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If you tested several site trees (well done!), you may find it better to group your findings by tree, to keep from confusing your readers:
Subject: tree tests - round 1 - summary of results
Hi team,
This week, we ran online tree tests of two new proposed structures for our website, to see if site visitors could find typical items by browsing the headings and subheadings.
We got a pretty good turn-out of existing customers and non-customers, and a clear winner to use as the skeleton of our site redesign:
Tree 0 (existing site) Tree 1 (task-based) Tree 2 (audience-based) # of Customers
87
91 81 # of non-customers 92 75 65 Success rate 44% 61% 74%
What worked well
Tree 1 (task-based) Tree 2 (audience-based) My Account and About Us were clear, with all participants easily finding relevant items there and not visiting those sections otherwise.
My Account was clear.
The Downloads page in the Support section was found by most participants looking for our latest software patches. The Downloads page (moved to the top level) was found by ALL participants.
What needs work
Tree 1 (task-based) Tree 2 (audience-based) The separate Products and Solutions sections were still confused by both user groups, as they were in the original site.
The unified Solutions page performed well, attracting the right clicks from both user groups.
Non-customers confused the SuperWidget product page with our Widget Packs and went to those pages instead.
Moving the Pack pages under their corresponding products increased the success rate of the product tasks.
Next steps
- Susan will run a follow-up tree test combining a revision of Tree 2 with the best elements of Tree 1.
- Lloyd will start updating content for a Tree-2-based site.
Full data and analysis
- The tree test data and more detailed results are at http://acme.com/studies/tree-test-2016-01-15
As always, contact me if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or ideas for future studies!
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