by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of competitors and addressing those accordingly.

This type of study produces two levels of report. At the top level, overall site usability scores can be compared. At a lower level sites can be contrasted across 10 separate categories of usability.

Comparison testing can be done on a stand-alone basis or as a complementary study to either an expert or user-based study.