Tree testing

By showing contributors a skeleton of labels and asking for feedback on the effectiveness of their wording and organization, you’re finding out how helpful your site structure is in offering the right information, in the right location.

With this template, easily see and hear your customers remotely as they perform a tree test so you can better speak their language and meet their needs. Its questions are designed to uncover how easily users can find content within your website or apps, and test different label names within your navigation to optimize engagement or conversions.

When it comes to tree testing, and most testing for that matter, the earlier the better. You can either do this step in the research phase or if following the Design Thinking Process, the prototype stage. The results you receive will spotlight any issues you need to address before launch or even highlight the best version of your site if you’re stuck on multiple options.

To prepare, gather an organized list or hierarchy of topics and categories that you want participants to use to answer questions.

Tree testing is a usability approach that works to evaluate the ease or difficulty of finding topics or categories on a website. Without the influence or distraction of design elements, tree tests feature the text-only version of your product.

The method provides feedback about site navigation and content labels—helping customers improve engagement, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction.