Chapter 4: Usability Studies

GENERAL USABILITY SITES

WEB WORD.COM Articles and insight on industrial strength usability.

USE IT.COM - Usability information.

USABILITY QUIZES A Quiz to Give Your Audience to Learn more about the usability of your own site by Cyberbee.com.

HOW ARE YOUR USERS USING YOUR WEB SITE? ZDNet Article on the importance of usability testing. (gives an example of a company that found out there was a minor error in their form through this type of testing.)

WEB TECHNIQUES.COM offers a web testing site to test your site.

BROWSER TESTING - GENERAL REFERENCE

It is very important to run your site through a browser check prior to a new launch or major site revision to ensure compatibility with other browsers.

Browsers by CNET A whole page of links and info. on all of the internet browsers.

Browser Watch This is an excellent site of browser info. and comparisions. This page is a comparison of the different browsers available.

Browser Compatibility testing w/different scripts and coding. A comparison by Web Monkey.

ACTUAL BROWSER TESTING FACILITIES

WEB SITE GARAGE will run your pages through an 18 point browser check, checking your site at popular cross browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Web TV, etc.) and at different versions (Internet Explorer 2, 3, 4, ect.)

NET MECHANIC.COM will do the same thing.

AOL CHECKING Match your site to AOL configurations.

WEB TV CHECKER Check your page at Web TV's development center.

PLATFORM CHECKERS

After you optimize your images, if you haven't already done so, find out how fast each page of your site will download under modem conditions ranging from 14kbps to T1 connections.

Web Site Garage Tune Ups
"Load Time Check - reports load time from 14.4K to T1" from Web Site Garage web site Free Trial!

Net Mechanic's Tune Up
"Check your links, HTML, page load time, spelling, and more!" from Net Mechanic's web site . Free Trial!

Site See Submission Service
This Service includes ...evaluating load times and giving suggestions on how to lower them...A full report with copies of the new html are sent to you or your webmaster. from Site See web site Only $29.95. Free trial.

Optiview.com
"You can cut your website download time by 30% to 90% using the OptiView Content Delivery Network and Real Time Optimization." from Optiview.com web site . New product that dynamically resizes your images to meet the circumstances for better download times.

Lift OnSite - checks color, images, features, keywords, descriptions, graphics, download times, titles, noframes, html checkers, navigation, mail tos, etc

Web Criteria.Com measures actual tasks on your site - how long it takes & how difficult it is compared to other similar sites. (task analysis) Can measure accessibility, load time, & content compared to other similar web sites. (site profile)

Server Checkers

You should also test your server from time to time to insure it is loading your page quickly using fast backbone connections & is working properly. It is an industry standard that servers be up 99.5% of the time. You should question anything lower than that. You should also question slow download times if you share a server with other web sites. This could mean that the actual server is overloaded.

Net Mechanic Checks your site's server performance levels at various times thoughtout a 24 hour period and during various degrees of usage.

ZDNet Review of Web Raider
Web Raider is suppose to do the same.

Keynote Test the performance and failure rates of your web site from over 60 locations in 35 cities around the US and the World. Real Time Graphs tell you how your site is doing.

Smart Age $6.95 set up/$6.95 month or 14.95 server performance checks

Host List.com will check out your web host's background. It will tell you what type of connection it has to the internet, what type of server it runs on, and how it performs.

Internet Traffic Report Maps out traffic levels and speeds over the "internet highway", both nationally and internationally.

THE STORE

Try it Free! 18 pt. browser check, 24 server checks, platform checks & more.

Web Site Garage
Try it Free!

Completely evaluate your entire site for worldwide usage in 1 free week!

tests your site for browser and disability usability. Free download.

free trial to test Web Speak/Plus software that lets you hear how your site would sound to those with visual disabilities.

Free Service. However, you will not be able to fix them with this free service. For the problems fixing purpose, there are downloadable tools for $199 to assist you.

Site Measurement Tools

Usability Surveys 30 Free Trial!

MAINTENANCE CHECK UPS:

IMAGE OPTIMIZING: If not already done prior to launch, this should be done to each page prior to launch for page optimizing. It should also be done after each major image revision and the each new image added to your site.

DOWNLOAD CHECKS It is important to check the load time of your site on a regular basis to insure your site is running properly. It is suggested that this test be run before launch, after each major change, and at least once quarterly.

SERVER CHECKS ALWAYS check out a new server. Run checks on it periodically to see how fast it downloads within a span of 24 hours, (the services above will run these checks for you.), test it on different days, visit server/host index sites like, Host Index.Com to check on it. Choose credible hosts with a solid reputation. Make sure their connection to the internet "backbone" is solid and they have a 99.5% success rate.

Netraker.com . Usability surveys from your web site w/this program. Gathers continuous feedback about the customer experience on your site directly from your customers in nine different areas. Provides customizable usability and market research templates that allow companies to collect high quality user interface and customer perception information. Displays how well your site is performing for your customers in every location, 24/7. You can monitor download times for your site across major metropolitan areas, and track network errors. Offers 30 day free trial.