Part Four: Homepage Re-Design - Test, Measure and Fine-Tune
January 6, 2009 - Chris LeCompte
But you’re not finished.
Once the homepage is built, you’ve just begun. Success on the web depends on a cycle of testing, measuring and fine-tuning. You’ll likely never get your homepage perfect which is why this is a continual process.
For testing your homepage, you have two options. You can go live with what you have and then measure, or you can test before launch. Obviously, testing before launch is the best bet but it’s not always possible due to time and money constraints. Even if you don’t have the resources to perform complete usability testing on the homepage, you can still benefit from simple user testing.
Simple user testing requires just a handful of people – they can even be people you know – and a little time. You can show each person the homepage you intend to launch and ask them to perform specific tasks. For example, ask how they would buy a widget from your company. You would then ask the user to “think out loud” as they show you the path they would take from the homepage.
There are tons of questions you could ask and many possible scenarios – it all ties back to the goals you have established for your homepage. What do you want your homepage to accomplish? From your simple user testing, is it evident that your homepage can meet these goals?
When your new homepage is live, it still doesn’t stop there. You need to measure. For that, I would recommend a nice web analytics package such as Google Analytics. Google Analytics will provide valuable tools and resources to tell you where your visitors come from, where they go, what they click and so forth.
Measuring this data is essential because you can learn important user patterns from it. And with these patterns, you can devise new changes and improvements for your homepage to enhance its effectiveness. Using the same testing methodology we discussed, you should continue to gather real user input before making major changes to the homepage.
This is a cycle that should never end. Test, measure and fine-tune. These activities will ensure that not only your homepage remains fresh, but on target as well.
