Browsing: business

In my previous articles about usability testing, I wrote about ways for businesses and organizations to perform their own usability testing with minimal cost, time, and difficulty. One of the great online features that make this possible is LiveStream.com with Procaster. No, this is not a paid endorsement. We were just so thrilled with LiveStream’s service when we did our last usability test that I had to share.

In my last article I wrote about what you would need for your usability test. You can see that information here in part 1. Today, I’m going to write about the process of the usability test. How do you perform a usability test?

Last week I wrote about what a usability test is and why it is a great tool anyone and everyone should use. Usability tests can be real eye-openers, revealing things about your website that you never realized. These revelations can be the difference between having a successful website and an unsuccessful site or the difference between having a good site and a great site. It may even be the difference between whether your online company thrives or fails. Today, I’m going to write about how any company or organization can perform usability tests quickly, cheaply, and effectively.

I wish I could say “why aren’t you doing usability tests? Everyone else is.” But it’s simply not true. Most companies and organizations don’t do usability testing and they are missing out on a great opportunity. Church staffers and other non-business people you need to read this too. While businesses can certainly benefit from usability testing, so can churches…and anyone else with a website for that matter. So, what is usability testing and why is it so important for you to start doing it?

One group, however, that has been slow to move online is local businesses. These tend to smaller businesses that only provide their product or service to a specific geographic location, their city. For them the Internet seemed, and in some ways was, to broad to be effective, but all that has been changing in the last few years. The Internet is now the most important place for local businesses to market themselves.