Entries Tagged 'Methodology' ↓
March 24th, 2010 — Methodology, ROI, Resources, Selling
7 reasons why you can’t sell usability, and what to do about it
Selling usability services has been on my mind quite a bit lately, and in that respect I’m not alone. Several other usability practitioners have discussed selling usability or UX. Some of them include Alan Colville, who recently posted an excellent article on selling UX to large companies, Kate Walser and her wonderful UX in the Boardroom article, and even the very useful book Selling Usability by John S. Rhodes.
All of these practitioners and more discuss the problems inherent in explaining usability and UX services to companies that are prospects for potential services.
So why then is selling usability so difficult? In my opinion, it;s quite simple;
“They won’t buy usability if they don’t know what it is.”
The problem of selling usability:
The problem with selling usability has nothing to do with you and how you pitch your usability services, or your advertising approach, your marketing materials, prospect lists or the copy you create to sell. The problem is;
“The audience is completely un-receptive to ANY sales message, because the service is not understood.”
Educate first, sell second:
The best method for you to use for selling usability is to not sell it at all. Instead, work toward educating prospects first about:
- What usability is (and what it isn’t)
- Why usability is helpful / necessary
- How to easily fit usability into the Software Development Life Cycle
After educating prospects about usability, and touching on the benefits usability can bring to your prospect then you can start selling usability.
If dealing with a prospect who either doesn’t know about usability, or is misinformed about how it works, you must know who you are talking to. You must understand and deal with the reason or reasons for their lack in interest about usability. Properly educating prospective clients is the best way to sell usability.
Here’s my top 7 reasons why selling usability is so difficult, and what to do about it, I hope you find these useful (note, scroll to the bottom of the page for a handy list of selling usability references used in this article):
#1 – Usability is not understood by senior management:
In many organizations, both large and small, usability is not part of the process for development because senior management has no clue what usability is. Why should they? Usability is not typically part of traditional business administration or technology training.
Also, senior management, especially technology leaders, are not compensated for usability or user satisfaction of the applications they build. They are only compensated for how well they complete projects on-time, on-budget and on-target to requirements and specifications. At mid-sized and small companies this impact is even greater.
Solution – Target usability education at senior management levels:
When usability is not understood at all in a company, I’ve found the best way is to start education at the top, speaking the language of executives in terms of ROI. Providing education and information about how usability contributes to improvements in application speed, reduction in errors, or increases in revenue uses the terms executives understand, and are compensated for. Human Factors International does a good job of providing calculators for ROI that executives will understand.
#2 – Just say “no”ds
A very wise former supervisor of mine once told me that he observed that people that moved up the corporate ladder and stayed there were excellent at saying “no.”
His opinion was that by saying “no” to trying anything new, saying “no” to changing the old routine, and saying “no” to unknown results these managers could safely continue to exist in their organizations.
Perhaps you’ve run across a “no” man from time to time.
Solution – Go over, around or under those that say “no”
It’s unlikely you’ll ever get a true “no” manager to say “yes.” You can try, using education about how usability will actually enable the manager’s goals to be hit easier, quicker and with better certainty.
There’s even an excellent book on how to deal with Getting Past “No” which you may find useful. However this is a long shot. “No” just comes naturally to these types of managers.
You may have to simply cut the “no” manager out of the equation if all else fails. If necessary, focus on someone either above, or to the side of that person (equal to, but in a different department for example). I’m not advocating not trying; rather I’m advocating spending your limited resources where the greatest good has the potential of occurring.
#3 – Usability doesn’t add to revenue
I once tried to sell usability testing to a small firm that produces applications on behalf of large businesses. However, this firm was very resistant to my usability testing. Why? Because they were paid to generate code according to the requirements provided by their clients (who knew nothing about usability) and usability didn’t add to their revenue.
Adding usability testing to the development process would have cost this little company money, money they hadn’t budgeted for and weren’t going to get back from their client. Worse, it might result in potentially needing to change the requirements, which would cause client issues and potential release delays, and thus more money. Far from being a revenue generator, usability was considered an unnecessary and potentially dangerous expense. How sad.
Solutions – Speak revenue in terms each type of prospect understands
For developer companies that build apps for 3rd parties, they could bundle usability as a component of their services, and either add a new revenue stream because they charge their clients for it, or differentiate their services from competitors by offering usability testing as part of the development package (to provide an even better application).
