4) Usability goals
Identify the top user tasks and make them work
A common way to ensure that web sites match users needs is to set up a list of five (or ten) tasks that users need to be able to do with the system.
Examples on top user tasks
- Find contact information
- Fill out a form
- Sign up for a product
Set up goals
So, now that you know which user tasks that are the most important, you only need to set up goals and measure them. Researching usability metrics will give us a reasonable good measure of the web site's usability.
- Percent of tasks completed. Measured for each task and average.
- Ratio of successes to failures. Strict pass/fail measurement. Measured for each task and average.
- Time to complete a task. Measured for each task and average.
- Rating scale for satisfaction with functions and features. Measured for each task and altogether. A 1-7 scale is used.
Goals could be defined like this:
- All top user tasks must have a success rate of at least 75 per cent
- In average, it may take the user maximum 1:30 minutes to find contact information.
- User satisfaction should be at least 5,0 of 7 for all top tasks
- User satisfaction should be better than at least two of your competitors
Benchmark against competitors
Make the test users carry out tasks on your and your competitors' websites. Calculate a usability where 100 is your organisation's result the first month of measurements.
| Task | Your company | Competitor 1 | Competitor 2 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Task completed | Success rate | Time | Satisfaction | Task completed | Success rate | Time | Satisfaction | Task completed | Success rate | Time | Satisfaction | |
| Find contact info | 95% | 80% | 0:35 | 5,3 | 95% | 80% | 0:35 | 5,3 | 95% | 80% | 0:35 | 5,3 |