User testing should be at the heart of every marketing campaign you do, ever. For website design, usability is always why you put a button here or a block of text there, so that you can drive your customers to click ‘Buy’ with ease. Once you’ve put your most important information above the fold (what the user sees without scrolling down), researched which colors psychologically promote what you’re trying to do or sell (oh yeah, there’s a science to it), and written content that reads easily to your customers, it’s time to test. In a perfect world, you would never want to launch your website without some thorough testing (besides your mom and dad), but deadlines come quickly and it’s tough to get to that last to-do.
There are services out there that offer user testing, such as heatmapping, but some aren’t all they claim to be. Not to name names, but there are some companies that market their service as a way around paying real live people and waiting for their timely responses. Is it really so much to wait a few days for some real live feedback?
We tried out one of these robo-services to compare to our ‘real’ heatmaps from earlier site testing, and the results were none too convincing.
Robo-Result:At first glance, this heatmap looked like it could be trusted, but on closer inspection, they appear to be using a formula to draw digital attention to the darkest areas of the page. In this case, the text is being hovered over, instead of the big button below it, and the darkest slice of pie-chart is apparently the most ‘clicked on’.
Human-Result:When you compare the Robo-Result to this real, live version you see what’s lacking. It may look willy-nilly, but all of the red spots show that people are interested in the navigation, as well as the buttons. Makes perfect sense, while the Robo-Result looks like it was done by, well..a robot.
Great piece of information and presentation thanks for sharing it.