For marketing and sales types, pointing to the usability success of the $300 million button and related success stories of eCommerce gains would be a great usability revenue generation education tool.
For applications developers / owners, the ability to sell more units, based on improved interface performance would be useful.
The Nielsen Norman Group produced a helpful ROI of Usability study that provides plenty of rationale for usability’s return on investment. All would be excellent ways to drive home the point that usability can indeed add to revenue.
#4 – Usability will slow development down
I hear this concern about usability slowing development down mostly from technology teams. The thinking is; “We already have our requirements and specifications, so UI issues are already decided. There’s no time to test usability, testing will slow us down and add no value.”
The real issue here is the technology team is probably acting in a reactive manner, and simply building code based on requirements received. They may have no power, or no desire, to rock the interface boat based on usability testing results, they may not own the requirements. Thus there’s “no time” to usability test.
Solution – Educate the requirements owners about usability
The solution in this case is to find and educate the people responsible for drafting and approving the requirements, which may not be the technology team. Mention how usability can be added to early stage development (paper prototype stage or wireframes) with minimal time impact, and maximum effectiveness. Tout the ability of early testing to optimize UI design decisions, so that the requirements can be written and or revised with better UI information.
#5 – Usability is focus groups which are already done (or not needed)
This argument comes mostly from companies that have marketing research departments or leaders, who assume usability is just a form of market research. The issue here is lack of education about the methodology and purpose of usability testing.
Solution – Educate about the differences between focus groups and usability testing
Here’s where you must clearly define that usability testing is not about gathering opinions about designs (aka market research and focus groups), it’s about gather task-flow error points. I’ve found using a table or chart showing the differences in usability testing vs. market research goals, methods and analysis can help educate market research types who are confused about or unaware of the differences. Another handy tool is WebCredible’s article on the differences between focus groups and usability testing.
#6 – There’s no budget for usability (it’s expensive)
I partly blame us usability practitioners for causing this confusion about usability and budgets. It doesn’t help that well known usability gurus charge $38,000 for a simple usability review of a web site. Although this may be their cost, your cost might be significantly less. The assumption prospects may make is if they charge that, so do you.
Also, there are many usability agency web sites that make no mention of the cost of their various usability services at all.
And it doesn’t help that the usability industry itself has no standard definitions for simple usability terms and prices vs. services guidelines for things like remote testing, usability reviews, heuristic evaluations, etc. etc. etc. We as an industry are helping to cause this confusion.
Solution – Educate about the costs of usability testing
The reality is your usability testing might cost far less than $38,000 for a basic usability review, and you need to tell prospects that. Also, applying remote research methods early in the design process is a very cost-effective way to run usability testing. Informing prospects about the costs of usability, based on each type of test (in-person, remote, moderated, un-moderated, etc.) can really help to clear up all the confusion.
A couple of good resources to use are Bolt | Peter’s article on comparing remote to in-person usability testing and the how-to book, Remote Research which has case studies and related cost/benefit information for low cost remote testing methods.
#7 – Usability isn’t needed, we use web site metrics and A/B testing
I hear this often from eCommerce firms that have dedicated web analytics or optimization teams. The feeling here is they already have detailed reporting and testing for all user interactions. Their reporting, and resulting A/B or multivariate testing already provide optimizations, thus no usability testing is needed. Some prospects mistakenly believe “hard” interaction data via A/B testing is much better than “soft” usability testing data.
Solution – Educate about the “why” of usability
Moderated usability testing is the only tool I know that can best uncover the “why” of user behavior. Explaining this to metrics-happy companies can be a difficult proposition. It helps to inform them that there’s a difference between only knowing that button “B” had 25% more clicks than button “A”, versus WHY button “B” had 25% more clicks. The usability testing “why” information can be used to make better decisions about future tests. This is because user reasoning and behavior is now part of the A/B testing equation.
A helpful tool you might use is my post on A/B vs Usability testing.
Conclusion: Top 7 reasons why you can’t sell usability
So those are my top 7 reasons why you can’t sell usability to prospects. The issue is selling can’t happen if there is a lack of understanding about what usability is. The best approach I’ve found is to educated prospects about usability, based on their reason given for not needing it. If properly educated and informed about what usability is, how it works and how it can provide benefits, prospects almost don’t need any selling. They will actually approach you with a potential project.
