The next Scottish Usability Professionals Association (SUPA) talk is a practical discussion on how to improve usability using a powerful (free) tool: Google Website Optimiser. Design is very subjective, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. A website may look ‘pretty’ in your opinion, but design is not just about how something looks, it has a job to do – it needs to be usable. If your design is not doing the job it’s supposed to do, i.e. making you money, it doesn’t matter if it looks nice. Many arguments have been had (and time wasted) choosing one design over another, “I think that one is better!”, “why?”, “erm… I don’t know, it looks better?”. To borrow a phrase from Harry Hill, “There’s only one way to find out… fight!”
We prefer not to spill blood these days and that’s where Google Website Optimizer comes in; science to the rescue. By measuring which page layout is more effective at achieving the desired conversion we can quickly determine which design is best and learn from that to help make design decisions easier in the future. One image or line of copy may mean the difference between being profitable or not. We’ll be using lots of case studies to show you how we’ve started using Google Website Optimizer to run A/B Split and Multivariate Tests in the development of a social networking/gaming site and share some of the mistakes and lessons learned. It would then be good to open the meeting up to discuss how to use optimisation tools to improve website usability.
Steve Young – Creative Director and Jim Williams – Web Analyst, both from WeeWorld, will take you through how to fight nice between competing designs: may the most usable win!
We will be at Scottish Enterprise again, so thanks to them for the use of the venue:
Venue: Scottish Enterprise, Apex House, 99 Haymarket Terrace, Edinburgh, EH12 5HD
Sign up here
Monday, April 27, 2009
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