You did a web analytics analysis. You see where visitors put a product in the shopping cart, visit your “Shipping” page, and then abandon their carts, indicating that they are unhappy with your shipping policies or prices. But you also see a perfectly great page that gets way too many exits – and you’ve got no idea why. That’s when it’s time to sit down with real users.

When the LunaMetricians do user testing, we find users who have already made more than one electronic purchase of your kind of product: these are people who are at ease when shopping online, and who are comfortable buying products like yours. We don’t videotape our user testing sessions. Instead, we sit next to the user and type her actions and comments into our own laptops. Each user is given time to explore a site, and then is given a series of tasks to complete. We write up every user test for you, and also accumulate the tests to create a final report explaining why users are behaving the way that they are.

Don’t be afraid to do some user testing on your own. If you want to know how a specific feature of your site is working, ask half a dozen users to try it. Keep your thoughts and advice to yourself as they struggle to download your whitepaper or moan about the length of your form – remember that most of the time, you won’t be there to help the user, and your goal is to see how she uses your site, unaided. When you’re done with the user test, ask the user how the site could be better. You’ll be amazed at what you learn.

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