5 Alternatives to Askable for User Research and Participant Recruitment

All the way back in 2014, the web passed a pretty significant milestone: 1 billion websites. Of course, fewer than 200 million of these are actually active as of 2019, but there’s an important underlying point. People love to create. If the current digital age that we live in has taught us anything, it’s that it’s never been as easy to get information and ideas out into the world.

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Understandably, this ability has been used – and often misused. Overloaded, convoluted websites are par for the course, with a common tactic for website renewal being to simply update them with a new coat of paint while ignoring the swirling pile of outdated and poorly organized content below.

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So what are you supposed to do when trying to address this problem on your own website or digital project? Well, there’s a fairly robust technique called top tasks management. Here, we’ll go over exactly what it is and how you can use it.

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Getting to grips with top tasks

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Ideally, all websites would be given regular, comprehensive reviews. Old content could be revisited and analyzed to see whether it’s still actually serving a purpose. If not, it could be reworked or just removed entirely. Based on research, content creators could add new content to address user needs. Of course, this is just the ideal. The reality is that there’s never really enough time or resource to manage the growing mass of digital content in this way. The solution is to hone in on what your users actually use your website for and tailor the experience accordingly by looking at top tasks.

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What are top tasks? They're basically a small set of tasks (typically around 5, but up to 10 is OK too) that are most important to your users. The thinking goes that if you get these core tasks right, your website will be serving the majority of your users and you’ll be more likely to retain them. Ignore top tasks (and any sort of task analysis), and you’ll likely find users leaving your website to find something else that better fits their needs.

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The counter to top tasks is tiny tasks. These are everything on a website that’s not all that important for the people actually using it. Commonly, tiny tasks are driven more by the organization’s needs than those of the users. Typically, the more important a task is to a user, the less information there is to support it. On the other hand, the less important a task is to a user, the more information there is. Tiny tasks stem very much from ‘organization first’ thinking, wherein user needs are placed lower on the list of considerations.
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According to Jerry McGovern (who penned an excellent write-up of top tasks on A List Apart), the top tasks model says “Focus on what really matters (the top tasks) and defocus on what matters less (the tiny tasks).”

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How to identify top tasks

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Figuring out your top tasks is an important step in clearing away the fog and identifying what actually matters to your users. We’ll call this stage of the process task discovery, and these are the steps:

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1. Gather: Work with your organization to gather a list of all customer tasks
2. Refine: Take this list of tasks to a smaller group of stakeholders and work it down into a shortlist
3. User feedback: Go out to your users and get a representative sample to vote on them
4. Finalise: Assemble a table of tasks with the one with the highest number of votes at the top and the lowest number of votes at the bottom

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We’ll go into detail on the above steps, explaining the best way of handling each one. Keep in mind that this process isn’t something you’ll be able to complete in a week – it’s more likely a 6 to 8-week project, depending on the size of your website, how large your user base is and the receptiveness of your organization to help out.

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Step 1: Gather – Figure out the long list of tasks

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The first part of the task process is to get out into the wider organization and discover what your users are actually trying to accomplish on your website or by using your products. It’s all about getting into the minds of your users – trying to see the world through their eyes, effectively.

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If you’re struggling to think of places where you might find customer tasks, here are some of the best sources:

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• Analytics: Take a deep dive into the analytics of your website or product to find out how people are using them. For websites, you’ll want to look at pages with high traffic and common downloads or interactions. The same applies to products – although the data you have access to will depend on the analytics systems in place.
• Customer support teams: Your own internal support teams can be a great source of user tasks. Support teams commonly spend all day speaking to users, and as a result, are able to build up a cohesive understanding of the types of tasks users commonly attempt.
• Sales teams: Similarly, sales teams are another good source of task data. Sales teams typically deal with people before they become your users, but a part of their job is to understand the problems they’re trying to solve and how your website or product can help.
• Direct customer feedback: Check for surveys your organization has run in the past to see whether any task data already exists.
• Social media: Head to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to see what people are talking about with regards to your industry. What tasks are being mentioned?

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It’s important to note that you need to cast a wide net when gathering task data. You can’t just rely on analytics data. Why? Well, downloads and page visits only reflect what you have, but not what your users might actually be searching for.

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As for search, Jerry McGovern explains why it doesn’t actually tell the entire story: “When we worked on the BBC intranet, we found they had a feature called “Top Searches” on their homepage. The problem was that once they published the top searches list, these terms no longer needed to be searched for, so in time a new list of top searches emerged! Similarly, top tasks tend to get bookmarked, so they don’t show up as much in search. And the better the navigation, the more likely the site search is to reflect tiny tasks.”

