Content Testing Roadmap

Nowadays, popularity of a website is not limited to its design and functionality. Content is playing a major role in making websites and web pages popular on search engines. Attractive, informative, comprehensive and to-the-point content helps organisations build a stable website traffic. Web content can be used in the form of images, videos, articles, blogs, case studies, and more for:

• Providing information related to the various services offered by an organisation.
• For learning and educational purposes.
• It reflects organisations keyword strategies, which connects the content to the search engines.
• It can also be used to provide internal links and call to action, which further helps organisation reach a vast number of people.

Defining Content Testing:

Content Testing, which is also known as Usability Testing, can simply be defined as a practise of testing whether the written content is appropriate & suitable for the audience in question, and whether or not they are able to understand & comprehend it. The main objective of content testing is to validate User Experience, i.e., the purpose is not to check whether the reader ‘likes’ the written content, but to ensure that it provides them appropriate and suitable information, which is written accurately and is readable, understandable, and helpful.

As content is a crucial part of understanding, learning, and getting to know the services and products provided by an organisation, it is extremely necessary for them to test it properly. With the assistance of content testing, one can gain perspective on content quality, presentation, and format.

How to Perform Content Testing?

Content testing allows one to test alternative variants of a website’s content and assists developers and designers in finding out which pages, components, and combinations of components are most effective with the visitors. Therefore, following is the process of content testing for your reference:

1. Identify Testing Goals:

The first and the most important step of content testing process is to identify the goals and objectives of testing like:

• User requirements.
• Content Strategy.
• Context of the content.
• Targeted users.

2.Test Plan Creation:

Once the aim of testing is decided, the team prepares a proper plan for implementing the process of testing. Here, steps are followed to test the quality, comprehensiveness, usability, readability, accessibility, searchability, and more, of the content.

3. Monitoring Tests:

The third step of content testing is to monitor the tests. This helps testers and organisation get valid information regarding:

• The usefulness of the content.
• Readability of the content.
• Contents accessibility and more.

4. Analysing the Results:

By analysing the output/results, team can take the necessary steps to improve the quality as well as the context of the content. This will allow them to cater to all the requirements of the users and improve the content according to their needs.

5. Test Content with Users:

Once the aforementioned stages are completed, the team gets the content tested by the users or the targeted audience. This helps them get credible and trustworthy feedbacks and reviews, which further allows them to make accurate changes.

Why Content Testing?

Apart from testing the quality and effectiveness of the content, content testing helps organisations in validation several other important features, which might seem insignificant but are crucial for the success of a business. These features are:

• Usability: With the assistance of content testing one can validate whether or not the provided information is useful to the reader or not.
• Readability: As this testing checks the style and tone of the content, it provides allows one to check content’s readability, i.e., whether the content is easily readable or not.
• Accessibility: By performing content testing organisations can make sure that the provided content is easily accessible or not.
• Searchability: It helps in validating whether the content is easy to search or not, as problem in searchability can affect the popularity of the website as well as can reduce the traffic of the same.

When to Perform Content Testing?

As content testing is immensely beneficial, it can be easily implemented before the content goes live on the website. However, to get best results and to simplify the process of testing, content testing is usually performed by the testing team in the following stages:

1. Before the Content Release: By getting the content tested by the users before the release of the content, one can ensure the readability, accuracy, and relevance of the content. This will further helps organisation create content that is searchable, usable and easily accessible.

2. During the process of Content Designing: While curating the content, writers often rely on old feedbacks and reviews, which can help in improving the content.

3. After the Content Release: Once the content is published on the website for the users and readers, one can test get important feedbacks, which can be used for improving the quality of the content in the future.

Tips to Simplify Content Testing:

From the above discussion we can easily understand the importance and requirement of content testing. It is one crucial form of testing, which if implemented accurately can help organisations immensely. Hence, to help you with this process, here are some tips to simplify content testing:

• Organise & prioritise.
• Indulge in layering.
• Monitor the writing style & tone.
• Perform small as well as large scale testing.
• Test the content early in the project, then iteratively.
• Test whether people can use, understand and act on the content.
• Test more than one concept for better and accurate feedback.

Conclusion:

Content, which is a vital part of an organisation’s website, their marketing strategies, and for attracting traffic, needs to be understandable, readable, comprehensive, relevant, useful, and compatible to the needs and requirements of the readers. By testing it regularly during the usability phase one can ensure its relevance as well as its accuracy. In short, if a business wants to reach great heights, it is important for them to get their content tested along with the design and other important aspects and components of the website.

Ref: 
https://medium.com/capitalonedesign/when-should-we-turn-to-content-testing-429f8bddf622
http://www.professionalqa.com