Testing Our Website

It has taken longer to develop than we expected, but we are nearly there - the new Sidhil website is almost ready for launch.

Before launch, though, there is an important step - user testing. It’s vital to ensure that what we think is a good idea really makes sense to our customers, and the only way to do that is to ask them to test the site for us.

So, we asked our local school if we could borrow their computer room and we invited a number of customers along for the afternoon. We then asked them to perform a number of tasks, monitored how easy or hard they were to perform, and asked them for their feedback and suggestions.

The feedback has been excellent. Customers found the site easy to use and to navigate, and they particularly liked the new ‘My Department’ feature which allows someone to see all the products relevant to where they work. Now, if they work on a hospital ward or buy for a community equipment loan store, there’s an easy way to find every product that might interested them in one place.

The customers spotted some items that weren’t very clear or didn’t work smoothly, but they were all very minor and we are working on them right now. We are also finishing off the proof checking for all the products, including checking all dimensions and specifications. By the end of August all of this should be finished, and we will then have a final internal test where we will ask a number of Sidhil colleagues to check the site out, looking for errors in the product information and problems with the site. Assuming there are no further problems we will be ready to go live and to formally launch the site early in September.