Perhaps I’ve not covered a reason you’ve run across? I hope you’ll take a moment to share with us in the comments your typical reasons, and how you deal with them!
Selling Usability Handy Resources Guide:
Articles
- Allan Colville, Taming Goliath: Selling UX to Large Companies (part 1 of 2)
- Bolt | Peters, Remote Testing versus Lab Testing
- Craig Tomlin, A/B, Alpha/Beta or Usability Testing, Whats Better? Part I, A/B Testing
- Jakob Nielsen, Paper Prototyping, Getting User Data Before You Code
- Jared Spool, The $300 Million Button
- Kate Walser, UX in the Boardroom: A Solid Case for Investing in UX
- WebCredible, Focus groups vs. usability testing – what, when and why?
Books
Calculators
Lists of Selling Tools
Report
March 11th, 2010 — Methodology, Resources, Usability Tools
Here are 7 ways you can increase your web site sales with usability.
Ecommerce web sites can use these seven powerful usability tools to help understand what behavior is occurring on the site, and most importantly WHY that behavior is occurring.
This is extremely helpful because managers can use this information to optimize the usability of the site - thus increasing conversion and ultimately sales.
Just like Batman and his utility belt full of tools, usability experts have available a variety of tools designed to fight the crimes of task-flow error and poor performance. These usability tools, used either separately or in conjunction with one another, can help determine where in an eCommerce web site there are usability issues that are causing lost conversion and sales. Implementing optimizations based on the analysis of the “why” of these task-flow errors can help increase web site conversion and sales.
So here then is a list of 7 ways eCommerce web sites can increase web sales with usability:
1. Conduct in-person moderated usability testing of your web site
This is the traditional, and arguably the best method to learn about where there are usability issues that are impacting web site performance, thus sales. I refer to it as “best” because it uses real users and directly answers the question of “why” your web site visitors are doing the crazy behaviors they do (like leaving order-flow pages early, or clicking the browser back and forward buttons continually part way through your eCommerce sales pages).
The “moderated” part of in-person moderated usability testing means the test participant and the moderator (and potentially observers) are present in the same room for the test sessions, and the moderator delivers the test and probes interesting behaviors with follow-up questions.
In-person moderated usability testing provides full interaction with and observation of the testing participants as they conduct the test. This enables the moderator to follow-up or probe issues as they occur, and learn from the participant the “why” of behavior and task-flow issues. In terms of actual usability data this method provides the most detail and best analysis of your web site, which eventually leads to optimization and increased sales.
Pros: Arguably the best way to gather usability data about your web site. Provides detailed observations and feedback via the in-person 1-on-1 interaction between the moderator and the participant.
Cons: Takes more time to set-up and administer than other methods. Costs more than many other methods and can be difficult or almost impossible logistically due to geography / distance.
2. Conduct a remote moderated usability test of your web site
Almost equal to the power of in-person moderated testing is remote moderated usability testing. With remote testing, the participant and the moderator interact together while conducting the test, but are not in the same room, maybe not even in the same country!
By using technology such as screen-sharing software, phones, web cams, and audio-video recording, a live moderated test can be conducted from anywhere, with almost anyone. The moderator could for example be in let’s say, Los Angeles, California, and the participant could be sitting at her computer in say London, England.
As with in-person moderated testing, remote moderated usability testing enables the moderator to observe and ask critical follow-up or probing questions with the participant. This provides rich and detailed “why” behavioral data that can be used to make recommendations for optimizing the site, thus leading eventually to increased sales.
If a web cam and microphone are available on the participant’s end, this enables the visual and audio interaction that is obtained via in-person testing. The only issue is that the same technology relied upon to deliver the computer-to computer or phone connection can sometimes fail (or technical term “hic-up”), causing issues or problems with the remote test.
Pros: Almost as good as in-person usability testing. In some ways better than in-person testing because remote moderated usability testing enables testing of participants regardless of geography, and thus can be far faster and cheaper than in-person moderated testing.
Cons: The technology used for the connections (telephone and or sharing of computers) can sometimes fail, causing issues with the test itself. In-person remote usability testing without the added visual component of a web cam means helpful non-verbal information is not obtained.
3. Conduct a remote un-moderated usability test of your web site
Often referred to as automated research (and by Scrabble champions as asynchronous research) remote un-moderated usability testing uses online tools to deliver usability tests to users without a human moderator being present. The user is typically intercepted via a pop-up or related type of request to participate in the study, and upon acceptance the participant is walked through the study via written instructions - while behavior is captured via click-analysis and participant feedback gathered via survey-type questions at the end of the study.
