After the mere face-lift, now is the time to report on the major overhaul of the user interface!
The last few weeks were very busy with improving the user experience at ningo.me, and with reducing the interface to the max.
If you are a current or future internet entrepreneur, I have one very loud advice for you: invest some of your very first money in external usability tests!
I have been pondering the idea for ningo.me for over 6 years now. I have been discussing it with a huge lot of people – team, family, friends, strangers at the party. We came to the point where we all agreed we were ready. The landing page looked great, the user interface was crisp and intuitive – to us!
Then I ran across the usability testing platform usertesting.com – and got the wake-up call! I chose to let three users follow my test script. They came from varying backgrounds, obviously had different levels of education etc. And the shocking result was that none of them – no one of them – had understood the concept of ningo.me at all!
This was the beginning of a crash course into serious usability optimization. We have run many more tests by now. We started to improve step by step. Beginning by the landing page, continuing all the way into the workflows for registered users. By now, the testers don’t even have to scroll down on the landing page to grasp the basic concept. They can follow the steps to register, and they can put the service to their use immediately.
The lesson learned is: not only are friends and family way better at comforting me and making me happy than at helping me improve my work significantly – so are strangers I run into in my life. They live in the same country, many have the same educational background, etc. If we target a global audience, we must let arbitrary users from around the globe test the site and give their feedback.
The major improvements on ningo.me:
- The landing page is way clearer (again), to the point, and complete (including a walk-through with screen-shots and the team page!)
- While still keeping the original user interface for advanced power-users, there is now a “simple mode” with a drastically reduced and easy interface and feature-set. The forms are much lighter, the dashboard is as easy as 1-2-3.
- Payments can be reviewed and tracked in a more complete report
What do you think of the changes?