"Your website is perfect. You've put so much time, and effort into ensuring every detail is perfect, from the copy to the design. But there's one thing you forget: usability. Just because your website looks good doesn't mean it's easy to use."

There are different methods to increase the quality of your website. The most common and important are:

• User testing
• Heuristic evaluation.
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User testing is when you ask people to use your website and give you feedback on their experience. This can be done in person or online.

User testing is a great way to receive valuable feedback on how functional and user-friendly your website is. However, we must note that often this feedback reflects the personal opinions and experiences of the testers, who may not be entirely objective. While asking people close to you what they think of your work can be uncomfortable, it's essential to provide visitors with an easy and enjoyable browsing experience. Thankfully, user testing can just as quickly be done online, making access to feedback faster, easier, and less awkward!

To implement successful user testing, you must avoid the Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne effect is when people perceive themselves as being observed, and because of it, they often change their behavior (they feel like a guinea pig in a lab).

Heuristic evaluation is analyzing your website against a set of best practice guidelines (known as heuristics) to see potential issues.

Heuristic Evaluation. Sounds fancy. It is indeed a very fancy term for a straightforward concept. Essentially, we take a website and compare it to an established list of best practices - heuristics. This quick review can help us identify any potential issues with the website before even visiting it - saving us time and money in the long run! So if your website "looks good" but you're unsure how well it follows industry standards, try a heuristic evaluation and put your mind at ease!

Usability heuristics are classified into design dimensions. The most common are:

• Information Architecture: How do you organize information for easy navigation? Do we include all the required topics in our information design?

• Interaction Design: How does the user interact with the website? How do you ensure user actions are intuitive and consistent? Are UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) designed effectively? Is the user able to accomplish his/her tasks?

• Visual Design: Does your site look good to visitors? Does it represent our company and brand design? Are the visual elements consistent?

• Content Quality: Is the content relevant and helpful to visitors? Do we provide information to solve their problems and generate leads?

A/B testing and analytics can be additional "tools" to understand users' behaviors.

While user testing and heuristic evaluation are the most common methods, we can partner them with valuable tools, especially A/B Testing and Analytics.

A/B testing is when you show users two different versions of your website, landing pages, ads and see which performs better in metrics like conversion rate or time on site.

A/B testing is the highlight of any digital marketer's day. Endlessly monitoring metrics like conversion rate and time on site can seem tedious, but when you boil it down, you're essentially playing an exciting game of two truths and a lie - only you're deciding which is which! After all, no matter how much market research we do, end users don't always behave according to expectations; A/B testing lets us discover what works best in real time. It's like having access to a crystal ball that gives us insights into our visitors' behavior. In conclusion: if you want to improve your online presence, A/B testing should definitely be at the top of your list.

Analytics - looking at the data generated by your website's users can give you insights into where there are usability issues that need to be addressed

Weeding through the data generated by your website's users to find usability issues can be like a needle in a haystack. However, it's worth investing the time to analyze the performance of your website on an ongoing basis. Using analytics to uncover problems can give you a chance to address them quickly and ensure your website continues to meet user needs. It certainly beats waiting until customers abandon your site out of frustration.

For example, if you have a product page with a very low number of visits and/or a high bounce rate, there are two main hypotheses: users don't find the page (usability issue), or they are not interested in the product (business problem).

Conclusions

Usability is a key part of website creation and maintenance. There are several ways to prioritize usability, such as conducting user testing, following heuristic guidelines, performing A/B tests, and analyzing analytics. These activities can help website owners ensure that their sites are user-friendly and enjoyable for all users. The importance of great usability cannot be overstated; ensuring users have a good experience on your site will lead to increased engagement and conversions. The bottom line is that the success of any website ultimately depends on how usable it is. So start investing in improving your website's usability today!