10 Things We Learned From Our Website User Testing Day
Two days after the launch of our responsive website, we held a user testing day for all museum staff.
The idea behind the day was to make IWM staff aware of the new responsive templates and why we made the change, but also to have them test the site and use their comments/feedback to help plan our next steps.
We booked out a conference room for the day and had three ‘stations’ — desktop, tablet and mobile. Each station was staffed by two Digital Engagement team members — one leading the testing, the other watching the users’ behaviour and taking notes.
Because of time constraints, each user session was limited to ten minutes. We wrote up a list of eight user tasks for them to perform — things like ‘Can you find the opening times for Churchill War Rooms’ and ‘Where would you go to make a donation to IWM North?’
The day was a huge success — not only did we have some great discussions with staff around the move to responsive, but we also came away with a big to-do list of issues to enter into our sprint planning.
Here are 10 of the changes we have made already or will be making in the next few weeks as a result of the day.
1. Homepage blocks need to be entirely clickable
Users noticed that the blocks (also called the ‘masonry’) on branch homepages weren’t clickable as a whole — they had to click on the title or the image. This was especially frustrating for mobile and tablet users. We’ve now fixed this, and users can click away to their heart’s desire.
2. Some pages have slow load times on certain devices
Some phones and tablets struggled to load the ‘masonry’ pages, presenting the blocks all jumbled up. We made a fix that helps with page load times and has now resolved the problem.
3. We’ve got a case of menu blindness-itis
One of our overwhelming findings was that users aren’t seeing the website menus at the top of each page. Our Digital Designer, Alex, is working on a solution for this right now, and we will be meeting with our Marketing department to talk about brand colours and ways we can make the menus more visible.
4. Curated blocks need to be more clickable
Some pages have three extra content blocks at the bottom of them (for example, this page) — we call these areas ‘curated blocks’. At the moment, these blocks are not fully clickable, and you can only click on links contained in the text. While we can’t make the blocks entirely clickable for technical reasons, we will be making the headings in the blocks clickable, so this will help with make the site more user-friendly for mobile and tablet users.
5. Donating to a specific branch should be easier
In our user testing sessions, we asked users to try to make a donation to IWM North. Some of them were able to find the IWM North donations page, while others used ‘Support Us’ curated blocks to access the main Support Us landing page. Users found this latter route confusing, saying they’d rather be taken directly to the page where you can donate to a specific branch. So, we’ve edited all our Support Us curated blocks across website so that they are now pointing at donation pages for the relevant branch.
6. Links need to be clearer
One thing that came up several times of the day was link text colour — some users weren’t sure what colour text signified that the text was a link to another area of the website. Digital Design guru Alex is working to fix this, looking at ways to make links more visible and distinct.
7. Air Shows are not exhibitions
At the moment, for technical reasons, IWM Duxford’s air shows are classified as exhibitions on our website. Users found this confusing, and we want to change it. We’ve started work on developing a new way of presenting air shows to website users, so that it’s clear that air shows are a special type of event offered at IWM Duxford and are distinct from exhibitions and other ‘things to see’.
8. ‘Collections’ and ‘Research’ have different user needs
The website currently has a ‘Research’ section, where information about both the collections and IWM’s research programme sit. The testing day revealed that users find this confusing and would prefer more differentiation between the two, so we are going to split it into two sections — one for collections-focused information and the other for IWM’s research programmes and facilities.
9. Our branch visitor information pages are confusing
These pages are long, wordy and difficult to navigate. We’ll be working with the Visitor Services team to improve them across the five branches and make it easier for users to find the information they’re looking for.
10. Some users know the Research Room is in IWM London
Currently, users book a research appointment through the Research Facilities page. But users proved to us that if you know the Research Room is at IWM London, then you may try to book an appointment by going to the IWM London pages. So, we’ve added a link to the research visit booking form on the IWM London Your Visit page to help users who try to book appointments that way.
