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Usability Testing - I'll show you mine if...

By Dave Roberts

Real Estate Agent with Healdsburg Sotheby's International Realty

November 25, 2011 11:49 AM

Usability Testing

Throw some spaghetti against the wall and see if it sticks. Fine for cooking, Messy for web site development and improvement. How many of us have added widgets, links, graphics, and other elements to our sites in search of more traffic, more email sign-ups, or more stickiness without any real idea what works or not? I'm a big fan of the utility of usability testing, but always thought it was beyond the financial reach of a small real estate firm.

I was researching other topics this morning and came across the website of a usability company called usabilla. They offered a free trial for a ten-user usability test. I signed up. I'm asking for my readers here on ActiveRain to take my usability test and see if this kind of usability testing might be useful for you to start experimenting with as well. My test was dead simple to set up, but I'm sure I could have created a lot more functionality if I had spent more time planning. This was sort of spur-of-the-moment, kind of like real estate floor calls.

My offer to you is that if you participate in the usability test for my site, I'll do the same for yours. After all, it's free, so there's no reason not to at least see if this might be worth exploring further. So, if you are game for a quick usability test, just click the sonoma.net test. My fondest hope is that we can all learn how to make our web sites better.

Once again, if you participate for me, I'll participate for you.

http://participate.usabilla.com/11965849294ed00e0cd42d9

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Marge Piwowarski

Phoenix AZ Horse Property - Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix AZ Horse Property, LLC

Dave,

I did yours, signed up for a free account. did my test .

My test link is

http://participate.usabilla.com/1341215204ed04ab722f9e

Suggested... Would reblog ig I could!

Nov 25, 2011 01:54 PM

Dave Roberts

Healdsburg Sotheby's International Realty - Healdsburg, CA

Marge - Great. Thanks for posting your link here. I think it would be a lot of fun if we could get a usability group helping each other. I am going to take your test right now.

At your suggestion, I added the re-blog

Nov 25, 2011 02:07 PM

I just took Marge's test. Fun and informative. I figured out that as you start working through the pages you can leave great feedback. Just click on the little yellow memo button to the right of the number on your scoring icon. You'll see what I mean. Usabilla did an excellent job on their interface. Anyway, I think annotating your top choices with why you liked or didn't like something will make for really rich feedback compared to just the numbers. I really liked Marge's site design and I could tell her that as well as a few issues where it would have been easier for me with a slight change. There was one great tip for me from how Marge used her contact information in her header. It wouldn't have come into my consciousness without the test asking interesting questions. So, this is fun stuff almost guaranteed to make your web site better if you listen to the feedback. None of us ever get enough of it from our peers. If you participate and put your site in the comments here, I will take the test for your site and leave you as thoughtful feedback as I can.

Nov 25, 2011 02:27 PM

Dick Greenberg

New Paradigm Partners LLC - Fort Collins, CO

Northern Colorado Residential Real Estate

Hi Dave - That was an interesting test, and I learned some things as I went through the site. I wasn't clear whether this was your site or one for the area you're part of, but the difficulty in figuring out contact info and the lack of personal branding were the two big things that stood out. I'll set mine up next week and send you the link. Thanks for the resource.

Nov 26, 2011 01:58 AM

Dick - Thanks for the feedback here and on the test itself. I know that I hae already learned a lot that I can put into practice, so even with two (so far) testers, I have succeeded in what I wanted to do.

Nov 26, 2011 02:57 AM

This is great! I just have to get more poeple to test my site. Thanks for the feedback Dave. This is fun and will enable us to make necessary changes.

Nov 26, 2011 08:01 AM

Marge - I already changed one of my header elements due to comments from you and Dick. That one change isn't going to make the world a better place, but a few more visitors who can find me more easily can make a difference. I haven't added a horse property link...yet, but I will.

Nov 27, 2011 01:42 AM

I have no idea if you have horse property buyers or not but I know most sites are not user friendly for horse property or acreage. Contact info needs to be easy to find.

I loved the ideas for improvement on mine. Some of them were because reviewers were working with a screen shot instead of a live site. A search widget isn't a good idea as I have live MLS feed and have done several hundred searches, any of which may be edited by the searching party. I haven't seen a widget that could effectively utilize those.

I am going to change some features and probsably more when I get more reviews. This is a great thing to do!

Nov 27, 2011 08:06 AM

Usability Testing - I'll show you mine if...

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