As web power-users, things that often seem wildly obvious to us, can be just plain confusing to everyday users. Several years ago we made heavy use of Flash on a jewelry website redesign. We were quite careful to use Flash responsibly and created easy-to-see navigation on the page.

But after the site launched, we found that visitors thought they were looking at a dreaded Flash intro. Some even emailed the site owner asking where the “skip intro” button was. Inexplicably, very few people saw the rather large navigation buttons at the top of the page, which we so lovingly put in place.

Many got stuck.

Visitors fled.

Sales plummeted.

This behavior was the last thing we expected during design and development. But it was a valuable lesson learned: users rarely use a website or web application in the way we expect.

Usability testing for the cost of a pizza

That jewelry website lost a week of online sales before we fixed the problem with a simple, strategically placed “view jewelry” text link. I’ve always wondered how things would have gone had we employed some user testing before launching (or even building) the site.

What if we had simply ordered a pizza and had the pizza delivery boy browse the site? Maybe we would have seen the problem then.

What if we had invited our office neighbors over to devour the remaining slices? Maybe they would have uncovered this issue while trying to place an order.

Had we done either, we may have avoided a big headache for us, the jewelry website’s owners, and its users.

Here’s the take-away: if you have any say over your company’s next web project, be sure to do some usability testing before it’s released into the wild.

Some guidelines for home-grown user testing:

• Recruit a handful of coworkers, parents, spouses, neighbors, or anyone willing to help to be your test subjects.
• Assure each participant that they are not being tested; they are helping you test the website and make it better.
• Observe each participant individually as they complete various website tasks.
• Bite your tongue and keep to yourself inner monologue thoughts like “Click the BIG BUTTON…IT’S RIGHT THERE…HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT??”
• Note the tasks that were completed with ease as well as those that were confusing and need rethinking.
• Refrain from beating yourself up over the things that are now obvious that a few moments ago were not.
• Rinse and repeat.

This is guerilla-style, but you will be surprised at the insight gleaned by watching someone with a fresh set of eyes wade through your website or your web application. Better to have test subjects find the flaws than would-be paying customers!