If your site’s engagement or conversion rate is unsatisfactory, you may be inclined to make some updates to improve your site’s user experience (UX). Before you jump into the editing stage, you should first attempt to validate your suspicions by testing your site’s usability such as navigation or product categorization.
Specifically, you may want to consider running a user experience (UX) test to refine your information architecture. Tree testing is an effective UX research process that evaluates a site’s labeling, structure, and navigability.
During a typical tree test, participants will be prompted to find a specific action or piece of information within a site’s structure. The navigation labels and hierarchy are tested independently of the user interface by presenting options as a text-based tree that users click on to progress deeper down branches.
Confirm Your Hunches
If you are the person working closest to your site, it can be easy to fall into the trap of following your intuition for every site update and refresh project. Tree Testing can help ensure that what seems logical to you is also understandable for visitors.
That said, there is also a strong chance you are not aware of every UX issue your site has. With tree testing, you may very well detect certain problematic areas within your site’s structure. You might be overlooking flow or logic issues that the average user experiences because of a knowledge gap between yourself and your visitors. The tree testing method is a great way to identify these knowledge gaps and indicate which areas of your site need to be edited for easier navigation and better overall flow.
It’s important to note that the “end-user” participating in this test should be a third party who is not familiar with your site. Having an unbiased and objective participant will result in better feedback, which you can then use to confirm or disregard the hunches you had prior to testing.
Independent IA Testing
Information architecture, commonly abbreviated as simply “IA,” captures and details the hierarchy, navigation, and all other forms of content organization present on a site or application. IA is an integral part of UX, but the two are not synonymous. User experience takes IA into account while also considering how an end-user responds to and engages with the site’s user interface (UI) to find the information in question.
Testing your IA independent from the user interface can give you key insights and opportunities to reorganize content within your site’s structure. It’s a no-frills way of testing if the site’s content organization and logic resonate with your site’s visitors. In this form of tree testing, participants are tasked with finding specific pieces of information using only the linked titles of the pages on the site. They are not presented with any of the design elements or visual aids that accompany a typical user interface.
If your users can find content when presented with the UI but cannot do so by the titles of the pages and subpages alone, that should be a clear indicator your IA needs work.
Speaking Your Audience’s Language
There are many benefits to conducting tree tests beyond confirming suspicions and improving IA.
Tree testing is an excellent way to evaluate whether your site’s terminology speaks to your target audience’s needs, fears, interests, and desires. Specifically, it can determine if the terms you’ve chosen to title your pages, subpages, drop-down menus, and other navigation tools are resonating with your end users. If your participants are clicking on one link title only to bounce back to the original page and try another link, you probably aren’t using terms or phrases that your audience understands or would associate with the content on the page (assuming your participants are members of your target audience, of course).
Adjusting your titles and rethinking your page categorization strategy can help ensure you speak the language of your prospects and customers. For e-commerce brands, this can drastically enhance the navigation and filtering experience of the site, which results in a secondary benefit: increased conversion rates.
Tree Testing for E-Commerce
When users are unable to find the information they need from a given site, they usually leave the page rather quickly to look elsewhere. This applies to instances of online shopping as well. If a shopper is looking for a specific product, feature, accessory, or solution, they are far more likely to buy from an e-commerce site that allows them to quickly find the information they need to feel confident in their purchase. Websites that don’t efficiently facilitate the buyer journey often cause frustration among end-users and are ultimately detrimental to e-commerce success.
Tree testing can be used to learn more about how shoppers want to browse. By adjusting your site navigation, filtering, and product meta to align with common customer habits captured during your test sessions, you can create a more fluid and seamless user experience. That, in turn, can lead to a higher volume of conversions.
Tree Testing & Non-Transactional Conversions
“Conversions” don’t always have to represent sales within the e-commerce framework. They don’t even have to represent sales at all.
For a volunteer group, conversions could mean user registrations to a charity event. A local business aiming to grow its social media presence may consider a conversion to be a new follower on one of their networks or one of the posts they share online. In both cases, site navigation and findability play a major role. Tree testing can help evaluate the end-user journey’s impact on conversions, even if the conversions are not transactional by nature.
When To Conduct Tree Testing
Although it may seem obvious, it should be noted that tree testing should take place at the beginning of a website redesign or refresh project, long before any new long-form content or layouts are created.
A successful tree test will highlight navigation issues that may be causing certain pages to experience low traffic volume. When these issues are resolved, pages that you previously thought were underperforming due to the on-page content have the potential to see spikes in traffic and engagement. Take the time to build tree testing into the initial stage of your next web development cycle to take advantage of the future benefits it can provide.
About Getfused
Whether you are conducting tree tests as a part of a website overhaul or a focused sales optimization effort, having the knowledge and expertise to create a seamless and intuitive user experience is essential to any web design project.
At Getfused, our robust, full-service creative marketing agency provides in-house services across branding, marketing, and user-centered design to deliver meaningful impact for our clients. By focusing on usability and creating uniquely branded web experiences, our team helps develop user journeys that impress our client’s audiences while simultaneously meeting their critical needs.
Learn how Getfused’s Web Design services can augment your next website redesign project.
