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Usability and user experience testing is vital to creating a successful website, and only more so if it's an e-commerce website, a complex app or another website for which there's a definite ROI. And running your own user tests to find out how users are interacting with your website and where problems might arise is completely possible.

The new business meeting was going swimmingly-that is, until the client started asking questions about our design process. Then we unleashed our lexicon of specialized user experience (UX) research terminology. Why should we do that thing you called...what was it, task analysis? We'd like some of those personas. They're important, right? What the heck is contextual inquiry?! As mental models flew about the room, I realized how hard it is for clients to understand the true value of UX research. As much as I'd like to tell my clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call me back when they're done, that won't cut it in a professional services environment. The whole team needs a common language and a philosophy that's easy to grok.

Andy Weissman, a partner at Union Square Ventures, laid out his firm's investment thesis this morning. USV has invested in grand slams like Zynga and Twitter. It is also an investor in Tumblr, Etsy and Foursquare. Weissman's colleague Brad Burnham tweeted the essence of the firm: "Large networks of engaged users, differentiated through user experience, and defensible through network effects."

If you've ever run a research or usability test, you'll know they can be tricky to facilitate. After all, you're dealing with people; and people come with a whole host of existing preconceptions, personalities, emotions, and experiences. One thing that can help you to gain more honest and thereby useful feedback from research participants is, in fact, to lie to them.

Talk by Janice Fraser at Startup Lessions Learned Conference in May 201. Case Study discussion from Cooper - Tim McCoy - Director, Integrated Product Development, Cooper Case Study: TheLadders - Jeff Gothelf - Director of User Experience, TheLadders Case Study: LUXr NYC - Josh Seiden - Program Director, LUXr NYC Case Study: SideReel - Zach Larson - Entrepreneur/Former CPO, SideReel

tl;dr - Web actions are actions a visitor to your site or application does to another site or app. They create a cleaner and more seamless user experience.