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At the end of the initial task-gathering stage you should be left with around 300 to 500 tasks. Of course, this can scale up or down depending on the size of the website or product.

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Step 2: Refine – Create your shortlist

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Now that you’ve got your long list of tasks, it’s time to trim them back until you’ve got a shortlist of 100 or less. Keep in mind that working through your long list of tasks is going to take some time, so plan for this process to take at least 4 weeks (but likely more).

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It’s important to involve stakeholders from across the organization during the shortlist process. Bring in people from support, sales, product, marketing and leadership areas of the organization. In addition to helping you to create a more concise and usable list, the shortlist process helps your stakeholders to think about areas of overlap and where they may need to work together.

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When working your list down to something more usable, try and consolidate and simplify. Stay away from product names as well as internal organization and industry jargon. With your tasks, you essentially want to focus on the underlying thing that a user is trying to do. If you were focusing on tasks for a bank, opt for “Transactions” instead of “Digital mobile payments”. Similarly, bring together tasks where possible. “Customer support”, “Help and support” and “Support center” can all be merged.

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At a very technical level, it also helps to avoid lengthy tasks. Stick to around 7 to 8 words and try and avoid verbs, using them only when there’s really no other option. You’ll find that your task list becomes quite to navigate when tasks begin with “look”, “find” and “get”. Finally, stay away from specific audiences and demographics. You want to keep your tasks universal.

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Step 3: User feedback – Get users to vote

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With your shortlist created, it’s time to take it to your users. Using a survey tool like Optimal's Surveys, add in each one of your shortlisted tasks and have users rank 5 tasks on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most important and 1 being the least important.

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If you’re thinking that your users will never take the time to work through such a long list, consider that the very length of the list means they’ll seek out the tasks that matter to them and ignore the ones that don’t.

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Step 4: Finalize – Analyze your results

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Now for the task analysis side of the project. What you want at the end of the user survey end of the project is a league table of entire shortlist of tasks. We’re going to use the example from Cisco’s top tasks project, which has been documented over at A List Apart by Gerry McGovern (who actually ran the project). The entire article is worth a read as it covers the process of running a top task project for a large organization.

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Here’s what a league table of the top 20 tasks looks like from Cisco:

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Here’s the breakdown of the vote for Cisco’s tasks:

• 3 tasks got the first 25 percent of the vote
• 6 tasks got 25-50 percent of the vote
• 14 tasks got 50-75 percent of the vote
• 44 tasks got 75-100 percent of the vote

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While the pattern may seem surprising, it’s actually not unusual. As Jerry explains: “We have done this process over 400 times and the same patterns emerge every single time.”

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Final thoughts

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Focusing on top tasks management is really a practice that needs to be conducted on a semi-regular basis. The approach benefits organizations in a multitude of ways, bringing different teams and people together to figure out how to best address why your users are coming to your website and what they actually need from you.

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As we explained at the beginning of this article, top tasks is really about clearing away the fog and understanding on what really matters. Instead of spreading yourself thin and focusing on a host of tiny tasks, hone in on those top tasks that actually matter to your users.

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Understanding how to improve your website

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The top tasks approach is an effective way of giving you a clear idea of what you should be focusing on when designing or redesigning your website, but this should really just be one aspect of the work you do.

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Utilizing a host of other UX research methods can give you a much more comprehensive idea of what’s working and what’s not. With card sorting, for example, you can learn how your users think the content on your website should be arranged. Then, with this data in hand, you can use tree testing to assemble draft structures of your website and test how people navigate their way through it. You can keep iterating on these structures to ensure you’ve created the most user-friendly navigation.
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Take a look at our 101 guides to learn more about card sorting and tree testing, as well as the other user research methods you can use to make solid improvements to your website. If you’d rather just start putting methods into practice using user research tools, take our UX platform for a spin for free here.

In today's digital landscape, delivering exceptional user experiences is no longer optional – it's essential for success. At Optimal, we're committed to empowering UX professionals and organizations with the best-in-class tools and methodologies to create outstanding digital products and experiences. 

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In this blog post, we'll explore practical use cases that demonstrate how Optimal's research platform can drive meaningful improvements across various UX scenarios.

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Use case 1: Make Collaborative Design Decisions or A/B Test a Design

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Refining an existing product? Launching a new website? Rebranding? Optimal's user research platform empowers your team to make informed, collaborative decisions. Here's how to leverage our tools for impactful results:

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1. Qualitative Insights: Establish organizational priorities

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• Use Qualitative Insights to develop a comprehensive list of top tasks or goals from your organization's perspective.
• Engage stakeholders across departments to ensure alignment on key objectives.

