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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.

A/B testing is often spoken of as though in opposition to usability testing. In reality, the two types of tests answer different questions and serve different purposes. Both have a place in a project; in fact, they often complement one another.

Question: How many users do you need to test with for a usability test? Answer 1: = 5 users (Jakob Nielsen and Thomas Landauer, 1993). Answer 2: = 15 users (Laurie Faulkner, 2004), PDF file. So, which is it, 5 or 15?

Often we are faced with determining the appropriate number of participants for our usability tests. Too many participants increase the cost and development time. If the number of participants is too small, the testing process may fail to detect important problems and result in reduced site usability.

What is the biggest missed opportunity in ecommerce optimization? Is it A/B testing? Performance testing? How about cart recovery? We put a lot of focus on optimizing the cart, getting the customer through to conversion, yet still it's not uncommon to have abandonment rates of 50% or higher. We know a good chunk of abandonment does not occur because the button wasn't big enough or green enough or our web forms are too long. Some got distracted, some wanted to hold items for later, some left and couldn't remember your site URL, some even thought the transaction went through when it did not.

sort of like usertesting.com but with a lot more detail. eye tracking and emotion tracking coming soon.

Steve Krug's video demonstrates how simple usability testing can and should be. The test conducted on this demo is an abbreviated version of the one Krug recommends you perform on your own site. You need to upgrade your Flash Player. You need version 9 or above to view this video. Originally shared by Beth @ July 11, 2012

By Christine Perfetti and Lori Landesman Originally published: Jun 18, 2001 One of the most popular questions we hear from web designers and usability professionals is: "How many users is enough when conducting usability tests?" Until recently, we had believed -- and told our clients -- that it wasn't usually necessary to test with more than eight users.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, June 26, 2006: We can define usability in terms of quality metrics, such as learning time, efficiency of use, memorability, user errors, and subjective satisfaction. Sadly, few projects collect such metrics because doing so is expensive: it requires four times as many users as simple user testing.

UX practitioners, both consultants and in house, sometimes conduct research. Be it usability testing or user research with a generative goal, research requires planning. To make sure product managers, developers, marketers and executives (let's call them stakeholders) act on UX research results, planning must be crystal clear, collaborative, fast and digestible.

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.

UX researchers are exposed to a broad cross-section of people and personalities, especially when it comes to conducting user tests. Frequently, the people we encounter are willing, helpful participants to the research process - but what happens when respondents aren't so willing or helpful? Originally shared by Beth @ July 12, 2011

Originally published: Apr 01, 2003 Not so very long ago, it was agreed that five to eight users was enough for a good usability test. Somehow, this idea achieved mythic status. We believed it. We preached it to everyone who would listen.

Looking for 80% convergence

Continuing our series on mobile web design for ecommerce, today's installment focuses on the first step of the conversion funnel - the cart summary page. The key metrics for the cart summary page are bounce rate (aim to reduce cart abandonment), clicks on the checkout button and successful clicks back to the home, category or product page to continue shopping.