Releasing without Testing on Users

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As a website or Web application is developed, important design decisions and assumptions are made that affect its usability and usefulness . No matter how good the designers are, these design decisions should be validated through usability testing, long before the site is released. By the time a site is ready for release, many design decisions are deeply entrenched, either in the site architecture or in developers' egos, and can be revisited and changed only at great expense. Usability tests should be done when the design and architecture are incomplete and therefore still malleable. A website or application that is released without having first been usability tested is at high risk of having no appreciable audience.

Another point some development managers miss is that conducting a usability test should be accompanied by a commitment to spend time and effort fixing usability problems uncovered by the test. Amazingly, some development organizations conduct usability tests but don't allocate time or resources to do anything about the test findings before releasing their sites.

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