CE Optimization and Usability

At each stage from concept to completion, GSS’s Optimum Online Customer Experience service determines and helps refine the best customer experience and user interface for your online relationship with your targets. For more than 12 years, we’ve been designing and executing website tests for the various stages of site development. Part of our after-testing service is to continue consulting with your designers, content specialists, and information architects, as needed, to get sites ready to deploy.

Scope of Customer Experience User Testing Services

Every project undertaken is put in the context of your overall marketing and business objectives and the online relationship you desire to have with your customer; each culminates in a concise recommended action plan. Every client’s project is custom designed, based on who their target consumer is and where they are in the site development process. Basic study description types are provided below:

“Know Your Target” Sessions

Done when little primary or secondary research exists to help a client understand who their target really is or to keep in touch with the target on an on-going basis.

Product Development Research

Exploratory research to assist in refining plans for a new product/website concept and its content and functional features. Use in the planning phase, before anything is architected or built. Helps to develop products/sites which will return a positive ROI. (When there is a need, follow-up quantitative research can also be conducted.)

Site Development Sessions

Can use site architecture, site demo, website prototype, or alpha-version of website for testing. (Discussion flow is influenced by materials used and by the individual study’s specific objectives.) Use when there is a need for direction on site content/functionality prior to major builds. Money is saved by learning from users prior to a complete build.

Classic Usability Testing

One-on-one interviews with target consumers in a lab-setting to assess navigation-related issues, done on an alpha- or beta-version of a website prior to hard launch; may also be conducted after launch to assist in future site redevelopment efforts. Use when navigation is the sole issue.

Dynamic Site Assessment Sessions
Conducted on a live site to explore general reactions to it, what is liked, and what needs to be improved. Content, navigation, other executional elements, and website functional features are probed. Use when an existing site is scheduled for redevelopment.

View a sample of an executive summary for Site Development Sessions