Overview

C–Inspector is an easy to use online service that allows you to test your website classification system standalone – cost efficiently and effectively. This is how it works:

1. Prepare

Upload your information architecture, define tasks and answer items, set up preferences (language, company logo etc.), specify the instructions and sent out the test link.

Your Categories

Your Tasks

2. Run

All user actions are tracked: Selecting answer items, moving backward//forward in the category structure, number of attempts, skipped tasks, comments, time to complete.

Collecting Quantitative Data

Collecting Qualitative Feedback

3. Analyse

Check the overall and individual task results: Whats tasks worked well? What (alternative) paths did the users take? What were the user actions in every step of the correct clickthrough(s)? How much time did they need? How many attempts did they make? What did the users say about the overall findabilty? And much more..

Results per Task

Task Details

When to use it

Consider intranets or "informational" web sites (big organizations, large companies or public authorities) with a narrow and deep hierarchical backbone: When it comes to a large amount of content, it is a fundamental issue to get the labels and the category structure right.

When you are interested in one of the following issues, C–Inspector is the right choice:

What categories have a poor findability?
How much time do users spent on each task?
How high is the breakup rate for a specific task?
There are alternative paths, what is the preferred one? (Converging branches)
What were the users' choices (paths) before they found the right category?
How many attempts do the users need to find a category?
Are the results of a card sorting study valid?

Some Benefits

Get direct user feedback for low costs
Get an insight into the users' mental model of the website
Identify misunterstood labels and ambigious classifications
Get an easy to use application and set up studies fast
Get statistics to rely on (for customer presentations)
Analyse the results online or export them as a spreadsheet

Designing a solid web site foundation

Tree structures or taxonomies are by far the most prevalent structures of today's Web sites. A welldesigned hierarchy is the foundation of almost all good information architecture. Subdivisions and parent–child relationships are simple and familiar and can therefore be easily adapted to the user's mental model of the site structure. They give the users a feeling where they are, where they came from and where they can navigate to.

Task–based category testing

Like the search, navigation can make or break a website. The best information in the world is no good if the user can't get there. With C–Inspector, you can evaluate the findabilty within your categories, taxonomy or sitemap. The results of the remote test provide insight into how users locate categories and help to identify critical classifications or ambigious labels. Statistics show how long users need for a task, what navigation paths (breadcrumbs) they have chosen and more. Qualitative feedback collected through text input forms help to get subjective user opinions about what works and what not.

With C–Inspector, you can focus on browsing a hierachical navigation system and thus enhance the overall navigation experience. Keep in mind that "real" user browsing behaviour has to be tested holistically with a visual interface including search, teasers, contextual links, inline navigation and much more.

Contact

Questions that could not be answered here or in the section features? Do not hesitate to use the contact form and ask for further information.