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Website Usability Testing: Definition, Problems, and Methods

Posted on  26 January, 2025
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You’ve just launched your eCommerce website, and everything seems to work flawlessly. All features function perfectly, and there are no bugs in sight. With everything in place, it feels like all that’s left is to wait for users to arrive and start converting.

However, in this competitive landscape, success requires more than a visually appealing site. Users expect seamless navigation and intuitive interactions. If your website is confusing or difficult to use, users are likely to leave, regardless of the design.

This is where website usability testing becomes crucial. By evaluating how real users interact with your site, usability testing uncovers hidden pain points and ensures a smooth user experience, thereby increasing the likelihood of converting visitors into customers.

In this guide, we’ll explore the benefits of conducting website usability tests, common issues that may arise, and effective testing methods to enhance your site’s user experience.

What is Website Usability Testing?

Website usability testing is a process used to evaluate how easily users can navigate and interact with a website. During this process, users are given specific Usability tasks to complete while observers watch how they perform these tasks. The goal is to uncover any points of confusion, frustration, or obstacles that users might face while using the site.

In general, conducting Website Usability Tests helps you:

  • Identify UX Issues: Observing users in action highlights issues that might not be obvious to designers or developers, such as unclear navigation, confusing forms, or broken links. These barriers can frustrate users, causing them to leave the site or abandon their intended actions.
  • Validate Design Decisions: Usability studies help validate whether website design elements—such as page layout, call-to-action buttons, or navigation menus—work as intended for your audience. It provides data-driven insights rather than relying on assumptions.
  • Improve Accessibility: Functional testing ensures the site works for diverse audiences, including people with disabilities or users on different devices and browsers. This not only improves site usability but also demonstrates a commitment to inclusivity.
  • Reduce Long-Term Costs: Identifying and fixing usability issues early in the design or development phase is significantly cheaper than post-launch corrections. It also reduces customer support requests caused by poor website functionality.

7 Common Website Usability Issues

Website usability issues are obstacles that hinder users from effectively interacting with a website, leading to frustration and potential abandonment. Addressing these issues is crucial for enhancing user experience and engagement.

Common Web Usability Issues

Here are 7 common web usability issues along with actionable solutions:

1. Complex Navigation

Navigation can feel confusing when menus are poorly structured, buried under multiple layers, or labeled in ways that don’t make sense to users. This often leaves visitors feeling lost and frustrated, unable to find what they’re looking for, which drives them to abandon the site.

How to improve:

  • Organize navigation menus logically with clear labels to help users find information effortlessly.
  • Use breadcrumb navigation to show users their current location within the site hierarchy.
  • Regularly test navigation with real users to identify and address confusion points.

2. Cluttered Layouts

A cluttered layout with excessive text, images, or overlapping elements can make it difficult for users to focus on what’s important. As a result, visitors may feel overwhelmed and struggle to process the information, often leaving before taking action.

How to improve:

  • Use size, color, and placement to highlight important elements and guide user attention.
  • Maintain uniformity in design elements across pages to create a cohesive experience.
  • Design responsive layouts that adapt to various screen sizes, ensuring usability on all devices.

3. Lack of Responsiveness

A website is considered to lack responsiveness when it fails to adapt its layout and content to different screen sizes and devices. This inflexibility often results in users needing to zoom in and out to read content or navigate the site, leading to a frustrating experience. 

How to improve:

  • Ensure your website adjusts seamlessly to different screen sizes and orientations.
  • Create touch-friendly interfaces with appropriately sized buttons and interactive elements.
  • Regularly test your website on various devices to identify and fix usability issues.

4. Inconsistent Visual Design

Inconsistent use of colors, fonts, or button styles across pages creates a disjointed and unprofessional appearance. This inconsistency confuses users, makes navigation harder, and reduces trust in the website’s quality.

How to improve:

  • Create and adhere to a style guide that defines fonts, colors, and layout principles.
  • Apply uniform branding elements across all pages to reinforce brand identity.
  • Continuously assess and update design components to maintain consistency.

5. Slow Page Load Times

Slow-loading pages frustrate users who are left waiting for content to appear, often resulting in site abandonment. The longer it takes, the less likely they are to return in the future.

How to improve:

  • Compress images and videos to reduce file sizes without compromising quality.
  • Reduce the number of elements on a page to decrease load times.
  • Enable caching to allow browsers to store static resources, speeding up subsequent page loads.

6. Poor Search Results

A search bar that delivers irrelevant, outdated, or poorly ranked results makes finding specific content unnecessarily difficult. Users end up wasting time scrolling through unrelated items or giving up entirely.

How to improve:

  • Include filters, autocomplete, and error-tolerant search to enhance user experience.
  • Use algorithms that prioritize and display the most pertinent results at the top.
  • Inform users when no results are found and suggest alternative queries or related content.

