Nobody expects you to make your site compatible with Netscape and Internet Explorer browser versions 1.0. However, if you take advantage of the latest versions of these products and don’t test on the slightly older versions still in use, you will lose audience.
Performing a Usability Study to Determine Cause
As you learned in the previous section, the Web host’s statistics are only half of the picture. The cause of user visitation problems may very well be your site’s design or implementation.
As an example, you learned in the previous section that the Barkley site’s Kid’s Playground page and the Family Travels page are not getting the hits that the family expects. Actually, the children’s page gets extremely few hits. The Family Travel page gets hits but little click-through, meaning few people click on the image map to read about the Barkleys’ travels.
The Barkleys decided to perform a little market analysis of their own, inside their home, by inviting some of Rachel’s friends over and watching how they access the site. The Barkleys know the importance of a usability study and decided to test their site with the actual users of the Kid’s Playground page, the children, since they are the ones who are not hitting this page. In addition, children are far more technically savvy than adults who might visit the site! At least, that’s what the Barkleys think, and it is possibly true.
How do you perform a usability study? Stand back and watch users work your site. Don’t guide them! Rather, see how long they take to figure things out for themselves. Next, gather the answers to the following questions in regard to the users’ behavior:
Where do they click?
What expressions are on their faces?
Do they smile or sneer when trying a new feature?
Do they access half the home page often but rarely get to the other?
What seems to keep them from the other half of the page? Are elements not visible enough or not simple to use?
Do they click the text hyperlinks?
Do they ignore graphic hyperlinks?