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2. Surveys: Validate user priorities and pain points

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• Deploy a targeted survey to confirm users' top tasks and identify existing issues.
• Gather quantitative data to support or challenge organizational assumptions about user needs.

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3. First-click Testing: Conduct preference testing

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• Use First-Click Testing to evaluate the effectiveness of different design options.
• This method provides valuable insights for A/B testing decisions, ensuring designs resonate with your target audience.

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4. Qualitative Insights: Deep dive into user preferences

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• Conduct follow-up interviews or focus groups using our Qualitative Insights to gain a deeper understanding of user preferences and experiences with different design options.
• Explore the 'why' behind user choices to inform more nuanced design decisions.

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5. Prototype Testing: Validate interaction flows and usability

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• Use Prototype Testing to observe how users interact with early-stage designs.
• Test navigation, UI components, and task flows to ensure your prototypes align with user expectations—before costly development begins.

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6. Interviews: Capture rich, contextual feedback

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• Conduct live, moderated Interviews directly within Optimal to explore user reactions and behaviors.
• Use screen recordings and notes to uncover deeper insights behind user choices and refine design decisions with confidence.

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By embedding user insights at every stage, your team can confidently design experiences that don’t just look good but work for real people. Optimal empowers you to make faster, more informed decisions that drive meaningful outcomes across your organization.

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Use case 2: Developing effective content strategies

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Developing a robust content strategy is crucial for intranets, help documents, websites, and product copy. Optimal's user research and insights platform empowers you to create content that resonates with your audience and drives engagement. Here's how to leverage our tools for effective content strategy development:

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1. Card Sorting: Organize content intuitively

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• Use Card Sorting to understand how users naturally categorize and group your content.
• Gain insights into users' mental models to inform your content hierarchy and organization.
• Apply findings to create a content structure that aligns with user expectations, enhancing findability and engagement.

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2. Tree Testing: Validate information architecture

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• Employ Tree Testing to confirm whether information placed within your proposed hierarchy is findable and understandable.
• Identify areas where users struggle to locate content, enabling you to refine your structure for optimal user experience.
• Iterate on your information architecture based on concrete user data, ensuring your content is easily accessible.
• Test different content structures and then compare them with each other using the task comparison tool available in Optimal to understand which structure is most likely to drive users to perform the targeted actions.

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3. Qualitative Insights: Analyze language perceptions

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• Leverage Qualitative Insights to conduct in-depth interviews or focus groups.
• Explore user perceptions of terminology, language style, and content tone.
• Gather rich insights to inform your content voice and style guide, ensuring your messaging resonates with your target audience.

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4. Additional Applications of Qualitative Insights

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   Expand your content strategy research by using Qualitative Insights to:

• Review internal tools and processes to streamline content creation workflows.
• Compare content experiences across desktop and mobile devices for consistency.
• Gather event feedback to inform content for future marketing materials.
• Analyze customer service and support interactions to identify common issues and FAQs.
• Conduct usability testing on existing content to identify areas for improvement.

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   Key questions to explore:

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• What's working well in your current content?
• What's not resonating with users?
• What are users' first impressions of your content?
• How do users typically interact with your content?
• How well does your content foster empathy and connection with your audience?

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By systematically applying these research methods, you'll develop a content strategy that not only meets your organizational goals but also deeply resonates with your audience. Remember, content strategy is an ongoing process. Regularly use Optimal's tools to assess the effectiveness of your content, gather user feedback, and iteratively improve your approach for continued success.

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Use case 3: Increase website conversion

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Empower your team to boost conversion rates by leveraging Optimal's best-in-class user research and insights platform. Here's how you can unlock meaningful improvements:

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1. Qualitative Insights & Surveys: Uncover user motivations

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• Conduct in-depth interviews or targeted surveys to gather rich, qualitative feedback about user experiences, motivations, and pain points on your site.
• Add an intercept snippet to your existing website to survey users as they come to your website to get a clear understanding of user motivations in context.
• Analyze responses to identify key themes and opportunities for optimization.

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2. Tree Testing: Optimize navigation structure

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• Use our Tree Testing tool to evaluate the effectiveness of your site's navigation structure.
• Identify areas where users struggle to find information, enabling you to streamline pathways to conversion.

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3. Card Sorting: Enhance information architecture

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• Leverage Card Sorting tool to understand how users naturally categorize your site's information.
• Apply insights to refine the layout of product features or benefits on your landing pages, aligning with user expectations.

