An immediate correlation is made between abandonment and e-commerce sites; however, any site providing information to its audience must ensure that everything from navigation strategies to nomenclature is appropriate for as many user profiles as can be accommodated. While sites can now be designed for adherence to industry recognized user-centered design (UCD) guidelines, the real measurement of effectiveness is how successfully users can accomplish the objective that brought them to a particular website.

One of the most popular forms of website interface evaluations is one-on-one user testing in a laboratory environment. This setting is beneficial from a data collection perspective but equally appealing for its benefit to expose product developers, managers, etc. to the user testing process and real-life interaction with their product. We've seen many observers arrive with a lukewarm opinion of the value of user testing, only to leave being convinced it should be part of all development efforts.

Alucid devotes great attention to understanding and establishing accurate profiles of the target audience(s). Recruitment of test respondents is taken very seriously as this is the foundation of all data to follow. With most projects, we conduct recruitment using our own database(s). In certain instances we look to our client or third party firms as resources for particular profiles. In either case, we will work with you to ensure all respondents are appropriately screened and determined to be a part of your target audience.

The resulting data from test sessions may be analyzed using a variety of methods. These are determined and utilized to be appropriate with client needs, sample sizes, focus on qualitative or quantitative data, etc. An additional focal point of Alucid is producing a digestible and useful final report, with the mindset and objective of the particular reader in mind (e.g. we understand not all folks will take the time to read a granular report, and get more out of the 'cliff note version'). We've seen many technically competent 'findings & recommendations' documents not understood or acted upon by the recipients. We are keenly aware that, in the end, the findings and recommendations were the reason for conducting the testing in the first place.