Alledia Usability Testing Report

Alledia.com are the leading Joomla SEO experts. They have a great blog with a lot of content and offer some much-needed SEO services to the growing Joomla community. I am familiar with their site, but was still able to find some very major problems and point them in the right direction. Steve Burge of Alledia.com took the test results very seriously and immediately fixed many of the problems. That's exactly the right reaction to a usability test. The criticism isn't personal; it's intended to help fix the "low hanging fruits" and improve your site quickly.

Tasks:

• Read and subscribe to the blog.
• Buy SEO club membership.
• Make a purchase from the store.

Watch the usability test video:

I apologize for the bad sound quality and the size of the screen. This video had some technical difficulties.

Video summary and suggestions:

1. Instead of "People Friendly Website", the tagline should be "The Joomla SEO Experts." It's more accurate and user-friendly.
2. In general, if you want people to perform an action or a task, give them a reason and make it easy. If you want them to register to a blog, explain what they get out of it. A clear button with bullet points of the benefits would do the trick here.
3. Stick to the standards: the "required" field indicator should look like this -->* and not like an info icon.
4. Make action buttons much bigger and place them in locations that suit the "direction" of where you want the user to "go."
5. After registering/activating my account, I expect to have easy access to what I've registered to receive. At the very least, a link to the blog should be present as soon as I login.
6. Keep the menu consistent. Different menu items after login are confusing.
7. The service icons of services are GREAT, but make sure users can understand what each icon means. Either add a small pop-up or place a key at the top of the page. Also, use the correct terms: a downloadable publication is an "e-book," not a "book."
8. After purchasing a service, I expect to see the same icons and to be able to these icons to receive the service.
9. I'd like to see a demo before I purchase a template.
10. Show me products on other sites in a new window so that I don't lose my original location.
11. After purchase, I expect to see a list of orders or some indication of my purchase -- and no bugs.

What's good:

1. Great content.
2. Active blog with a lot of comments.
3. Clean look.
4. Good branding.