Step 1: Define your goals
Before you start planning your audit, you need to decide what your goal is. Who and what are you testing? You need to know who your users are, what their needs and expectations of your text are. If your product is used by people from different demographic groups, it should be tested with users from each group. If your test doesn’t sufficiently reflect your demographics, you run the risk of creating text that doesn’t make sense to all of your characters.
Step 2. Choose an audit method and create a test
Once you’ve decided who and why, you can choose the most appropriate text audit method. For example:
- You want to test whether your users can understand how to shop on your site. In this case, method #1: Usability testing will work. It will allow you to see if they can successfully complete tasks.
- You want to see if the home page is relevant to your target audience. A highlight test will assess how they feel about it.
- You want to see how users perceive the home page at a glance. You should use a five-second test to measure first impressions.
Tip: In the test, don’t ask users if they like the text. Ask if they can navigate easily, if they understand a paragraph, or if they feel comfortable with the tone. Remember that you’re not writing a fiction novel here. In context, it doesn’t matter if the reader likes your text. What matters is how relevant and understandable it is.
Step 3. Test the test
After you’ve created your initial test, see if it makes sense. Before you start finding test participants, take a few colleagues or acquaintances and run the test with them first.
A common mistake is to make a test and then run it immediately for users. As a result, you may discover problems in the test while it is running. Testing the test will make sure that the instructions make sense and that test participants can properly understand what is required of them. This allows them to focus on your text rather than trying to decipher it.
Step 4. Gather the test participants
Once your test is created, it’s time to find test users. If you’re running quality tests, you need to find at least 5 participants. That’s enough to justify your content decisions. If you want to collect quantitative data, it’s best to run a test with at least 20 people, or even more if possible.
Ultimately, the number of people you need to recruit depends on the audit method you are conducting and the criticality of the task.
Great care should be taken to find the right users for the actual test. The people you work with may not use your product. You will end up with a positive feedback because they already know your project and that data is unreliable.
Step 5. Run the test
Now you need to decide whether to moderate the test or not. Each method has its own advantages.
- Moderated test.
You will have more control during the test. Having a moderator will provide additional feedback on the results of the study.
Moderating these studies will allow you to ask additional questions specific to the user. You will be able to understand their doubts when they arise as well as reassure participants during the test.
If you moderate the test, allow plenty of time for participants to read the content. Unlike traditional usability testing, where users complete tasks and express their thoughts out loud, text testing may require more time.
- Unmoderated test With unmoderated testing, you don’t need to find someone to moderate the test. This type of testing is usually done remotely. It allows you to run more tests at a faster rate, even simultaneously, which gives you more quantitative data to audit. Moreover, it allows you to find users from different parts of the world, this allows you to understand how people from different countries react to your text.
Step 6. Analyze Results
Once the testing is complete, you can analyze the results. You’ll get a general idea of how your text is performing, as well as features you need to improve – whether it’s readability, voice, or any other important factor.
Conclusion
A text audit is not a one-time event. As your site and user base grows and develops, you need to keep testing to see if your text is working and interacting with it.