5 site testing ideas that will increase leads

[Hawaii Real Estate Pro]

Getting people to your site is only half the battle. If a user finds your site and can't figure out how to use it, then you've wasted all that money advertising and building search engine ranking.

Max made a great comment in another post about getting friends and family who are not familiar with your site and use them to do user testing. You can take this one step further by hiring people to do user testing for you, and it's not as expensive as you might think.

5 site testing ideas

1. Target Audience: Think about who your users are and find some people similar to who you would expect to be the target audience for your site.

2. Calm their nerves: Explain to your site testers that this is not a "test" on how well they use the internet. Rather, it's a test on how well your site works, and that they're here to help you find mistakes. So if they can't figure out something, don't be embarrassed, that's what they're here for.

3. Think out loud: Ask your site testers to think out loud and share with their thinking process with you as they look for links and go through the site. This will give you insite into what is missing or what they can't find.

4. Pay them: By paying people for the user testing, they will take things more seriously and you will get better results. $25 to $50 for a half hours worth of testing time should be enough.

5. Take notes: This sounds like an obvious thing, but be sure to take notes. You can even video the testing to get the most out of it.

Generally 2 rounds of 5 users will catch all the mistakes in your website. We've found several mistakes with our website and have made band aid fixes already with a full redesign beginning after summer to correct everything. We've seen our bounce rate go from 35% to 15% with just some simple changes. Leads continue to increase!

You can read more about this in a book called "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. It's good stuff all around.

Well there you have it. Fix the mistakes on your website and you'll see your bounce rate shrink and your leads increase.

[Search Engine Idiot]

Max: This is why I prefer it when everyone must put their real name in their signature.

[Hawaii Real Estate Pro]

Terry: Just out of curiosity,

1. Do you not like my signature?
2. Is my real name relevant to my post?

I'm not trying to argue with you. I'm open to criticism of my signature. I think this is a great forum and I enjoy helping others and reading the great info others post. Just interested in your reasoning behind requiring a name in the signature.

Oh yeah! Name: Justin Britt

[Search Engine Idiot]

My pet peeve is that I want to know who everyone is that is posting as a professional to professionals, and I want everyone else to know, too. It is not any more complicated than that.

[punchy]

Hi Terry, Hi Justin

[Cleo]

Very interesting post, I never thought of doing something like this. Thanks Justin