You probably read this headline and scratched your head. No, the flu bug that I’m still getting over isn’t speaking to me — your customers really can help design your site. But don’t send them an email asking them to buy Photoshop just yet… Even though your customers know nothing about effective web design, there are two ways they can help you design your site.
The first is covered in GrokDotCom’s recent blog post about A/B testing. The premise is that your designer can post two versions of a page or page template, measure results and keep the page that works the best. This way, you enable your customers to indirectly tell you what they like best. Continually testing new designs doesn’t have to be time consuming or costly — it can be as easy as changing the placement, size or color of a button, or just pulling important copy out of a paragraph and making it a headline.
Second, you can conduct a usability test of your site with customers. This can be done in a lab (which can be a very expensive option), or you can test your site with remote users. There are some new options in the remote testing arena that are promising, especially for sites that have never been tested before (and nearly 77% of online retailers don’t test their sites). Remote testing, while less costly, will identify “low-hanging fruit” that you can easily fix.
No matter which you choose, you can let your customers design your site through their feedback and through the use of both quantitative and qualitative data.
