University of Tasmania, Australia

About web testing at UTAS

There are several types of web testing that are being used by Web & Learning Services at UTAS:

• Usability testing
• Card sorting
• Web statistics and website analytics

Usability testing

Usability testing is used for site assessment and verification, either at the story-board stage, or on an electronic version of a site. Usability testing sessions are task oriented and produce results which show what users do with your site, rather that what they may say about it. Basically, there is only one valid way to gather usability data: observe real users as they use your site to accomplish real tasks. To see an example of usability testing conducted at UTAS, please refer to this paper on an investigation of the usability of the UTAS website for prospective science students.

Card sorting

Card sorting is a method that maps the information architecture of websites. Card sorting can be done by a small group in a few hours. It is important that the people you test are representative of the users of that site its target audience. For an example of card sorting at UTAS, please refer to a card sorting study of MyLO and Turnitin conducted in 2009 (WORD, 168KB).

Web statistics and analytics

UTAS uses Google Analytics and log file analysis to get information about its websites. All sites in the Faculty Content Management System include Google Analytics code.

If you would like to find out about any of these types of web testing, please email Web and Learning Services.