What is a website usability test?

A website usability test is a test and questionnaire that primarily enables you to assess the usability of your live website. Instead of testing a prototype that’s ‘like the real thing’, website usability tests enable you to test the actual real thing.

Why are website usability tests used?

Website usability tests are used for two reasons.

Firstly, they’re used to collect real feedback on live websites, enabling you to assess certain aspects of the usability (e.g. reliability and performance) that would be impossible to assess when testing with prototypes. This is in addition to all other aspects of usability, of course.

Secondly, it’s not uncommon for website projects to have no up-to-date prototypes or even no prototypes at all. If you’ve ever been the first designer in a previously all-dev product team, you’ll be very familiar with the scenario where website usability tests are not only a great choice, but the only choice anyway.

You can also use the template for general website testing, gathering feedback on features, aesthetics, marketing, and so on, instead of usability or in addition to it. The template can be customized easily, so it’s your call.

Who uses website usability tests?

Website usability tests are used by designers and design researchers that are looking for opportunities to improve live websites.

What types of data do website usability tests yield?

Website usability tests are mostly qualitative, resulting in extremely useful written and spoken feedback in addition to visual feedback consisting of face and screen recordings. Our website usability test template includes some quantitative questions and you can customize the template to include more.

It’s one of the most comprehensive website testing templates in terms of data yield.

What questions are in the competitor website usability test template?

The template starts off with a preliminary multiple-choice question designed to provide context to the respondent’s answers. If needed, you can customize the question to turn it into a different type of question (as is the case with all questions in all Ballpark templates).

After that, respondents are asked to allow their face, voice, and screen to be recorded before being presented with the first website testing task (e.g. “Go to our website and add a jar of Hot Garlic to your basket”).

Next, after successfully (or unsuccessfully) completing the task, respondents are asked how it went (e.g. “Were you able to add the jar of Hot Garlic to your basket?”, a simple yes/no question that, again, can be customized).

The template then continues on with the same format: a website test followed by a short questionnaire consisting of qualitative and quantitative questions about the experience that they had.

To wrap up, respondents are asked to rate how likely they are to recommend the website on a scale of 0-10 (which can optionally be synthesized into a Net Promoter Score), and to provide their email address so that you can follow up with them regarding the feedback that they gave (if needed).

Some of the example questions in our paid search test template:

• Have you heard of the brands in these adverts?

• Which of these adverts would you click on and why?

• How would you improve the following advert?

• Beyond this advert, what additional information would you need to be confident to buy?