"How would it feel if a customer does not enter your shop just for a simple reason that the front door of your shop is hard to open, or if the stairs at the front are not in even size? For me, I won’t buy a product if I feel the presentation is not good. Every visitor which converts into a customer, is a success for an e-commerce website. Considering e-commerce websites, sales is directly proportional to the usability. Usability refers to a lot of factors such as responsiveness, ease of access, expectation of users, breadcrumbs and in short, overall look and feel of the website.
It is best to test usability with the live users as it will exactly tell how the users are using your website, Testing usability with live users will leave no space for assumptions(putting yourself in customer shoes). How to test usability for an e-commerce website?
Some of the ways are:
1. Eye movement tracking.
2. Mouse movement tracking.
3. Tracking mouse clicks.
Information from tracking reports can help in knowing what areas you need to make more appealing in your website. Some of the tools for testing usability are:
1. http://www.google.co.in/analytics/
2. http://mouseflow.com/
3. http://www.clicktale.com/product/mouse_move
4. https://www.crazyegg.com/
5. http://eyetrackshop.com/
Usability testing of any software refers to measuring or testing the ease of utilizing any software. It measures 'How easy and convenient it is to use and learn the software'.
Usability is crucial for e-commerce websites having different pages related to shopping carts, shipping and billing flow, Payment and order process, since it involves another layer of complexity in creating usable online stores.
Usability is vital for an online shop to attain its full potency. If people cannot shop, find it unsecured and long order process, then the site is despicable. Any ecommerce website’s goal is to expedite and streamline the purchase process as effectively as possible.
Yes, it is possible to get the usability of the software tested through live user, even when geographically distant located through video conferencing or software available in the market. Click locations and streams of the users along with any critical incidents that occurred are automatically entered, along with user's feedback. Remote usability testing allows to record the duration each tester took to complete the tasks. Testing is carried out in the real environment of the user instead of a controlled environment.
"Tester Cannot have a user Experience” - May be that is why Usability Testing came into the picture as it is the most proximate way to assume a customer view. It attempts test on User Interface of the application through which user interact and concludes the ease to use a specific Web Application by a native user.
When money comes into the action like in E-Commerce Web application Usability Testing becomes an indispensable virtue of testing. It becomes highly essential to test the robustness and learnability ratio. Depicting how well an application interface is made and how easy does a customer finds it to use.
In Usability testing priority takes an upper edge than severity as what people will conceive about the application through itsfront end.Best way to conduct Usability Testing in my opinion would be giving it away to a group customer or user to testwithin as their mindset is different as that of a tester therefore their response would be different.Paying attention to what users do, not just what they say can help a lot in increasing the efficiency of application as well as gaining trust.
It is possible to run a usability test with the live audience in our website in two ways:
Screen Sharing and Audio and Recording Sessions
E-commerce is nothing but modern marketing approach for selling things online, for making an e-commerce website successful among all the competitors it needs a good user experience. Here, emerges the need for usability testing for an e-commerce to make it user friendly. Following elements needs more focus in usability testing of ecommerce website.
• Registration page: This page should be more interactive and support auto fills option for repetitive entries. Also, in case any wrong entry in the form error should be displayed only at the entry instead of an error message with complete blank form.
• Checkout process: Ensure that it should be more secure and convenient for a user while completing the shopping.
• Product Descriptions: Detailed descriptions of top notch should display the product through image, text and video and clearly and effectively as possible.
• Important information: It should be easily findable for the user.
• Cart: Products should be easily added to it.
It is possible to run a usability test with the live audience in website, by giving them access to the beta version of the application and allowing them to report issues through mail or any bug logging tool.
In this competitive world, there are so many e-commerce websites that are being used among various users in the market. Usability testing is done to measure the ease of use for an e-commerce website. This can result in a significant growth in ROI with the following aids:
~ Reduction in customer care enquiries
~ Reduction in checkout process that promotes customers to reuse the site in future
~ Improvement in understanding of customer's need etc.
Consumers are the best usability tester for an e-commerce website. We can encourage users to share their experience by giving them additional points or discounts for future purchase.
The usability of an e-commerce site should be regularly improved. It leads to building a competitive edge over other similar sites. User are not satisfied with just simple shopping sites. They want similar experience which they get while shopping in a real store. Customers should be provided with product information with high level of detail and similarly Checkout experience should be easy and smooth.
It is possible to run a usability test with live audience. I would suggest running the test in a leading shopping store by setting up systems and then asking the customers to compare their experience with shopping online and shopping in a store.
In usability testing basically the tester’s tests user-friendliness of a product. It reveals parameters like users' comfortable level with your application (or website) according to its flow, navigation, layout, speed and content.
Usability testing tests that how easy it is-
– To use the software.
– To learn the software.
– How convenient is the software to end user
For an e-commerce website it can be reason of its popularity or it might even doom that e-commerce website too.
Running usability test with live users is a fantastic way to find out different use scenarios and one can use Crowd testing for it. Not only it will benefit from perspective of budget but it also will provide different thinking and usability scenarios, by people with different nature, priorities and uses for an e-commerce website, also Crowd-sourced testing experts will have different devices of which they would be testing the product."
E-commerce is latest boom. People from all ages are part for this new wave. And with increase in number of internet users due to mobility, testing an E commerce site from usability prospective is highly essential. If users find it difficulty in making purchase or making payment, then whole idea of selling goes down, no matter how good products one make available on their website. User experience should be smooth and quick with all necessary information shared point to point while accessing e commerce site.
As far as running usability test with live audience is concerned, I think yes this is very much feasible and should be made a practice along with regular testing. This can be achieved with great success using ‘Crowd Testing’where users across the globe share their experiences to help make the application better. There are many portals exist in market to achieve this goal like bugmoney.com, 99tests.com etc. They provide crowd testers a platform to express their concerns, likes and dislikes about the application which help in enhancing usability experience of site.
If user experiences great when he/she visits an e-commerce website its direct impact on revenue. So, certainly usability testing is very much required for an e-commerce website. Now a days ‘Feedback’ concept very useful to enhance user experience as well as for usability testing. Checkout flow should be simple and smooth. Need to test UI of e-commerce websites against jazzy themes and colors. Invoices and Receipts should be clear to understand the taxes, discounted amount, VAT.
Certainly, it is possible to run a usability test with the live audience in your website. Through on line customer care chat option and feedback options are very popular to get the user experiences and trace out the problems faced by the live users. All the total cost should be displayed before payment. Search functionality should reflect relevant products otherwise it would badly impact stakeholders business. Coupon codes and discount links/buttons/labels should be proper placed.
For more information on usability testing log on to http://www.qainfotech.com/services_UsabilitynaccessTesting.html
