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The organization of the content on your website and how it connects together – known as the Information Architecture (IA) – is an important part of a usable website. If the IA of a site is done well, users’ will rarely have problems finding what they need. How do you structure your site’s content in a way users will understand? One popular way is through a technique called card sorting.

Card Sorting is a tried and true technique for improving the IA of a site because it actually involves the users in the process, allowing them to communicate their organizational expectations and preferences.

We have conducted numerous card sorting exercises for clients across multiple industries to help inform structural redesign of their website content, navigation paths, menu structures, work flows, and product lists. Here are some of the most important things we’ve learned from our studies:

Keep It Simple
Users want logical and simple categories. For websites with extensive navigation menu items or product lists, utilize a multi-level categorization to avoid user confusion and frustration. Multi-level organization of content promotes an easier and quicker access to your content. This can be achieved by using larger and meaningful main categories and smaller and logical subcategories. Too many choices at the top-level can cause cognitive overload, while not enough can bury much needed information.

Card Sorting Resolves Internal Conflicts
If members of your team can’t seem to agree on the Information Architecture of your site, let card sorting come to the rescue. One of our clients had two teams who couldn’t agree on restructuring their website content. The card sorting exercises we ran helped resolve this conflict in the best way possible – the users told them exactly what they wanted.

Avoid Internal Language
Avoid using insider language or jargon that users don’t understand. A usable site should be easy for a user to learn and remember how to use, and if they don’t fully understand the language that’s being used, those goals will be more difficult to meet. The best way to find out whether you are using internal language for your labels, is to test them with actual users. Users are not shy in expressing “I have no idea what that means.” That’s when you know you are using internal language that’s not clear to your users. You can test unclear labels by including them in a follow-up survey study.

If your website is performing poorly, there may be any number of reasons for this, but poor Information Architecture might certainly be a main culprit because bad IA means users can’t find the content they’re after. Online card sorting is a preferred tool for helping to improve IA because it is reliable, inexpensive, easy to execute, and involves a large number of your site’s target users.

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Advocates of user research are familiar with real benefits of testing an interface with the target audience: customer satisfaction, engagement and loyalty, which generally result in higher conversion rates and increased revenue. Including user research late into the design process can create certain challenges. In many cases, the changes are too costly to implement or it’s too late to implement them before launch. However, it is possible to include user research into an Agile framework harmoniously.

The ROI of User Research
The user research of a product needs to be factored in at early stages of the design process in order to achieve the maximum levels of return on investment. As the saying goes: Bad UX = money lost; Good UX = money gained. Indeed, maximum savings are gained from making changes earlier in the design life cycle.

The rule of thumb in many user-research-aware organizations is that the cost-benefit ratio for user research is $1 : $10-$100. In other words, once a system is in development, correcting a problem costs 10 times as much as fixing the same problem in design. If the system has been released, it costs 100 times as much relative to fixing in design. (Gilb, 1988)

What is Agile Development?
If you work in the tech industry, you’ve probably heard of Agile, and maybe you’ve even practiced it. For those who haven’t, Agile is a set of product development practices that favor responding to change rather than following a plan. The Agile framework operates in sprints that usually last one to two weeks at a time, allowing for several design iterations and changes. The agile process embraces change as a useful part of the process that actually pushes designers and developers in the right direction.

In addition to responding well to change, Agile development values individuals and interactions, customer collaboration, and products that work. There are several agile frameworks including Lean and Scrum.

The alternative framework to Agile is known as Waterfall, which is a process where time and cost are variables, but the scope of the project never changes. It’s an efficient way of getting a project done, but it doesn’t account for change very well, which can cause significant–and expensive–problems.

User Research Testing in an Agile Framework
Traditionally, when working within a Waterfall framework, user research is factored in close to the end of development. Because development is mostly completed at the point of testing, making any necessary changes found due to testing can be very costly. Additionally, there may not be enough time to incorporate the user research recommendations prior to launch.

“Agile offers many opportunities for overcoming problems with traditional development methods that have long impeded user research.” (Source: Nielsen Norman Group)

When working within an Agile framework, user research can be done from the early stages of the design and on a regular basis, meaning changes are easy to make and much less costly.

To overcome the challenges with conducting traditional user research in an Agile framework, you need to incorporate the following solutions:

• Test small
• Test during every sprint
• Test any fidelity of the product
• Add a feature/functionality to every test
• Try different types of testing
• Observe testing sessions with the entire team
• Streamline the findings and recommendations report

Promoting Excellence with Agile and User Research
When user research is done during every sprint, it creates beneficial changes that improve the overall experience of a product because Agile methods inherently embrace and harness change, giving your product a competitive advantage.

Agile and user research go hand-in-hand because Agile principles call for good design and technical excellence, and User Research enforces excellence early on.

User Research is all about individuals and interactions while customer collaboration is an Agile value. User Research and Agile bring the user, team and business together on a regular basis. Iterative studies throughout the product life cycle can further inform the product’s Experience Design and result in task success and customer satisfaction.

