How many times have you found a site on the Web that looks truly horrible? Perhaps it doesn’t load, or the page generates a big error box and won’t go anywhere, or the button that is supposed to open a link to another page just sits there and leaves you without any place to go. You know the author didn’t intend the page to look like that, or to behave like that.

It’s usually a case of insufficient testing, not just of poor design. But testing isn’t easy; if it were, more people would do a better job with it.

Proper design testing requires that you have all sorts of different computers and all sorts of different hardware and software configurations at your disposal. It means considering all the various browsers in which a user might come to a Web site, what browser preferences they might have set, what they might be looking for in your Web site design, and under what conditions they might be viewing. There are countless possibilities.

For most businesses, it’s impossible to perform thorough self-testing. Few designers test thoroughly. Testing a Web site can be one of the most time consuming and tedious parts of the design process.

But there is no excuse for failing to make sure that your core customers can view your pages as you intended.

Once your designer has finished the initial coding of a sample of each of your main pages, your designer should thoroughly test each sample page to make sure that it is safe and meets your standards. By doing one sample page, showing you the results, and making corrections before moving into the actual coding of your site, your designer saves you design costs and eliminates unwanted errors.

Before your designer begins final coding, each main page format should be tested and you should be shown a printed version of how it will look in various formats.

If you use Java or frames in your design, you should see how the page would look, or function, if the user had Java disabled, or if they didn't pick up your whole frame set. (Search engines can bring visitors to pages anywhere on your site!) Testing on UNIX machines, Amiga, or OS2 systems may need to be completed, depending on your customers' needs. And your Web site should be tested at both 256 and 16 million color resolution in all environments, with screen sizes from 470 pixels wide to 1248 pixels wide.

THE CUSTOMERS’ PERSPECTIVE

To find out how your customers might respond to your pages, you need to test on a wide range of users. At The Write Edge, our test subjects start as young as seven and age in range to seventy plus. They come from all walks of life; from rural economies, big cities, and suburbs . . . They come from different countries and ethnic backgrounds, and from different educational levels and from professions ranging from creative to technical.

We ask them to evaluate many things about each site that we design by providing them with a survey form. Sample questions include the following:

1. What do you think this site was designed to do?
2. What’s the first thing you notice about this site?
3. How would you describe this site to a friend?
4. What do you like?
5. What don’t you like?
6. If you were a customer, what would you be looking for as you came to this site?
7. How easy would it be for you to find what you came for?
8. What would you want to do after you finished your first task?
9. What impression do you have of the company after looking at these pages?

AN EDGE ON TESTING

At The Write Edge, we design to the guidelines and according to the technology that our clients' customers will use to view their sites. We don’t guarantee that pages will look good in every format -- or that they will please everyone who sees them. But we do feel that it is our job to make sure that clients understand exactly what their choices mean to their viewers, and that these results are acceptable.

After seeing test results, clients often choose to change a feature that makes the page particularly inaccessible in one type of situation. Sometimes they choose to provide a text-only or printer-friendly version of the site. They might decide to use a "sniffer" to detect what kind of browser visitors are using and automatically load pages tailored just for them.

Design decisions are often a matter of weighing benefits and drawbacks. As you work with a designer on your own site, remember that it is the designer’s job to give you all the necessary data, information, and printed material that you need so that you can make informed decisions. That's the edge that we offer to our clients, and we hope that your designer will do the same for you.

We make sure you have the opportunity to make corrections before they become expensive.

If you're interested in learning more about the kind of testing that we perform, just drop us a note. We'll be happy to answer your questions.

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