7. Lack of Progress Indicators

Users who take actions like submitting forms or navigating between pages, but don’t see any feedback or loading indicators are left wondering if the system is working. This uncertainty leads to impatience and frustration, often causing users to abandon tasks.

How to improve:

  • Display progress bars or spinners during loading processes to inform users of ongoing actions.
  • Show clear messages after user actions, such as form submissions, to confirm successful completion.
  • Allow users to reverse actions from mistakes easily.

How to Conduct Website Usability Testing

Web Usability Testing Methods

In particular, conducting usability testing of website involves 5 key stages to ensure your site meets user needs effectively:

  1. Create a Comprehensive Usability Testing Plan: Begin by outlining clear objectives and usability testing metrics based on the initial brief. In addition, selecting appropriate testing approaches and methods, and preparing a usability testing script (or Discussion guide) to facilitate the test. The plan also helps ensure that the usability test is completed within the allotted time frame, minimising any spill-over.
  2. Recruit the Right Participants: Identify individuals who closely represent your target audience to participate in the testing. This can be done through various sources, such as Recruitment Tools, Existing Customer Base, or Social Media.
  3. Schedule & Set Up Testing Sessions: Organize sessions at convenient times for participants and ensure the testing environment is conducive to honest feedback. Whether in-person or remote usability testing, make sure all necessary tools and technologies are in place for a smooth session.
  4. Execute Usability Tests: During the sessions, observe participants as they interact with your website, noting any difficulties or confusion they experience. Encourage them to share their thoughts and feelings. Furthermore, ask usability testing questions to uncover user perceptions and challenges.
  5. Document & Report Findings: After completing the tests, compile the data collected into a comprehensive Deliverable Package highlighting the Project overview,  Key findings and Areas for improvement. This provides actionable insights to guide the next steps in improving the web usability.

For an in-depth exploration of these stages, read our previous blog: The Complete Guide to Conducting Usability Testing

Common Website Usability Testing Methods 

1. Card Sorting

Card Sorting involves providing participants with a set of labeled cards, each representing a piece of content or functionality. Participants are asked to organize these cards into groups that make sense to them and label each group. This process reveals users’ mental models and helps designers structure information in a way that aligns with user expectations, enhancing the website’s information architecture and navigation. 

  • When to apply: During the planning or redesign phase to improve information architecture and navigation structures
  • Recommended usability testing tools: Optimal Workshop, UXtweak, Maze.

2. 5-second Testing

5-Second Testing involves showing a webpage or design for exactly five seconds. After this brief exposure, they are asked to recall specific elements or the overall purpose of the page. This usability test method assesses the effectiveness of a design’s first impression and ensures that key messages are communicated promptly and clearly to users. 

  • When to apply: During the early design phase to assess the effectiveness of a page’s first impression and ensure that critical information is immediately apparent to users.
  • Recommended usability testing tools: Lyssna, Maze, Useberry.

3. First-click Testing

First-click Testing helps evaluate the initial interaction users have with a webpage when attempting to complete a specific task. Participants are presented with a design and given a task; researchers then observe where users click first. Analyzing these first clicks helps determine if users can intuitively navigate the site as intended, ensuring that key functions are easily accessible. 

  • When to apply: During the design and prototyping stages to validate whether users can intuitively navigate the site as intended
  • Recommended usability testing tools: UserZoom, Optimal Workshop, Useberry.

4. Session Recording

Session recording involves recording users’ interactions with a website or web application, capturing mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, and keystrokes. By replaying these sessions, researchers can observe real user behaviors, identify usability issues, and understand how users navigate and interact with the site, providing valuable insights for improvement. 

  • When to apply: During the evaluation phase to observe real user interactions and uncover unexpected user behaviors.
  • Recommended usability testing tools: Lookback, Hotjar, Crazy Egg.

5. Eye Tracking Testing

Eye Tracking Testing uses specialized technology to monitor and record where and how long a user looks at different parts of a webpage. By analyzing eye movements, researchers can create visual representations like heat maps to see which elements attract attention. This data helps in optimizing page layouts to enhance user engagement and ensure that important information is noticed.  

  • When to apply: When detailed insights into visual attention are required to improve layouts, especially for content-heavy pages.
  • Recommended usability testing tools: Maze, Hotjar, Crazy Egg.

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Conclusion

In this blog, we’ve delved into the benefits of website usability testing, identified common usability issues, and discussed effective methods to detect and address them. Regular usability testing helps ensure your digital products meet user expectations and provide seamless experiences.

If you’re seeking a UX Audit service provider or a reliable usability testing company to conduct a website user experience audit and enhance your digital product, our team of usability experts is ready to assist. We offer thorough website/app usability testing services, providing detailed evaluation reports tailored to your unique needs.

As a leading UI/UX design studio, Lollypop delivers comprehensive product development services, including UX research, product design, and development across various digital platforms. Our expertise ensures that your digital solutions are visually appealing, user-centric, and highly functional.

Partner with us to elevate your digital products and create exceptional user experiences that drive engagement and success.

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