Is your website customer-centric?

Customers visit your site for many reasons and their expectations for navigation, use, and information can widely vary. So how do you account for all these variations? Do you even know what they are?

User testing is the best way to determine just how well your website meets your target audience expectations.

User tests can be elaborate and expensive, but if you focus tests on one or two tasks at a time, you can save time and money while collecting the data needed to create a customer-centric website. Focusing allows you to test just 5-7 customers, only take 15-30 minutes of their time, and collect enough data to make informed site improvements — improvements that will wow your audience.

User testing should become part of your web strategy. You should test when you want to make site updates or go through a site redesign to ensure the changes provide value to your audience. If you are experiencing high bounce rates on certain web pages, testing is a great way to uncover why visitors are leaving the page without exploring more of your site or converting.

A good way to approach user testing is to start a customers feedback group. Ask customers from each segment of your business if they’d be willing to occasionally participate in user tests to improve their website experience. You’d be surprised how willing your customers are to help. It’s always a good idea to provide customers with a small token of appreciation when they do participate to keep up the goodwill.

Always remember, when you update your site based on feedback from user tests, let your audience know — they will be delighted you cared enough to take their input seriously and used it to improve your website.