Usability Testing of RMA’s Website What We’ve Learned So Far Janet Stevens RMA Website Project Manager

What Is Usability? The measure of the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a product or system, such as a web site, a software application, mobile technology, or any user- operated device.

Why Usability Testing? Research by User Interface Engineering, Inc., shows that people cannot find the information they seek on Web sites about 60% of the time. Industry expert Jakob Nielsen measured traffic at 42 major sites where usability had been emphasized at the design stage and found that they performed 135 percent better on average. Industry content expert Gerry McGovern stated that 90% of users went to only 1% of the Microsoft site

Why Now? Site statistics showed that the rapid annual growth following our first website redesign in October 1999 had slowed, from a rate of 46% for hits and 43% for visitors from to 16% for hits and 15% for visitors from Although staying at near-record levels of 3.4 million hits and nearly 80,000 visitors per month, site usage had slowed. We decided to transition the site to a portal to accommodate our diverse audiences. To transition to a portal in the next months under the eGov initiative, we would need audience analysis and usability/accessibility testing.

Why Contract Out? Complying with Section 508 accessibility requirements for the web site would use up existing web team resources No resources to help developers ensure Section 508 compliance of existing online applications No team experience with/education on web usability testing No current data available on our audiences; only anecdotal or feedback-related info

Our Goals Learn about our 3 major audiences: –Producers, especially limited-resource, minority, and specialty crop –Commodity insurance agents who sell to and manage policies/claims for producers –RMA and FSA employees, especially in the field offices, who producers rely on extensively for program information and education

Our Goals Have an independent review of the accessibility/usability of our online applications Have the user interface of our top two online applications completely redesigned Get usability/accessibility training and documentation for the web team and developers

What We Learned About Our Core Audiences Producers: –Do not regularly go to Web sites to get information; however, some want to conduct business with the government online in the future –Who use the Internet tend to be younger, more technology savvy, more highly educated, and operators of larger farms –In many operations task a spouse or child to gather relevant ag information and news for the enterprise –Look for specific information: a quotation, a premium estimate, or a county production average

What We Learned About Our Core Audiences Producers: –Connect at lower bandwidths, do not scroll, and are very impatient with slow downloads on modems –Want to see lessons learned and best practices –Are very interested in seeing what other producers are doing, whether in commodity insurance, planting techniques, or farm management case studies –Like finding hints, tips, and suggestions for improving their practice –Want to use the Internet in the future for online trainings, rather than attending local events

What We Learned About Our Core Audiences Commodity Insurance Agents: –Connect frequently at higher bandwidths –Tend to have our site as their home page –Are familiar with agency/insurance terms, but there were some terms used that even they did not know –Monitor our site for the latest agency news –Use our daily ag weather information, but rely on producers and local contacts for local weather news

What We Learned About Our Core Audiences Commodity Insurance Agents –Visit Tools and Calculators extensively and most used either the Summary of Business or the Premium Calculator every week or several times a week –Tended to use the proprietary version provided by the insurance company, not the RMA online version

What We Learned About Our Core Audiences RMA/FSA Employees –Use the information on our intranet unless they can only find it on the public site –Look at information on a larger scale, such as yearly trends, overall participation rates, or acres enrolled –Have direct contact with producers and are often help them use the site –Need to find a specific answer to a query in a short period of time. They feel confident that the answer is “somewhere” in a known area of the site, but they can’t always find it quickly and have learned who to ask in the office who can point them in the right direction

Putting It All Together We need to make our applications and front door more usable for our audiences by: –Improving the terms and organization of our nav bar –Segregate information based on audience type; often their needs are too diverse –Improve our online glossary –Add producer case studies to teach others about best practices