Checking a website is user friendly is really important

(This was an email to a client but it wanted to become a blog post too...)

We'd like to think, well I would, that there'd be some rules that we could follow to guarantee everyone can get around our websites easily. There are some rules, but not enough. For the bits that we can't follow rules for we have to find another solution: testing.

Here's an article about user testing for you to take a look at. As a small business working for small businesses I'm very aware that we need to be mindful of resources. But convincing people to do something fun, like test a website and share their opinions, may not be that hard.

You could ask your current/past clients to help you. If you said "we're really keen to get some intelligent, savvy people to share their opinions about our new website and we thought we'd ask you" they may say "we'd love to". Of course they'd have to pick people from their teams who didn't work with you last time, people who know enough to behave like a potential client but don't already know what you do.