"A place for everything, and everything in its place" - Charles A. Goodrich
Tree testing starts with…of course…a tree.
By “tree”, we mean the hierarchical structure of your website or information space, represented as a multi-level list of headings:
- ss of sample tree
You may be testing an existing tree (e.g. the structure of your existing site) or trying out some new trees (revised, or completely rethought) to see how well they work.
While a full discussion of how to create site trees is beyond the scope of this guide, we’ll cover the basics and provide links to other good resources.
Basing new trees on research
Common schemes, combining/flipping, shallow vs. deep, etc.
Picking candidates to test
Triaging ideas, fleshing out candidates, checking coverage
Posing questions about tree elements
Testing specific alternatives using specific tasks