Quality Investigation in Website Design

During the process of website design there are several methods used to determine whether a given website fulfills its functions and expectations of the users. The most popular are: quality investigation, especially focused interviews and individual extended interviews, and functionality testing. They are carried out during various phases of website design.


Both interviews and functionality testing can be conducted even before creating a prototype. The main focus of the investigation at that point are websites of the competitors (that is why it is called the analysis of the competitors’ functionalities) and it enables us to avoid common mistakes during the development of our own website.

Quality investigation is used to determine opinions, views, motives and feelings of the future website users. It allows the designers to establish and explain reasons for the users’ behaviour, which are not immediately obvious. Such research makes it easier to generate ideas for the website development.

Quality investigation helps to create an efficient website by:

• Supplying information and evaluation of the competitors’ websites.
• Explaining the way the end user communicates.
• Giving preliminary project evaluation.
• Diagnosing potential problems.

When developing online shopping system, quality investigation may also help to clarify factors influencing the customers’ decisions whether to go ahead with a purchase.

Quality investigation is carried out when:

• A completely new website is introduced (it helps to identify the ideas about the website appearance and functionality).
• A new website is introduced which has similar equivalents already functioning on the Web (the investigation helps to find out about the competitors’ evaluation and the users’ emotions as well as it helps to identify their needs connected with the created website).
• Changes are introduces in an already existing website - redesign (investigation helps to identify opinions and attitudes to the proposed changes).
• Designers want to learn about the end users’ opinions about the website’s content and appearance. During the investigation a technique called card sorting may be used. It allows us to check if the project matches the users expectations about the structure of the site as well as if the language used for the navigation is understandable for the users.

The following techniques are part of quality investigation:

• Focus group interview - used to find out about the customers’ attitudes to a new product or service. A group of several people (6 to 10) discusses a given project for a few hours. The arguments presented during such a discussion are often used when changes are introduced to the project (matching the project with emotions and opinions of the users).
• Individual extended interviews - that is a discussion involving two people about a given subject. One of them is a moderator who ensures that the conversation follows a correct path and who asks appropriate questions. The questions are usually open ended and many support questions are asked.

Quality investigation constitutes a valuable source of information regardless whether it is carried out at the beginning (when individual stages of the project are investigated) or during the final phase (when a working prototype of the website has already been developed).