Website Usability Testing: IntuitionHQ.com

In my recent post on The Godaddy User Experience Fail I asked people to partake in a quick test to help gather a variety of views and interactions with the Godaddy site.

The results have started coming in, and it’s been quite interesting to see how people found the Godaddy experience. If you are interested you can take the test at http://video.intuitionhq.com/godaddy-ux, or just read on to see the results. It’s possibly not the most scientific test in the history of man, but you still get the idea that something isn’t quite right with the Godaddy UX.

Update: Hi to all the visitors from Godaddy – we’d love to hear your side of the story – and would respect your privacy if you wanted to post anonymously. Don’t be shy.

The results:

1) Where would you click to view your account?

Where would you click to view your account?

Simple question to start with: Where would you click to view your account? As you can see in the results above 76% of people clicked the ‘My Account’ button and the remainder clicked the log in area – I’d say it was safe to say a 100% success rate; more or less what you’d expect for such a simple task. The average time for completion (top left of the results image) is a little long, but there is often such a delay with the first question of a test as people get accustomed to the interface.

2) Where would you click to view your expiring domains?

Where would you click to view your expiring domains?

Another fairly straight forward question, but it’s always interesting to see the different ways people try and achieve the same goals. In this case clicking on ‘Domains’ won’t actually lead you to the page where you can renew your expiring domains but rather to a page where you can search for new domains and with a list of pricing for different domain names (so that’s where I could find that information). That means this page has an 80% success rate with an average click time of 11.26 seconds.

This means this page could probably do with some tweaking; if 20% of people are clicking in a different location to try and renew domains, Godaddy should perhaps incorporate the renew domain feature into the ‘Domains’ page. Supposing they have 1000 customers a day trying to renew domains, 20% (200) click the wrong location, and as a result say 25% (50) of those abandon their purchase (at roughly $10 a domain) that’s still $500 a day. Better than a kick in the knickers.

3) Based on the following information would you say you are:

Based on the following information would you say you are:

Now, this seems like it would be very straight forward, but 20% say they are logged in, 56% say they aren’t and 24% aren’t sure. This is something that should be glaringly obvious and can lead to frustration for customers if it’s not as obvious as it should be. Definitely a fail on this front.

Even after having gone through the purchase process, I still couldn’t tell you if I was logged in or not – in fact it seems Godaddy has some sort of semi-logged in state which is really very confusing. Such basic functionality should really be fixed, and while immediate financial effects may not be obvious, I can imagine a number of users abandoning Godaddy after such frustrating experiences, and telling many others about their negative experiences.

4) Based on the following information, what currency would you think you are using?

Based on the following information, what currency would you think you are using?

OK, glad to see I’m not that only one who was a little confused by this. A full 20% either say they are using the wrong currency or aren’t sure what currency they are using. Why do they have the New Zealand flag there if they aren’t using New Zealand dollars? Yes, you can trace my IP address to New Zealand, congratulations, and yes, that is what my flag looks like, but why do you have it there?

Again, these are the little quirks that can slowly (or not so slowly) but surely cause a frustrating experience for users. Why not just make it obvious? I can cope with not having my flag there so long as the visual cues make sense.

5) How would you add this domain to your cart?

How would you add this domain to your cart?

Interesting numbers here: 77% clicked in a location that would select the correct (or all) domain, which means 23% clicked somewhere else – and what’s more, there was an average click time of 22.72 seconds for this test – much too high, which means too much thinking. Clicking the continue button doesn’t actually add the domain to your cart, but it doesn’t actually tell you this until you are two steps further through the process. Can you feel the frustration brewing?

Adding a warning on this page that your domain hadn’t been added would be a very quick and simple fix to this problem, rather than letting users carrying on and trying to upsell them in the process.

6) Where would you click to toggle automatic renewal for this domain?

Where would you click to toggle automatic renewal for this domain?

Kind of a trick question because it has a 100% failure rate – at least in my experience. Regardless of where I clicked and what I did, I couldn’t turn off auto-renew. I’m sure advertising at the superbowl is expensive, but I can’t image using tactics like this to keep customers will do good things for your business. I’d be very interested to hear if others had the same experience when renewing their domains with Godaddy.

7) Based on the following screenshot, would you say you are:

Based on the following screenshot, would you say you are:

The same question as number 3 after having gone through the checkout process. 42% now believe they are logged in, 29% think they aren’t, and 25% don’t know. I can tell you which answer is right because I still don’t know. I did have to log in (again?) to actually access my domain management area, which would lead me to think I wasn’t logged in, but then again it knew one of my domains was expiring when I came to the site and let me pay for renewal so I’m really not sure. Does anyone have any insight into this? Very confusing in my opinion, and so the test results show.

8) Would you say the following page is easy to understand, a little confusing, or quite confusing?

Would you say the following page is easy to understand, a little confusing, or quite confusing?

A leading question maybe, but still, 84% of people say the page is either a little or quite confusing. Really Godaddy? Up your game! I imagine if they took 10% of their marketing budget and invested it in their site they could make some dramatic improvements. I’d like to think the trend is making content more understandable and accessible, designs cleaner and less cluttered, and generally towards providing an ever improving user experience. I’d say so far Godaddy is failing on all three fronts.

What does this mean?

Obviously it’s far too early for me to predict the demise of Godaddy, and so far they have such a huge slice of mindshare it’s hard to imagine someone overcoming them. But like all things web, it’s never too late for a strong, new challenger to come along, and it’s not too late for Godaddy to try and improve their game either.

Whichever side wins, there does need to be a focus on making as great a user experience as possible. As I’ve quoted before, “Build it and they will come; build it well and they will come back”. By developing the site to meet their target markets need, by making the experience an enjoyable one, by making a clear, understandable process and by constantly tweaking and improving their site, Godaddy could make a huge improvement to their service. Just a few quick usability tests (shameless plug) and they will have some ideas on how they should get started and what they could improve. Why not do the same for your site too?

What do you think of the Godaddy service? Do these test results help you? How could you improve your own site? Any questions or comments, be sure to let us know below.

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