Because actual users are part of the study, this is a very helpful source of data - especially when larger numbers of participants are used. Data gathered from the analysis of the testing can lead to usability optimizations that increase conversion and thus web site sales.
Unlike moderated usability testing however, there is no ability to modify the test in real-time based on participant behavior or feedback. Thus the “why” of behavior may not be readily available. To help understand the “why,” automated usability testing has to carefully include sufficient questions to dig into participant attitudes and opinions about their behavior without leading the witness (so to speak).
The validity of results for remote un-moderated usability testing completely relies upon the skills and expertise of the person developing the test. This is NOT the place for amateurs or do-it-yourselfers who have no usability training. A poorly set up test with leading questions could actually harm web site sales, because the tainted results of a bad automated study if applied on a web site could negatively impact conversion and thus sales.
Pros: A very quick and relatively inexpensive way to gather large amounts of actual user behavioral data. Testing can be run on almost any web site (including your competitors!) and analysis can lead to optimizations that improve eCommerce conversion and thus sales.
Cons: Developing automated tests that evaluate the right information but without providing give-away answers or leading questions is very difficult without the expertise of a trained professional. The inability to probe participants and dig into the why of their behaviors while they are conducting the test means important feedback may not be available.
4. Conduct an expert usability review of your web site
An expert usability review is an audit of your web site by a trained usability professional. The usability review is an examination of the site against common usability best practices and heuristics, which are the 10 general principles for user interface design.
The usability review should include detailed analysis including screen captures of the web pages with specific call-outs for where the issues are, what they are, and potential ways the issues can be optimized. This is a very fast and efficient way to gather usability feedback about an eCommerce site. The information provided can be used to optimize the site and thus improve conversion and sales.
The issue with expert usability reviews is they don’t use actual web site visitors for testing at all – instead the expert evaluates the site in much the same way a Doctor evaluates your health during a check-up. If only one expert conducts the review, it’s unlikely that the expert usability review will find all the usability problems. The important “why” of user behavior is not available, although the trained expert may give opinions about potential reasons for the “whys.”
Pros: Very quick and efficient way to learn about potential usability issues and opportunities for improvement. Lower in cost than many other usability testing types.
Cons: If only conducted by one person, usability issues may be missed. Worse, because actual users are not tested and observed, the “whys” of user task flow errors are not captured.
5. Conduct a click-stream analysis of your web site
Another handy usability tool is click-stream analysis, which can be used to map typical (or more interestingly atypical) paths through your eCommerce web site. Evaluations of where users click on a page (or where they don’t!) can lead to testing of new placements, graphic treatments or related optimization of buttons, calls-to-action and related interaction elements.
Most click-stream analysis tools provide a snippet of code you place on your web pages, which enables the tracking of actual users clicks. Because your real users are providing this real data, it can be very helpful when evaluating usability optimizations to improve conversion and thus sales. Several tools also capture form entry data, which can be very useful when trying to evaluate why certain form fields have high error or abandonment rates.
However, because there is no “why” information of user behavior, click-stream analysis misses important user behavioral information and feedback. This means that to a certain extent some guess-work is required to evaluate results and make recommendations, a dangerous proposition if the guesses are wrong and conversion and sales decrease instead of increase. I typically recommend to my clients who are interested in using click-stream analysis to do so in conjunction with A/B or multivariate testing of resulting recommended optimizations. It’s a safe way to hedge your bets and ensure you don’t hurt instead of improve sales.
Pros: A very handy way to evaluate actual user click actions on a page, or better yet across several pages. Very cost-effective, and assuming you have the ability to add code to your pages can be set up and run quickly.
Cons: Doesn’t provide the “why” of user behavior. Interpretation of results and recommendations for optimizations is completely reliant on the skills of the evaluator. Can be privacy and or security issues if captured data includes form entries as well as clicks.
6. Conduct an eye-tracking study of your web site
Ahh eye tracking, the one subject that seems more than most to cause usability professionals to take sides and in some locations (picture a bar with a few drinks under their belts) might even cause a fight. Some usability professionals swear by eye tracking, and some usability professionals swear AT eye tracking.
