You are all familiar with split-testing, or “AB testing”. It is an interesting quantitative approach, which has the merit of providing evaluation elements that are therefore objective (Example: “after modification of the color codes, we see an increase of + 7.54% in clicks on the button ‘add to basket ‘, so it is more visible and / or encourages more clicks ”). Except that split-testing takes time. And sometimes, especially when working for a young start-up, you don’t have time to put electronic Biactol on each of the “buttons” (in both senses of the term) of your pre-pubescent site. There are so many things to do …
In this case, we will use user testimonials, which will allow us to collect information of a different, more “qualitative” nature:
- “I find that the color of this button does not integrate well with the graphic charter of your site”;
- “I think this element is too low in the page and is not highlighted enough”;
- etc …
Note that the user is always right and that “wrong answers” do not exist. It’s a bit like the dean of an old Corsican family, with a chiseled face and heightened sensitivity: don’t contradict him 😉
The home page
Examples of user feedback regarding the TonPsy.fr home page:
- Your site is visually overloaded;
- Your site is not responsive (= resizable on different interfaces);
- The language bar (which was originally at the bottom of the page) looks too much like a footer (which poses a big problem because a lot of content is below the fold);
- The main navigation (top menu) has too many occurrences. As such, be aware that the short-term memory of an average person can retain on average 5 items, with variations of + or – 2 depending on the person. No need to overload your menus: if the user hesitates and does not know where to click, when he reaches the last item, he will not remember the first, and will therefore have to start reading again at the beginning.
Here is what the site looked like in October 2012 (I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to a site that can really serve you for your design optimizations, or if you need to do a retrospective for educational purposes: web.archive.org:
At the time of writing, the site looks like this:
As you can see, we have improved many things (in a short time and often simultaneously, which would have been impossible with an incremental approach like that of split-testing).
- We have reduced the height of the header, which occupied too much space and forced scrolling;
- We have added faces to humanize the site: that of a psychologist, that of a patient, and finally that of the person in charge of support (bottom right);
- We’ve replaced the “check out our blog” button with “I’m making an appointment”, because that’s what we want our visitors to do. We have kept the blog, but we do not put it forward any more, because it is not a priority.
The Facebook Like button: less is more?
Regarding our accounts on social networks, we originally opted for the possibility of liking the facebook page directly on the pages of the site. Internet users generally like to make the least possible effort, so it seemed appropriate to allow them to like with a single click, not in 2 clicks (one click to go to the facebook page and one click to like). “Seemed”, because in reality it was a false good idea.
We finally removed this device because it involved communication with Facebook’s servers, and therefore considerably lengthened the page loading time.
A “How to”
We strongly recommend that you post a little “how to” on your site. It catches the eye and shows that your site is easy to use (even if it is, if you don’t say it, no one can know …)
Choice of payment method
The choice of payment method is a point that we strongly advise you to work on. Beware of Paypal, which first offers to pay with a paypal account and not by credit card (even if both are allowed by their system): you could lose users who do not have a paypal account and who believe this necessary to finalize the order.
You can use the Stripe payment solution, which is free and, as you can see, refined to its maximum.
If you sell electronic goods, you don’t need to collect a mailing address, or even a last name. Think about it: data mining is not an obligation! You will gain in fluidity at the time of registration and / or payment, so you will convert more.
The importance of context
Keep in mind that visitors to your site came to it from different sources, with a different user flow, and with a different level of engagement. It is therefore important to present them with different content. So we have two buttons with different incentives:
- the first (in blue, bottom right), for internet users who are on the blog or on the home page, is “contact -orientation”: indeed, we assume that they need answers rather general questions.
- The second (in orange, on the right side), for Internet users who are already consulting the list of shrinks or the profile of a particular therapist, and who are therefore located at a more advanced level in climbing to engagement, is more frontal: “Which shrink should I choose?”
It is entirely possible that a user arrives first on the blog and therefore sees the first blue button at the bottom, then goes to the list of therapists. The risk is then that he does not see the 2nd button, if it is displayed in the same place and in the same color. We want to remind him that we are there to advise him: to give maximum visibility to this second button, we have therefore chosen to change the format.
In this article I tried to share as varied and original examples as possible, because it seemed important to you to make you perceive the possibilities and the power of ergonomics tests (and this is only the beginning, there would still have a lot to add). Richer than the data from split-testing, the information coming from user feedback therefore constitutes a complementary approach which we would be wrong to deprive ourselves of!