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4. Prototype Testing: Validate Design Changes

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• Develop prototypes of new landing pages or key conversion elements (like CTAs) using our Prototype Testing tool.
• Conduct first-click tests to ensure your design changes resonate with users and drive desired actions.

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5. Follow-up Qualitative Insights: Iterate and improve

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• After implementing changes, conduct follow-up interviews or surveys to gauge the impact of your optimizations.
• Gather feedback on the improved user experience and identify any remaining pain points.

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By systematically applying these research methods, you'll gain the actionable insights needed to create a more intuitive, engaging, and conversion-friendly website. Optimal empowers you to make data-driven decisions that not only boost conversions but also enhance overall user satisfaction.

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Embracing mixed methods research

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To truly unlock the power of user research, we recommend a mixed methods approach. By combining quantitative data from surveys and usability tests with qualitative insights from interviews and open-ended responses, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your users' needs and behaviors.

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For more information on mixed methods research and how it can enhance your UX strategy, check out our detailed guide: What is mixed methods research?

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And that’s a wrap

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Optimal's user research and insights platform provides the tools and methodologies you need to deliver exceptional digital experiences. By leveraging these use cases and adopting a mixed methods approach, you can make data-driven decisions that resonate with your users and drive business success.

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Remember, great UX is an ongoing journey. Regularly employ these research methods to stay attuned to your users' evolving needs and preferences. With Optimal as your partner, you're equipped to create digital products and experiences that truly stand out in today's competitive landscape.

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Ready to elevate your UX research? Explore Optimal's platform and start unlocking actionable insights today!

Definition of a website footer

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The footer of a website sits at the very bottom of every single web page and contains links to various types of content on your website. It’s an often overlooked component of a website, but it plays several important roles in your information architecture (IA) – it’s not just some extra thing that gets plonked at the bottom of every page.

Getting your website footer right matters!

The footer communicates to your website visitors that they’ve reached the bottom of the page and it’s also a great place to position important content links that don’t belong anywhere else – within reason. A website footer is not a dumping ground for random content links that you couldn’t find a home for, however there are some content types that are conventionally accessed via the footer e.g., privacy policies and copyright information just to name a few.

Lastly, from a usability and navigation perspective, website footers can serve as a bit of a safety net for lost website visitors. Users might be scrolling and scrolling trying to find something and the footer might be what catches them and guides them back to safety before they give up on your website and go elsewhere. Footers are a functional and important part of your overall IA, but also have their own architecture too.

Read on to learn about the types of content links that might be found in a footer, see some real life examples and discuss some approaches that you might take when testing your footer to ensure that your website is supporting your visitors from top to bottom.

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What belongs in a website footer

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Deciding which content links belong in your footer depends entirely on your website. The type of footer, its intent and content depends on its audience of your customers, potential customers and more — ie your website visitors. Every website is different, but here’s a list of links to content types that might typically be found in a footer.

• Legal content that may include: Copyright information, disclaimer, privacy policy, terms or use or terms of service – always seek appropriate advice on legal content and where to place it!
• Your site map
• Contact details including social media links and live chat or chat bot access
• Customer service content that may include: shipping and delivery details, order tracking, returns, size guides, pricing if you’re a service and product recall information.
• Website accessibility details and ways to provide feedback 
• ‘About Us’ type content that may include: company history, team or leadership team details, the careers page and more 
• Key navigational links that also appear in the main navigation menu that is presented to website visitors when they first land on the page (e.g. at the top or the side)

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Website footer examples

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Let’s take a look at three diverse real life examples of website footers.

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IKEA US
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IKEA’s US website has an interesting double barrelled footer that is also large and complex – a ‘fat footer’ as it’s often called – and its structure changes as you travel deeper into the IA. The below image taken from the IKEA US home page shows two clear blocks of text separated by a blue horizontal line. Above the line we have the heading of ‘All Departments’ with four columns showing product categories and below the line there are seven clear groups of content links covering a broad range of topics including customer service information, links that appear in the top navigation menu and careers. At the very bottom of the footer there are social media links and the copyright information for the website.
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As expected, IKEA’s overall website IA is quite large, and as a website visitor clicks deeper into the IA, the footer starts to change. On the product category landing pages, the footer is mostly the same but with a new addition of some handy breadcrumbs to aid navigation (see below image).
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When a website visitor travels all the way down to the individual product page level, the footer changes again. In the below image found on the product page for a bath mat, while the blue line and everything below it is still there, the ‘All Departments’ section of the footer has been removed and replaced with non-clickable text on the left hand side that reads as ‘More Bath mats’ and a link on the right hand side that says ‘Go to Bath mats’. Clicking on that link takes the website visitor back to the page above.
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Overall, evolving the footer content as the website visitor progresses deeper into the IA is an interesting approach - as the main page content becomes more focussed as does the footer while still maintaining multiple supportive safety net features.