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To fully comprehend users’ experience and satisfaction with a digital product, it is important to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. In the past, quantitative and qualitative testing had to be done separately due to limitations of online testing tools and methodology. This inherently created timeline and budget constraints. For example, if you needed both types of data, performing two separate studies meant that you also needed two separate user groups. This was not only costly and took longer, but it also meant your data wasn’t coming from the same set of users.

Today’s industry leading online testing tools allow user research researchers to combine both quantitative and qualitative studies into one, while using the same user set, and consequently accommodating more efficient and cost effective results.

Some of the latest online user research tools are able to collect a comprehensive set of quantitative and qualitative data in a single study:

Behavioral/Qualitative Data

• User comments and reasons why
• User’s facial expressions
• Clickstreams
• Heatmaps
• Screen recording

Quantitative Data

• Task success or failure
• Task effectiveness and efficiency
• Task ease of use
• User preferences
• Survey responses
• Satisfaction metrics
• Net Promoter Scores
• Information architecture data

What’s more, this data can be collected from hundreds of participants all over the globe, not just the 8-12 participants that one-on-one studies average. This will generate statistically significant results for your study.

Another benefit of online user research is the participants are taking the tests in their natural environment using their own devices, so their behaviors are natural – this is something that is almost impossible to recreate in a lab setting. And, because online testing can be automated (rather than just moderated), users are able to participate on their own schedule.

With automated testing, there are fewer logistics involved. There is no longer a need to set up test schedules, moderate individual test sessions, or recruit more users than necessary due to no-shows. All of this saves time and money. The majority of the effort is in configuring the online testing tool based on the user research research goals, monitoring the study while it’s live and analyzing the data collected by the tool. Online user research research facilitates frequent testing at lower costs at any stage of your product design cycle.

Many UX research experts agree that modern advancements with online user research allows us to perform more complete research that can capture the same qualitative data as in-lab tests, in addition to many other quantitative points of data. Because of this, unmoderated online user research is becoming more commonplace and more trusted. According to UX Matters, “Remote user research is a welcome addition to any researcher’s arsenal—particularly as we try to fit data collection into agile sprints and work within the constraints of an increasingly lean bottom line.”

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Many online surveys, despite all efforts in creating optimal questions and targeting appropriate audiences, result in low response rates and high abandon rates.

“Response rates vary widely for different types of surveys. Customer satisfaction surveys and market research surveys often have response rates in the 10% – 30% range. Employee surveys typically have a response rate of 25% – 60%. Regardless of the type of survey you are conducting, you can have a major effect on the number of respondents who complete your survey.” (Source: PeoplePulse)

Here are some tips to improve engagement, enjoyment and interactivity with your online surveys. 

• Limit the study duration to 10-15 minutes maximum
• Include a progress bar to show how close respondents are to completion
• Provide incentives (cash, gift card, product, discounts, badges, etc.)
• Limit the number of open-ended questions to the most crucial subjects
• Reword the questions in a way that makes respondents want to answer them (e.g. change: What is your favorite game? to: If you could only play one game for the rest of your life, what would it be?)
• Include interactive elements whenever possible (e.g. images, graphics, videos, sounds, interactive sliders, star ratings, thumbs up/down, drag & drop, etc.)
• Encourage Social Media sharing
• Include photo breaks (e.g. provide visual breaks in between survey sections)

Additionally, online survey gamification can help increase survey response rates. Gamification of surveys not only encourages engagement with respondents, but it’s even been shown to increase the amount of time respondents spend per question, as well as increase response rates. Here are a few suggestion on how to gamify your next survey:

• Turn demographic questions into a fill-in-the-blank story
• Add an element of competition to your questions (e.g. list as many types of food as you can in 60 seconds)
• Include a letter finding game (e.g. Ask respondents to find letters at various stages throughout the survey and unscramble at the end to reveal the answer.)
• Include an Avatar (e.g. Ask respondents to choose an avatar to customize. The avatar will accompany them throughout the survey.)

A well-structured survey takes time and foresight. Knowing the kind of data you’re hoping to collect is helpful when writing questions. Having a general understanding of the audience who will receive the survey is also very important. According to SurveyGizmo, response rates can soar past 85% (about 43 responses for every 50 invitations sent) when the respondent population is motivated and the survey is well-executed. UX Mastery provides an in-depth look at how to craft a meaningful survey that works.

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Testing on different mobile platforms could result in higher customer satisfaction and net promoter scores.

In a mobile app user research, it was found that standard gestures do not translate from one platform to another for the same action. For example, the functions requiring a swiping gesture on an iOS, may require a tapping gesture on an Android.

The app that we tested utilized iOS gestures for a specific functionality on both iOS and Android platforms. The iOS users easily completed the task because they were accustomed to the swipe gesture for that functionality. However, many Android users were unable to complete the task because the swiping gesture for that functionality was not standard on Android. Therefore, many Android users failed to complete the main task.

The survey results revealed that some Android users were less satisfied with the product and less willing to download the app on their device. Most importantly, they were less likely to recommend the app to a friend or family member.

In conclusion, it is vital for a single app to be customized and tested for major platforms. Doing so will help to avoid compromising the user perception, experience, and satisfaction of the product.

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