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9 Guidelines for Productive Usability Studies of Magazine Web Sites

If your magazine’s Web site isn’t delivering the revenue and awareness you want, it is time to talk with your customers. Usability studies offer a product-centered dialog with your customers, consisting of observing and talking with people while they use something. Usability studies of magazine Web sites can yield surprisingly-simple improvement ideas involving changes to text, content, and design. The following guidelines should help you get started on making your site easier to use and more profitable.

1. Use just a few participants

Six participants is plenty to get a good view of what customers think of the site. If you get widely diverging opinions with the first 6 participants, however, go ahead and do a few more.

2. Use a mix of participants

Use a mix of people. Obtain a cross-section of what your readership is like, in terms of use of the Web in general, magazine use, and demographics. Make sure you get a couple of people who represent the kind of person you most want to use the Web site.

3. Use an outside interviewer

Consumer participants provide more honest feedback about the site when they talk with someone who isn't a company employee. An outside interviewer is also more likely to pursue unconventional ideas and be able to see new solutions beyond current company thinking. Along with a neutral interviewer you also need a neutral space — use a room (it can be at your company) that isn't festooned with your company's name or products.

4. Study one participant at a time

If you do a few participants at once, each person may be reluctant to reveal what confuses him or her in front of others. Also, you can get groupthink, where everyone in the group piles onto one opinion.

5. Keep the study as real-life as possible

First individually interview a few subscribers (not usability participants) and ask them about their life and the role of your magazine’s subject in that life. Understand how the Web site and the magazine fit into that overall picture. Then design the usability study script in light of that overall picture. Do the usability study in people’s homes if possible. Start off the usability participant session by asking them to engage in magazine-related activities and use the site however they like, and don’t hurry them. Then move on to asking them to do several specific tasks.

6. Pick tasks important to you and the participant

Pick tasks for the participants to do that are important to your company. Some possible tasks are to buy a subscription, find a useful article (they choose the topic), contact the company about something (they choose what), or find out three great things about the company. Think about all the people (subscribers, investors, job-seekers, etc.) you want to use the site, and what you want them to do on the site.

7. Test the magazine and Web site together

Have participants use the magazine alongside the Web site. You need to find out if the site and the magazine work together as one good offering in the mind of the reader.

8. Always run a comparative usability study

You can have each usability participant look at one or two other sites that are competitors to your magazine site. You get much more interesting and solid results that way, and some unexpected ideas.

9. Make sure each participant does the same set of tasks

Have them do these standard tasks after their real-life explorations. Write out what you’ll ask participants to do. Comparable tasks make the analysis easier.