Eye tracking is a means of providing a participant with an apparatus that tracks their eye movements as they look at a web page or pages. Typically the path of the users eyes as they move around the page is recorded (this is called “saccades”) as well as the amount of time users focus on particular places on the page (this is called “fixations”). Aggregating multiple sessions of eye tracking can provide common visual paths users take as they view a page or pages.
Proponents of eye tracking use the information to determine what objects seem to be capturing a users attention, and what elements are ignored or missed. This can be helpful when analyzing and optimizing placement or graphical features of important objects on pages, which can potentially help improve usability and thus web site sales.
Opponents of eye tracking claim the data is highly artificial and potentially not valid because users are not in their normal environment and are required to use technological implements that they normally would not use. In addition, opponents feel the data can be misinterpreted, causing potentially bad recommendations that could hurt web site conversion and thus sales.
Pros: Enables eCommerce web site managers to gather actual user visual data as participants scan web pages and objects on the page. Analysis of what is capturing attention, as well as what is not capturing attention can be used to optimize placement or graphical features of objects on the page - potentially resulting in increased conversion and sales.
Cons: Can be expensive and time-consuming to set-up and run. Opponents maintain that because of the technology required to capture the data, the user is not in their normal context and thus results may not be accurate. Further, analysis of results and subsequent recommendations for changes are completely reliant on the skills of the evaluator. They “why” of typical web site user behavior may also not be known as eye movement is only one part of the interaction a user has with a web site.
7. Conduct a simulated eye-tracking study of your web site
Because in-person eye tracking can be expensive (depending on the technology, number of participants and facility) simulated eye-tracking algorithms were created as a low-cost alternative. These simulated tools in theory replicate a human eye-track based on object location, white space, contrast, size, etc. of objects on a page. This information can be used to infer where potential issues with typical visual paths are, and to make changes that seek to optimize tracking resulting in increased conversion and sales.
Because they are so cheap and relatively easy to perform, simulated eye-tracking can provide data almost immediately. Test pages with changes in object location or graphical treatment can be run through the same test to determine if the changes improved the visual path.
As with in-person eye-tracking studies, opponents claim this is all a load of dingo’s kidneys (hat tip to Douglas Adams) and that not only is the “why” of user behavior data missing, so is the user.
Pros: Provides a low cost and fast alternative to human eye-tracking studies. Data can be used to evaluate potential usability issues with object placement or graphical treatment. New versions of placement or graphics can be tested quickly and compared against the original set to evaluate the potential usability improvement.
Cons: Does not use real users, instead uses algorithms to simulate typical human eye-tracking responses to objects on a page. Does not capture the “why” of behavior. Dependent on the skills of the evaluator in analyzing results and making optimization recommendations.
Conclusion: 7 ways to increase your web site sales with usability
As with Batman’s tool belt, it usually takes one or more tools used for specific means to provide the best usability testing results. This is certainly true when dealing with the 7 usability testing tools mentioned above. By using the correct tool or tools an eCommerce site can be evaluated and usability improvements can be made, which improves the conversion and thus sales of the site.
February 25th, 2010 — Methodology
Conducting a Usability Review:
In the world of usability, nothing seems to confuse my clients more than trying to determine exactly what a usability review is. And it’s difficult to purchase something if you don’t know what it is!
Usability reviews don't hurt (physically)
You can think about a usability review this way, it’s kind of the same as going to a doctor for a check-up, your web site will be examined to find usability issues (ailments) and you’ll be provided with recommended optimizations (prescriptions) for improvements.
Usability reviews are not generally well known or understood because the usability field itself does not have a single, consistent, standardized definition of “usability review.”
It’s an interesting and ironic truth that usability professionals who pride themselves on utilizing standards for testing and optimizing web sites can’t create their own set of standard definitions of common usability terms. Go figure.
So, what is a usability review and how do you do one?
Since there is no consistent standardized definition of a usability review (also known as an expert review, expert usability review, usability audit, heuristic evaluation, etc. etc. etc.) I’ll go ahead and give you mine:
Craig’s definition of a usability review:
“A usability review is an evaluation of a user interface versus common usability best practices and heuristics by a trained usability professional.”
So in the spirit of sharing and giving, here are the steps I use when conducting a review. By following these steps, you will have all the information necessary to conduct your own usability review.
And if you would like me to email you a sample usability review so you can see how this all comes together, just contact me and I’ll be glad to send you one.
Step 1 – Become a trained usability professional, or save time and hire one.
