[Hidden-tech] user testing for an ecommerce site

[Lambertus Louw]

Try https://www.usertesting.com they source the "volunteers" for you and 
you can set up any kind of test you want. The users are encouraged to 
talk their way through whatever process you wish for them to test. You 
can set the demographics you require to do the test as well.

Sincerely

LP Louw

hello at lplouw.com <mailto:hello at lplouw.com>
portfolio.lplouw.com <http://portfolio.lplouw.com>
+1-310-498-6062

On 10/11/2016 4:33 PM, Tim Boudreau wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 11:59 AM, Simon Alciere 
> <alciere at simonstamp.com <mailto:alciere at simonstamp.com>> wrote:
>
>     Dear Hidden Tech,
>
>     Our new ecommerce website needs to be tested before it goes live.
>     I've heard that the way to do it is with half a dozen paid
>     volunters. They use the site to make a purchase, talking out loud
>     while they do it. We videotape.
>
>     Does anyone have experience with this?
>
>
> Are you talking about testing if the site functions correctly, or 
> /usability/ testing (which is what is usually done with volunteers and 
> video taped)?
>
> For functional testing, that can be automated - yes, you could use 
> volunteers to do that, but you're better off using a testing tool such 
> as Selenium - http://docs.seleniumhq.org/ - so that the tests can be 
> automated, and run whenever there is a change in the site, so that you 
> know if any change broke something.
>
> For usability testing, yes, the most effective way to do that is 
> volunteers, and video taping is a good idea because you want to go 
> back and see what they did, and you don't want to interrupt the 
> volunteer to ask "why did you do that?" because that's going to alter 
> your results - you want to give them a task and turn them loose to 
> figure out how to do that, and then look at what they actually did, 
> identify false starts or things they did that didn't work, so that you 
> can tune your site to users' expectation of it (the user is always 
> right). Other worthwhile metrics are how long it took to perform a 
> task, and the number of clicks or keystrokes required - generally, the 
> more work you put between a user and their goal, the more users you lose.
>
> I've done some of that sort of thing many years ago in my work on 
> NetBeans - it's pretty simple - if you have a computer and a video 
> camera or smartphone and a list of tasks to complete, that's about all 
> you need.  The important things are to butt out while they're doing 
> the work (if you want to know why someone did something, review it on 
> the tape and ask them after), to take notes while reviewing them (a 
> spreadsheet is handy), and to be willing to make changes if a 
> significant number of users do something "wrong".
>
> -Tim
>
> -- 
> http://timboudreau.com
>
>
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