Keeping your website’s usability in good shape can be a tricky task. In the past, we’ve recommended some tools that can help you stay on top of your site’s usability – but there are times when a DIY approach to UX doesn’t quite cut it.
So when do you need to call in the experts for a proper UX evaluation? Here are some red flags to look out for.
1) It’s been a long time since you did a UX evaluation
This might sound like a cop out, but it is one of the biggest UX red flags. If you haven’t been keeping on top of your site’s usability, chances are it could use some work.
We’ve covered the virtues of quarterly audits and an iterative design approach before, so we won’t beat a dead horse. The gist is that you should view your site as an ongoing project that can be constantly improved through testing, tweaking, and upgrading. Regularly evaluating your site is key here – it can help you catch problems early, make you aware of potential issues to keep an eye on, and help you reach peak usability.
So if you haven’t been keeping an eye on your site’s usability or doing regular UX evaluations, treat that as a red flag and look into doing some UX testing.
2) Your site is slow
Slow page load times are some of the most common UX problems. It’s easy for developers and site owners to get caught up in creating cool features and graphics, or putting video and visual content front-and-center. After all, delighting users is important, right?
Sure. But doing that at the expense of load time is a bad idea: research shows that from a user perspective, a fast load time is much more important.
Luckily, this is a relatively easy problem to find and fix. An online speed testing tool can help you spot problems with your site’s speed, but a UX evaluation can take things to the next level. If your site is running slow, it’s worth getting in touch with a UX specialist that can help you identify why your site is slow, what features you can ditch to ramp up your speed, and how you can streamline and speed up the user experience.
3) Users can’t find what they’re looking for
Ultimately, the point of a website is to help users find the information they’re after and complete their task as easily as possible. If your site is hard to navigate, that’s not going to happen.
There are a few ways that a UX evaluation can help with this problem and improve the user journey, including:
- Finding navigation problems (such as non-fixed navigation or confusing user journeys)
- Evaluating the affordance of various site elements
- Making sure that important information is visible (for example ensuring that nothing crucial is hidden below-the-fold)
4) No one is signing up
If your site is getting good traffic, but no one is signing up to your service, newsletter, or what have you, you’ve got a problem – and there’s a good possibility that usability has something to do with it.
There are a few potential culprits – long forms that don’t give users feedback on their progress, an overly formal tone, or a lack of social log-in or ‘lazy sign-up’ features – but a UX evaluation can help you pinpoint what exactly is causing your issue. Identifying these problems and improving your site’s usability can boost your conversion rates, so a UX evaluation is definitely one avenue worth pursuing.
5) You’re using outdated features
There are all kinds of design features and styles that – just like your sweet 1980s spandex jumpsuit – used to be all the rage, but have since fallen out of favour, due to their obvious lack of functionality.
Things like paginated stories, a Flash intro, non-mobile friendly features, or a badly designed hamburger menu should be on your radar.
If your site has any of these things, getting a UX evaluation is a good idea. Design trends fall out of favour for a reason, and outdated features could be putting a major dent in your site’s usability.
Wrap Up
Knowing when to take the plunge and do a full-blown UX evaluation is a tough call. Working on your site’s usability is an ongoing project that you can sometimes handle on your own – but there are times when you should get some UX pros on the case. These five red flags are a good place to start.
