Concept Marketing Group Inc.

However, also well designed and pretty websites do not necessarily perform well. What’s good and clear to the interface designer sometimes does not match at all with how real users use the website later, when the site has been launched. Users get confused by stylish new design ideas, cryptic wording or just crammed windows with lots and lots of attention grabbing stuff on it.

But an underperforming website jeopardizes your overall website ROI, caused by lower conversion rates. Therefore changes should be implemented rather sooner than later. And exactly here you lose twice: First, your site’s ROI drops through lower conversion rates (opportunity cost) and second the overall ROI plummets again, when necessary changes on your finished site cost you a lot more (and we are speaking of 16-fold here) compared to when the same changes had been made in the stage of prototyping of your interface design or website project.

Looking on the process how most websites are created, you can see that there are many stake holders involved who all want to add their opinion to the new website. But as we know, too many cooks spoil the broth. Of course some websites must serve several, sometimes even contradictory purposes, but the question remains, who decides how to balance this out.

Let your Users lead your Interface Design Process

Underperforming websites right from the launch, increased cost for later changes and many differing opinions from all the stake holders just leave one valid option: directly ask your users! And the earlier you do that in the interface design process, the more cost-effective you can integrate the findings from user testing.

Studies have shown that early stage user testing helps you to find roughly 90% of the usability bugs in your website or interface design. The good news is that you only need about 5 qualitative user tests for that extraordinary result! But please, don’t test with the fellow on the desk right next to you (aka colleague). Invite real users from your targeted user group to give you open feedback or watch them clicking through your design concept. But make sure you deal with the psyche of your test users in the right way. High-fidelity prototypes look just too ‘finished’, triggering bad conscious with the test users when giving bad feedback preventing true feedback.

I suggest using clickable wireframes for testing purposes, since they contain all the important elements of each page and allow the user to experience your site as a clickable interface prototype. Thus the test user gets a good grip on how the website will later look like and you get a good grip whether your interface design concept works with the real user – everybody happy!