"How many of you wash your hands when you leave the bathroom?" all hands go up in a room. That is a focus group. People telling you what they want to hear—swayed by other individuals in the room. What people THINK they might do in a situation. The truth is, if you put a camera pointing at the wash basins, 1 out of 4 fail to wash. This is what people actually DO.

Usability testing gets past surveys and focus groups, and allows you to get past what they think and see what they actually do while visiting your web site. The importance of this kind of testing is especially relevant with today's fast-moving web-based products and services. One bad experience and a customer is lost. Loyalty is gained through a positive online experience. Your company cannot afford to lose a single customer and would like to maintain steady relationships with your ongoing base—so learn more about their needs, behaviors and desires and fix what is broken. Or improve upon it. Your customers will be happier, and your revenue and brand value will increase during the process.

Veteran Usability expert Kelly Goto takes you through the basics of informal usability testing—demystifying it in the process. Learn about rapid testing techniques that enable you to ramp up, execute and implement results in just a week. Understand why iterative testing cycles during the lifecycle of a web site or web-based application deployment is not just a good idea, but should be a business imperative in your organization.