Website usability is a growing area of interest to web authors, designers, academicians, and business professionals. Many organizational leaders are beginning to invest in usability testing to ensure that their e-commerce websites are successful. Typically, website success is often measured by conversion and retention rates.

Since business professionals don’t have a lot of time to waste, they are looking for sites that they can access with ease. So, website effectiveness and efficiency are key factors to ensure they return.

Most usability researchers would argue that even the most usable websites have problems. Because of this reality, usability tests are growing in importance. To gain greater insight into this practice, this paper will conduct a usability test on a website and offer recommendations for improvement.

This researcher selected The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) website for this usability study, because thousands of users visit it daily for vital business information and solutions. SHRM is “the leading provider of resources serving the needs of HR professionals and advancing the practice of human resource management” (SHRM, 2017, para. #1). SHRM has been around for 70 years.

This facilitator conducted this study to test for user satisfaction, website functionality and effectiveness, and overall visual appeal. The main features of the SHRM websites tested in this study were membership, HR jobs, certification, tools and samples, SHRM store, blog, and the seminar registration process.

The goal of this test, like most, is to fix all serious problems first. With this insight, this formal analysis outlines the project description, timeline, results, and recommendations.

If you would like to learn more about my usability test, please read the full study.