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M.A.C Cosmetics US
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The footer for the US website of this well known cosmetics brand has a four part footer. At first it appears to just have three parts as shown in the image below: a wide section with seven content link categories covering a broad range of content types as the main part with a narrow black strip on either end of it making up the second and third parts. The strip above has loyalty program and live chat links and the strip below contains mostly links to legal content.
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When a website visitor hovers over the ‘Join our loyalty program’ call to action (CTA) in that top narrow strip, the hidden fourth part of the footer which is slightly translucent pulls up like a drawer and sits directly above the strip capping off the top of the main section (as shown in the below image). This section contains more information about the loyalty program and contains further CTAs to join or sign in. It disappears when the cursor is moved away from the hover CTA or it can be collapsed manually via the arrow in the top right hand corner of this fourth part. It’s an interesting and unexpected interaction to have with a footer, but it adds to the overall consistent and cohesive experience of this website because it feels like the footer is an active participant in that experience.
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Domino’s Pizza US
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Domino’s Pizza’s US website has a reasonably flat footer in terms of architecture but it occupies as much space as a more complex or deeper footer. As shown in the image below, its content links are presented horizontally over three rows on the left hand side of the footer and these links are visually separated by forward slashes. It also displays social media links and some advertising content on the right hand side. The most interesting feature of this footer is the large paragraph of text titled ‘Legal Stuff’ below the links. Delightfully it uses direct, clear and plain language and even includes a note about delivery charges not including tips and to ‘Please reward your driver for awesomeness’.
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How to test a website footer

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Like every other part of your website, the only way you’re going to know if your footer is supporting your website visitors is if you test it with them. When testing a website’s IA overall, the footer is often excluded. This might be because we want to focus on other areas first or maybe it’s because testing everything at once has the potential to be overwhelming for our research participants.
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Testing a footer is fairly easy thing to do and there’s no right or wrong approach – it really does depend on where you are up to in your project, the resources you have available to you and the size and complexity of the footer itself!
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If you’re designing a footer for a new website there’s a few ways you might approach ensuring your footer is best supporting your website visitors. If you’re planning to include a large and complex footer, it’s a good idea to start by running an open card sort just on those footer links. An open card sort will help you understand how your website visitors expect those content links in your footer to be grouped and what they think those groups should be called.
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If you’re redesigning an existing website, you might first run a tree test on the existing footer to benchmark test it and to pinpoint the exact issues. You might tree test just the footer in the study or you might test the whole website including the footer. Optimal's tree testing is really flexible and you can tree test just a small section of an IA or you can do the whole thing in one go to find out where people are getting lost in the structure. Your approach will depend on your project and what you already know so far. If you suspect there may be issues with the website’s footer, for example, if no one is visiting it and/or you’ve been receiving customer service requests from visitors to help them find content that only lives in the footer,  it would be a good idea to consider isolating it for testing. This will help you avoid any competition between the footer and the rest of your IA as well as any potential confusion that may arise from duplicated tree branches (i.e. when your footer contains duplicate labels).
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If you’re short on time and there aren’t any known issues with the footer prior to a redesign, you might tree test the entire IA in your benchmark study, iterate your design and then along with everything else, include testing activities for your footer in your moderated usability testing plan. You might include a usability testing scenario or question that requires your participants to complete a task that involves finding content that can only be found in the footer (e.g., shipping information if it’s an ecommerce website). Also keep a close eye on how your participants are moving around the page in general and see if/when the footer comes into play – is it helping people when they’re lost and scrolling? Or is it going unnoticed? If so, why and so on. Talk to your research participants like you would about any other aspect of your website to find out what’s going on there. When resources are tight, use your best judgement and choose the research approach that’s best for your situation, we’ve all had moments where we’ve had to be pragmatic and do our best with what we have.
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When you’re at a stage in your design process where you have a visual design or concept for your footer, you could also run a first-click test. First-click tests are quick and easy and will help you determine how your website visitors are faring once they reach your footer and if they can identify the correct content link to complete their task. Studies can be run remotely or in person and just like the rest of the tools in Optimal's user research platform, are super quick to run and great for reaching website visitors all over the world simply by sharing a link to the study.