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I recently carried out some user testing on the Channel 4 news site, looking at the site in general, but also the new blog  area – where Jon Snow (one of the lead news presenters) is blogging. We wanted to find out how people reacted to blogs and the plugins that you can get for them.Here are some of my main takeaways.

Try to avoid using Blog standard labels

The people we tested were daily web users, who were super fans of news and news sites. However, when we asked them what “Blogroll” was, they didn’t know or understand the concept. The label was too far into the real of industry jargon. I know what it means, as do all blog owners and regular blog users. However, people who only read blog posts from a link they clicked don’t understand it.

We’re now looking at ways to re-label our blogroll – “Recommended Blogs” or “Recommended Sites” are the current favourites, with “Blogs we like” still hanging on.

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Eye tracking heatmap of the Channel 4 homepage

A couple of weeks ago we carried out some Eye Tacking testing on the Channel 4 website and I posted our initial findings soon afterwards. I’d now like to talk a little about the methodology that we used.

In traditional eye tracking studies the participant is presented with a page (in the case of web testing), given a period of time to look at the page, generally 15 seconds, during which the places that their eyes look is captured. This provides some very valuable feedback in that it shows where users look first, in what order they look at things and how long they look at things for.

However, it is merely a capture of the first look, and not linked to any task. People generally come to a website for a reason – they have a goal. When we carried out our eye tracking, we blended it with qualitative testing also. We carried out the initial gaze capture, but also tacked eye movement during specific task completion.

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We’ve been carrying out eye tracking testing on the new Channel 4 pages (homepage, TV Listings page, Programmes page, and show page) to see where people look and to inform decisions on where we position elements on the page. We haven’t got the final results yet, which come in the form of heat maps and scan path overlays (the path where the eyes look is overlaid on the webpage), but here are some of the initial things I’ve observed.

People are naturally drawn to look at faces

Faces are a huge draw for the eyes. Images of people are the first things that people generally look at, and in particular their faces. The takeaway is that if you want people to notice something use an image that features a persons face. This was strongly emphasised when adverts with faces were shown on a page. In this case the eyes tended to look more often and quicker on these adverts.

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I am currently conducting user testing on the e4.com website (which is why I haven’t posted in a few days!), which I really enjoy. There is nothing more valuable than testing with real users. We work from a script that we use to take our participants on a certain journey through the site, testing features and content as we go.

The test that I’m currently working on is designed more to examine the langauge we use on the site. Is the wording of link meaningful, do headers make sense, how do users decide what to click on? We’ve found some really interesting things. The demographic for this site is young, web savvy users. Unsurprisingly, images are the main deciding factor on what they choose to click on.

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There is no better way of informing decisions around design, usability and user interaction with a web page than testing it on real users. The results that you get from testing are second to none, and have made a huge difference to the latest versions of the Channel 4 website, which I’ve had the pleasure of being involved with.

Unfortunately, Formal testing is expensive and time consuming. You need to pay for the use of a testing lab; pay for recruitment; spend time preparing the recruitment screener and test script; spend 2 days testing (with, ideally, 2 people taking notes); and write up your results and recommendations. The results are great but the cost is high.

There is an alternative though! Guerilla testing.

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