WorldFriends.tv

Tasks:

1. Register (for free).
2. Upload photo
3. Purchase a paid subscription.
4. Invite their friends to register (for free) using the Invite feature.

Watch the usability test video

Video summary and suggestions:

Register

1. The logo should have a .tv in case they forget.
2. The most obvious thing is the “register” button, that’s good.
3. It’s telling me that there is an error before I even have a chance to enter the password/email verification
4. Maybe the most popular countries should be on top (Japan and USA)
5. Privacy and terms should not take to a new page, should be a pop up(that can’t be blocked)
6. Should allow me to choose “any” ethnicity, for people who don’t have a preference.
7. I received the confirmation email only after about 30 minutes. Maybe it would be better to make it clear that they don’t have to confirm the email to keep using the site.

Invite friends:

1. I expect to be able to upload my pictures, but if inviting is a higher priority then it’s ok
2. It should be clear on TOP that I can select which friends to send to.
3. Instead of a block of text, you should put some bullet points of “why invite friends”
4. It’s asking me to choose both webmail server AND the email extension (hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.). It would be better to eliminate the webmail selection, since it’s obvious if I choose the email extension which webmail I will be using.
5. The list of imported contacts should be on top, not at the bottom, because I couldn’t even see it was there. The message should be under it.
6. After I invite, there is no clear indication that I did.
7. After I send an invitation I should get a new page with indication of who invited AND “call to action” — what action(s) you want me to take next. ie: invite more, upload a photo, buy membership.

Upload photo

1. Photo description: is it optional?
2. Missing: bullet points of “why I should upload my photos”
3. I can’t click on my photo to see it in large size

Purchase subscription

1. Regular – what does it mean?
2. Too complicated, too many options
3. You have 3 membership types with 8 different options total.Better test a new page with no more than 1 type of membership with 3-4 options.
4. It’s unclear why different types have different options.
5. After I pay, there is no acknowledgement that I did. I can’t find “my account” to manage details of my subscriptions and ability to cancel.

Watch the usability test video:

Video summary and suggestions:

1. Some links look like text; some text looks like links that look like text.

Links should always look like links and text should always look like text. The link to the members’ profile on Match’s search results however doesn’t look like a link. In fact, it looks exactly the same as the heading text. On the list of winks, the username doesn’t link to the profile even though it should. Worse, it looks exactly the same as the username on the search result and that does link to the profile.

2. Profile views show different numbers in different locations.

Members can see two different “profile views” statistics, and the difference between them isn’t clear. One of them tends to be about 15% of the other, so maybe this smaller figure represents the number of views in the last month or week?

3. Logged in members are taken to the marketing home page.

Click on the Match.com logo after logging in and users expect to be taken to their home page. Instead, they’re taken to the Match.com marketing home page that was designed to attract new members. If they’re already members, why do they need to see this page?

4. The username on the mailbox doesn’t link to the member profile.

Users cannot access the profile of the person who wrote to them directly from the mailbox. Instead, they have to open the email first in order to click to the profile.

5. Search demands information already submitted.

Searching should be as easy as possible. Match, however, requires information already entered such as gender and age range. That makes searching a bit tedious.

6. Clicking on photos requires scrolling to see the results.

If someone has more than 3-4 photos, clicking on the thumbnails at the bottom means that the only way to see the large photo is to scroll upwards. Yahoo! Personals places the thumbnails on the right and the large photo on the left, a better solution.

7. Clicking the photo opens a new window.

Clicking the large photo, opens the image in a completely new window. This could confuse novice users because they have to close the window or find the other browser window rather than use the “back” button to access the profile page again.

8. No “who’s online” feature.

Finding “who’s online” locally is a fundamental feature and shouldn’t be hard to achieve. Not only will it encourage users to login to the site more often to be seen by other members, but it will also make people happy that they can access people who are online now.

9. Not allowing a search by partial username.

Expecting members to remember exact usernames is neither realistic nor user-friendly.

10. Placing a limit on the Daily 5

The new “Daily 5″ feature is great, but why limit playing time? Why should users have to wait 24 hours to do more of the fun stuff?

I determined five tasks:

1. Register to the dating site.
2. Subscribe (pay) to join the dating site.
3. View Who’s Online in my area.
4. Send an email to a member.
5. View my sent email and discover its status.

Because of some of the difficulties I encountered on the site, all of those tasks took too long to complete so I decided to skip the subscription and emailing part. I may create another video for that.

Watch the usability test video:

Video summary and suggestions:

1. When a new user reaches the home page, it’s hard to figure out how to register. There is only one obvious “Call to Action” but it’s for searching, not joining. That’s a mistake. It would be a better idea to add a clear “Join Now” button for users who want to sign up.
2. Registration is very cumbersome and requires leaping through a number of hoops. I would suggest taking the user directly to the Yahoo! Personals registration page and automatically create a Yahoo! account. The information I had to complete was almost identical. Filling out two forms is not a good user experience.
3. Firefox is NOT a “rare” browser. Based on this page, almost 20 percent of users use Firefox, and I am sure the number is even bigger in the US. Maybe this is an old message that should be updated.
4. There is no “Who’s Online” link at the top of the page. That makes it hard for me to do what I *really* want to do: find people in my area who are currently online. It would be great if I had a link that showed the following information by default:
   • People of the opposite sex
   • Who are now online
   • Who are in the preferred age range that I specified during registration
   • Who have pictures
   • Sorted by proximity to me.
5. The site won’t allow me to choose two parameters simultaneously on the search results.
6. Nor will it let me filter the results by people with photos on the search results.
7. The site doesn’t have the the “online now” icon on search results. I have to hover over the picture to see if this person is currently on the site.
8. When I filter by “online,” nothing seems to happen.

The good stuff:

• The site is clean and easy on the eyes.
• The profile layout is excellent and easy to understand.
• I like the fact that I can see some of the profile by hovering the photo on search result.