6 Essential User Testing Questions for Website Redesign
Website Redesign involves more than just an aesthetic overhaul. It requires a strategic approach to ensure the site not only looks appealing but also functions seamlessly and aligns with your long-term business goals.
As marketers and designers embark on the journey of a website redesign, asking the right questions is crucial to delivering a site that meets user needs, drives engagement, and performs well. Here are six key user testing questions to guide your process and ensure a successful website launch.
1. How Do Users Understand My Content?
Understanding how users process and categorize your content is critical. One effective way to do this is through card sorting, where users group content from your website (such as pages, categories, and blog posts) in a way that makes sense to them. This exercise can be done with a variety of users, whether from outside your company or internal stakeholders, such as marketing and technical teams.
Card sorting helps clarify how information should be structured, allowing you to create intuitive navigation that meets user expectations. For example, when redesigning our agency’s website, we had employees from different departments organize services and deliverables. This simple and low-cost test provided valuable insights, ensuring we could present our services in a user-friendly way.
2. Does My Navigation Work?
Navigation plays a crucial role in whether users can easily find what they’re looking for on your site. To test the effectiveness of your navigation, conduct navigation and taxonomy testing. This can be done by asking users to perform tasks that involve navigating your site. The goal is to identify any challenges or roadblocks they encounter.
For instance, during a university website redesign, we tested a new navigation structure with ten users. The first half identified several key areas for improvement, which we addressed. The second group validated these changes, confirming that users could easily find important information. Tools like Treejack from Optimal Suite can simplify this testing process, making it quick and cost-effective.
Every business needs a website to reach customers, build trust, and drive sales.
Contact us today for a website design that turns visitors into customers.
3. What Impression Is My Site Leaving?
First impressions are powerful, and user perceptions of your site can influence their overall experience. Moderated user testing is an excellent way to gauge how users feel about your website’s design and user experience. Through structured, task-based interviews, you can get qualitative feedback on design choices and usability.
This method is especially helpful when you’re deciding between multiple design options. For example, when working on a redesign for the NFL’s club site, we used moderated testing to understand fan preferences. This feedback helped us confidently choose the most appealing design direction before moving on to page layouts.
4. Does My Site Get the Job Done?
Another crucial test to conduct is unmoderated task-based testing. This involves asking users to complete specific tasks on your site, such as locating a contact page or finding a product category. By observing how they perform these tasks, you can identify friction points and areas for improvement.
This type of testing is valuable because it can be done remotely, making it easy to fit into a busy schedule. While it requires thoughtful planning, such as recruiting participants and setting up the right tools to capture data, unmoderated testing provides rich qualitative insights and can even offer quantitative data when scaled.
5. Is My Site Ready to Launch?
Before launching your redesigned website, you need to ensure it’s ready for the spotlight. Fit and finish testing helps you identify any final bugs or errors that could affect user experience. It’s a way to “clean up” the site before it goes live.
When we redesigned Plante Moran’s website, we used fit and finish testing to ensure users could accomplish the top 10 objectives we had set for the site. This final round of testing helped uncover minor issues, which we were able to fix before launch. Some more complex changes were documented for future improvements. Fit and finish testing is often done informally within your team, but it provides critical information that boosts confidence in your site’s readiness.
6. Can I Optimize the User Experience?
Finally, after your site is live, it’s essential to continuously optimize the user experience. A/B testing is the go-to method for comparing two design variations to see which performs better in terms of user engagement and conversions.
This could be as simple as testing different button colors or trying out two different landing page layouts. By tracking real-time metrics, such as click rates and conversion statistics, you can fine-tune elements of the site to maximize its impact. Even small changes, like altering a call-to-action button’s wording or design, can lead to big improvements in user interaction and business outcomes.
Delivering a Site That Works for Your Users
User testing is not just a step in the website redesign process—it’s a critical tool for ensuring your site meets user expectations and achieves business goals. Whether you’re in the early planning stages or validating a recently launched site, asking the right questions and conducting relevant tests will help you uncover valuable insights, improve the user experience, and ensure your website’s success.
By leveraging these six key questions and testing methodologies, you’ll be better equipped to launch a site that not only looks great but also delivers real value to your users and your business.
