Comments on: How To DIY Site Design And Usability

By: Niall Harbison

Niall Harbison — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:07:45 +0000

Ah yeah I would say there are a load of better tests out there for professional designers but I do think this is useful for amateurs to get a quick look at what people think about their site. We know from quickly looking at ours here that we have some very obvious flaws that we need to get ironed out ASAP such as a way for people to contact us. agree you would need something far more advanced to do it properly though

By: Cormac Moylan

Cormac Moylan — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:58:40 +0000

5 Second Tests are ultimately flawed. What’s the average bounce rate on your homepage? It’s not 5 seconds so why give a group of random people 5 seconds to click something, anything at all.

Heat maps and density maps are much more valuable than almost pressuring people into making a click and using that as a measurement of usability.

There are much better tools out there for usability testing that 5SecondTest. I wouldn’t even count it as a usability tool myself.

By: Lauren Fisher

Lauren Fisher — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:50:09 +0000

We’ll let you know of changes we make to the site, as a result of the test. I think the beauty is in its simplicity. The fact it takes virtually no time for a user to participate is a big plus for me.

By: Lauren Fisher

Lauren Fisher — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:46:20 +0000

That’s a really good idea. Wouldn’t want it to look too ‘garish’ , but be fairly prominent on the homepage.

By: Abban

Abban — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:19:06 +0000

I recommend a nice big bright call-to-action button as part of the opening blurb left of the picture. Have it say Contact Us or whatever you want your site conversions to be.

By: Philip Boyle

Philip Boyle — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:18:12 +0000

Do you have any examples of changes you actually made on the back of using a Five Second Test? I’d be interested to see if the results of your changes matched your expectations.

My suspicion is that the test can be overwhelmed by simple things like an eye catching picture or logo, both of which you’d expect the eye to be drawn to briefly. That leaves very little time for any actual usability information to be registered.

Like most good ideas, Five Second Test is pretty simple. Unfortunately, I think it might be too simple.

By: Barry Hand

Barry Hand — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:16:41 +0000

Could be useful to implement some heatmaps if you don’t already have something, CrazyEgg is good, Clickheat is free – http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/

Collect enough data, drop in Google’s Website Optimizer and run some multivariate split testing. Cool thing is you can do most of this with free tools.

By: Niall Harbison

Niall Harbison — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:07:47 +0000

Yep defo agreed Barry! That is why we did it! The key now is getting some of our targets into that top fold and playing around with it! Contact us would be the most obvious for us to get customers calling and emailing!

By: Barry Hand

Barry Hand — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:02:31 +0000

It’s really useful, Amazing to quickly see how ineffectual your homepage is!! as visitors were clicking on logo and home link (both going to same destination)

As well as people clicking on non interactive elements (text & rotate image)