Why you should test other people’s sites before your own

Budget is often restrained for designers and researchers, whether in time, money, or both. So, why would it ever make sense to test someone else’s website? Especially where you don’t have any ownership or influence to change the designs based on your research or testing.

While it may not be the best case for every situation, there are times when it makes perfect sense; maybe you have a fresh idea you're unsure of, or perhaps you need to showcase the value of research, and the client isn’t budging.

You know why user testing is important; read on to discover when it makes sense to test websites other than your own.

Testing with an initial idea

Let’s say you have an idea for a new product, website, or service, but you’re unsure whether it will work or if there is a market for it.

You can either go ahead and design and build a prototype of your own which, depending on the fidelity needed to convey your idea, can be costly in terms of money and time, or another option is to find competitors as similar as possible to your idea. Then, as part of your strategy, use those websites or products to converse with users to understand the market.

At the same time, you can explore gaps in the market and any usability dos and don’ts to strengthen your idea.

This is competitor analysis with user research and should be done before and after launching the product. But as the market becomes more saturated with products and apps, it makes sense to look into why such an idea has not been done before, before investing your time and efforts.

Reassuring yourself there's a purpose for your idea could help motivate you and the people around you if you need their investment.

Testing another site as a new UX designer

This may work in the second scenario for those new to user experience testing or research. As someone new to their UX role, testing someone else’s website can provide useful experience in interviewing users in this context. Interviewing is difficult and expensive, even emotionally, so the more you practice, the more second nature it is to know what to say to build trust in your research.

Use this opportunity to hone your research skills. Often in testing, it is easy to feel guilty when a website or product is bad because you’re putting someone through the pain of using it. Utilize other sites to learn how to dig deep into issues and separate yourself from the product.

Suppose you’re also new to stakeholder management or have stakeholders apprehensive about testing their products or services with users. In that case, showing them insights into other websites is a useful way to showcase the worth of testing without them feeling like their work is being insulted. This is particularly useful if you’re a team of one and are struggling to showcase the value of this type of research.

Testing another site as a seasoned UX designer

Now, even as a seasoned designer, why should you be looking to test other websites, products, or services before your own? It has been said that one of the biggest milestones of becoming a senior is learning the ability not to be so hung up and defensive over work. While this is great advice and a good characteristic, being defensive is sometimes an unconscious psychological mechanism. As designers, we pour our hearts and souls over the details. We spend hours, weeks, months, and years researching, designing, exploring, re-researching, redesigning, and re-exploring, which means critique can get to even the best of us.

So, where does someone else’s website come into this? Every website has its issues, and we can use this to our advantage. Hearing all the issues of someone else’s work can ease our imposter syndrome and help us prepare for hearing issues in our own work.

This can be a great ice breaker and introduction to how people use the product or service. From this, you can start to predict the usability issues your website faces, and the issues won’t be such a surprise when you test your website.

Testing another site as a client

Let’s start by breaking it down by your role or circumstance. As a client or owner of a product or service, why would you spend the money, time, and effort on testing someone else’s website? What value would that bring to you or your users? As a client, testing someone else’s website can add value in showing you, at times, more realistic user behavior.

Your business is not the only one out there on the market. You know this, and so do your users. People have a lot of the information they need about their options right at their fingertips. It’s unrealistic to think users sit at home undistracted, exploring just your website and seeing your business as their only option. People go to your site. They open up competitor websites. They flick between tabs. Compare prices, product or service benefits. They make a brew, have a biscuit, and come back.

While most usability testing can’t naturally emulate this, what you can bring into the session is the task of asking users to show you what they would do when looking into you and competitors. The question is not if but when you test other people’s sites. Whether your business is new or mature, it sometimes makes sense to test competitors with users so that you can see the gaps in competitors that your business can fill in.

Types of other websites to test

Of course, if you test anyone else’s website, choose a direct and worthwhile competitor. Otherwise, there is little purpose in doing the research. Even though it may not be your website, there should still be a strategy. Interviewing users with any old website doesn’t make any sense. Otherwise, you’re left with research on some website that will have zero impact on your product or service.

If you test with direct competitors, you’re practically testing with your possible users, who can offer insights into what people expect of you. Test with competitors, or one as close as possible, to see if your website or product has the same problems.

Don’t forget to highlight the positive quotes from the uses of competitors to help you highlight any gaps your product may have or ideas that you have not considered before.

What not to do when testing other websites

Bear in mind that all testing comes at a cost—strategizing, planning, and writing scenarios and questions for the interviews and recruitment, lost efforts because of no-shows, and participant incentives are all costs to you in terms of time, energy, and, yes, money.

The good news is that usability testing can be done in relatively cheap and expensive ways. If it’s a choice between testing your website or someone else’s, ensure the strategy makes sense and, where possible, prioritize your own work, as that will be the most beneficial. If you consider testing other websites, try and do so at a cheaper cost, like shorter sessions or methods like guerrilla testing.

When to not test websites other than your own

I know what you’re thinking. “This is great, but I’ve only just been given a budget to test my own website, never mind someone else’s!” When it comes to usability testing, sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do it. The earlier the testing, the easier it is to listen to criticism and make the necessary changes. That’s not to say that users will tear into what they see, but the later you leave asking for feedback, the more usability issues are not dealt with, and the larger your issues will become.

Arguably, there is no reason why you can’t test other websites simultaneously as yours in sessions, depending on budget or the size of the product or service that needs to be tested. For example, why not add a scenario asking users to compare one or two competitors before introducing your product or service? Use this to ask them if they would have chosen yours and why or why not.

Conclusion

As with all research, for it to be done well, there has to be a solid strategy underpinning the research so that you trust it yourself, and stakeholders can’t use any slight mishap or excuse as a reason not to buy into the research.

Even if you are testing other websites, make sure there is a purpose behind it, whether that is because you want to showcase the value of research to a stubborn client or you want to sanity-check an idea.