83 East Avenue
Suite 104
Norwalk, CT 06851

Martha's Vineyard, MA
203 577 8578

The WMR Testing philosophy and why it is important to your success.

Usability is changing. At one end are the Usability engineers who focus on collecting data such as: time on task, completion rate, failure rates. This testing also reviews compliance with conventional usability guidelines. It is does not typically look into the content elements which motivate conversion or client engagement.

At the other end are those who look at traffic analytics tools which only record what works and what doesn't based upon user's clicks on the site. They don't do direct user testing. They review sites for sales barriers and create user personas in their efforts to increase conversions.

Both approaches are helpful tools but the first barely touches on persuasive elements focusing more in tasks and the second identifies problems but doesn't identify why users behave the way they do.

What if you could measure motivation, identify brand impact, and truly understand how a site appeals to a user on a deeper level ?

The answer, we believe, is that you can, if you combine tools of psychology (why we have a psychologist on our team), a deep understanding of body language indicators and the profiling tools mentioned earlier. A detailed review of the user test video, careful probing during testing and combined over 35 years of testing users behavior, gives us the skillset we need to give your marketing staff the insights they need. Our tools are proprietary but we do share the full details of the results with all our clients.

We believe that functional reviews and conversion reviews are important but both fail to address personality and learning style issues among test candidates or customer personas. Our approach is called: Conversion Point Architecture.

We profile both the personalities and learning styles of every user. The insights from these tests provide far deeper understandings of how to: engage, educate and motivate users. We insure that the conversion path of every site meets our criteria. When we are involved in the early design process, this information is used during the prototype testing process to insure higher conversion rates and more successful launches. We also bring these insights into Pay per Click and email campaigns.

We invite you to learn more about these processes by contacting us.

Testing Criteria:

Commonly accepted research indicates that testing 5 users reveals over 90% of site problems. How can you be sure that these 5 users are representative? The answer is that without more information, you may have addressed the functional problems but conversion (aka site success) is about much more, here is why.

Learning styles.
People learn in different ways and though a variety of theories exist on learning styles we agree that presenting information in an optimal style increases learning and retention. When evaluating test results we know that understanding test candidates learning styles is key. If for example, 3 out of your 5 candidates fall into one learning style, such as visual, the user insights gained in testing will be skewed compared to the normal population. Software programmers for example have a high percentage of intuitive learners and learn poorly with visual presentations. If you fail to adequately asses your test candidates or your market, you risk never knowing why your conversions suffer.

Personality Profiles

It is important for niche focused sites to understand the learning style and personality profile of their clients, in case dominant learning styles exist. In fact most sites have a niche focus. We have monitored learning styles for many years. If you can profile the typical candidate, different content paths can be created which best appeal to different profiles. Our architecture allows users to self-select the preferred path. The way the content is written and the graphics are displayed can tailor the information presentation to your niche clients preferences. While it sounds complex and challenging, ten years of research has shown simple solutions.

Ongoing research
Field dependence is an indicator of how effectively people can "absorb" information on a page. We currently are exploring ways to assess field dependence and use it in addition to profiling and learning styles in helping optimize sites to better meet user preferences.

We believe that the Holy Grail of eCommerce is the ability to deliver customized sites which deliver the best possible user experience and the highest possible conversion rates. We are exploring a wide variety of ways to achieve this and we invite you to join us in this important work.

We ascribe to the guidelines and are members in good standing of the Usability Professionals Association