As with most any other professional such as a doctor, lawyer or elephant-trainer, it’s important to have an education and experience in the practice. Usability testing of critical tasks and usability reviews are not about providing opinions about a design, conducting focus groups or deploying a satisfaction survey on a web site.
Rather, usability testing and reviews are a scientific approach to analyzing a user interface and task-flow to determine where (and why) there are problems that cause users to have difficulty completing their tasks.
Using a trained usability professional for your usability review means taking the guess-work out of conducting the evaluation, and ensuring that a non-biased approach is used.
Step 2 – Identify critical goals for the web site or application:
More than likely, there are multiple goals for your web site or application. The important aspect of a usability review is to focus on the most critical goals. This is because narrowing down the focus enables evaluation of specific tasks associated with that critical goal or goals, and helps shape the subsequent to-do list of potential optimizations derived from the review.
For an eCommerce site like Blue Nile it’s probably selling diamond engagement rings.
For an informational site like the State library of Kansas it’s probably helping you find the literature you are looking for.
Whatever your web site or application has for critical goals, those are the ones that you should focus on first when conducting a usability review.
Step 3 – Define typical users via a Persona:
The vast majority of web sites and applications have typical users who share a common set of domain expertise (knowledge of the field) and critical tasks. Identifying the Persona (a fictional representation of the typical user) is critical. This is because the usability review must take into consideration the type of person who is interacting most frequently with the user interface. It must consider their familiarity or lack thereof with the terminology, information architecture, navigation schema and related user interface systems they interact with.
For example, the Persona used for a usability review of a web site that deals with precision electronic measurement probes for the engineering industry, such as on MicronTesa.com may be quite different from that of a Persona who visits VirginAtlantic looking to book a flight to Heathrow.
Basic usability standards apply across all users, but specific “mental maps” (expectations of labeling and information architecture – groupings of information) must be considered when conducting a usability review.
Step 4 – Conduct the critical tasks:
With the above steps completed, now the actual “review” of the web site or application can take place. The identified critical tasks are conducted one at a time, yes even down to purchasing that airline ticket – make sure you purchase a fully-refundable ticket of course!
As each task is conducted, the usability review identifies specific task issues as well as general usability issues as defined by usability heuristics (best practices).
What are the usability heuristics?
According to Jakob Nielsen the 10 usability heuristics are:
- Visibility of system status
- Match between system and the real world
- User control and freedom
- Consistency and standards
- Error prevention
- Recognition rather than recall
- Flexibility and efficiency of use
- Aesthetic and minimalist design
- Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
- Help and documentation
Typically each critical task has to be conducted many times, and each time a separate usability heuristic is evaluated against the task. Issues are noted, typically with screen shots captured and detailed information about the usability issue found.
Step 5 – Compile the analysis
By now, you have a great amount of information about specific usability issues in the task flows. Although you *could* list each one out separately, a better way to compile the analysis is with a set of grouped issues. In addition, I like to provide screen shots documenting the issues, with commentary provided.
It’s important to also include suggestions or recommendations to improve the usability issues found. After all, nobody wants to receive a laundry-list of problems with no hope of improvement.
As mentioned, there should be several issues that all share common traits, these can be grouped together. I like to group issues into buckets of commonality, such as those involving:
- Information architecture
- Navigation
- Labeling (taxonomy)
- Layout
- Functional flow
- Form function
- Error handling and messaging
Step 6 – Present the analysis
More than likely the client will be faced with a litany of problems, issues and snafus. When presenting the results of the usability review, I always like to start with some positives. I typically will provide (as best I can) screen shots and commentary of the good points of the web site or application. This has two purposes:
- If provides the recipient of the bad news with a glimmer of hope
- It reminds everyone that the web site or application has benefits, benefits that can and should be mentioned
There’s one other important point to consider about a usability review, and that is there’s no such thing as the perfect usability review. I always like to remind my recipients that a usability review, because it’s conducted by one person, will not catch all the usability issues that might be present.
But by focusing on the critical tasks of the web site or application, hopefully the most significant usability issues are identified, and recommendations for improvements made available.
Conclusion: How to conduct a usability review
So there you have it, those are the steps I use in developing a usability review. Whether you call it a heuristic review, a usability audit or an expert review, the point is it’s a great way to learn about issues and opportunities to improve a web site or application.
By the way, if you would like to see a sample usability review I’ll be glad to email you one, just contact me.
