How often should we assess the usability and functionality of our website to make sure that we are maximising sales?
You’ve built your shiny new ecommerce website and launched it to your customers, but how quickly should you go back and check whether it is continuing to meet their needs in terms of ease of use?
Andy Budd, managing director of usability agency Clearleft, says that all too often retailers shy away from looking at usability again once the site has launched because they are worried about how expensive such a project can become.
Budd says it is just as crucial to consider usability when you are initially designing the site as once it is up and running.
He advocates getting into a test and improvement cycle: “If your design or development team can see that there are high drop-out rates somewhere on the site you can do some testing, rather than testing to a particular schedule.”
Budd adds that testing, whether done externally or in-house, should be seen as an opportunity to improve a site’s performance and therefore sales, and not just as a cost.
He says retailers should not be put off testing altogether by the £20,000 to £30,000 costs they might be used to with big lab-based usability tests, and instead can look to much less expensive web testing tools and tactics such as inviting a group of shoppers in to watch how they use your site, to allow usability to be continually improved.
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