Ad Agency Usability Testing Report

iJoomla Ad Agency is always a work in progress and even though we try hard to make it user-friendly, we have received reports that some advertisers have found the front-end confusing. So we decided to do usability testing. As always, it was a very eye-opening experience — even a mortifying one. When you’re doing Web and software development you simply have to do usability testing.There is no other way to predict how users actually use your product until you see them doing it.

This is just one of many usability tests we plan to do for Ad Agency; we are committed to making it the most user-friendly Joomla extension in the world!

Giles Fabris of DieHardCustomers agreed to act as the advertiser. He went through the sign-up and ad placement process.

Usability testing video:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/26933639[/vimeo]

Issues found:

The main issues were that notices were in the wrong places at the wrong times and that there was a lack of emphasis on the desired action button.

1. The “Your account pending approval” notice isn’t clear enough.
2. The “Select the ad type” notice isn’t clear enough.
3. User didn’t see the home button.
4. The notice on the adding banner page is confusing.
5. The notice on the adding campaign page is confusing.
6. The user seems stuck on an endless loop, confused by the placement of the notices.
7. The user tends to click on the Cancel button instead of the Continue button

As always, the best action to take after doing usability testing is simply to get to work and fix all the issues as quickly as possible. And so we did. It took us a a couple of days to make the changes and add a few enhancements on both Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6+ versions. Now a new and improved version is available for download.

Here’s a list of changes:

1. Changed “Your application is pending approval. Meanwhile you can add your banner/ads.” to: “Your advertising account application is pending approval. As soon as we approve your application, we will send you an email. In the meantime, you can still add banners and campaigns.”
2. Removed the notice “You have no campaigns available for this banner type/size. Please add a new campaign here.”
3. Removed the notice on campaign creation: “There are no banners available for this campaign. Banner/Ad requirements:..”
4. Placed “Add Banners” link on campaigns that have no banners.
5. Instead of using the .button class for all the buttons, we added our own classes. The Cancel button is now in light gray and the Action button in orange so that the user can easily see what to do next.
6. Changed “Select the ad type” to “Below you will find a list of the available ad types. Click on the one you’d like to add to continue”
7. Made the “Home” button smaller and added a link to “Advertiser Dashboard.”

Placed "Add Banners" link on campaigns that have no banners.

Instead of using the .button class for all the buttons, we added our own classes. The Cancel button is now in light gray and the Action button in orange so that the user can easily see what to do next.

You can download the latest version here. Enjoy the improved Ad Agency and stay tuned for more usability improvements soon.

Tags: iJoomla Ad Agency