EXPLORE TREE TESTING
Learn all about tree testing methodology. What, how, and why to use it to evaluate and improve user experience on your website, apps, and other digital products.
What is tree testing?
“Never let your users get lost.”
Tree testing is an UX research method that gives you insights how easy it is for users to find information on your website*. It shows you whether the structure of your website corresponds with what users would imagine it to be.
In treetesting you give testers descriptive tasks and they have to pick a destination in which they would look for the answer.
Why you should use Tree Testing?
Tree testing is a method that tells you how easily users can find information on your website (or application, or any other product where information architecture is present). If users get lost, it tells you exactly where that is. It is a popular method for testing the effectiveness and intuitiveness of information architecture. Let’s talk about the main benefits.
The test itself is very fast and takes only couple of minutes, depending on the number of tasks. The whole study can take less than one business day.
Sessions can be done remotely and asynchronously, what saves overhead costs. The online tools do offer free plans as well.
The time spent and data received ration is very much profitable. You get various datasets projected into graphs, charts and tables.
So you can find recruit your respondents anywhere online, you are not limited just to people living around you. And that adds a lot of relevancy.
Thanks to the remote aspect you can’t bias the testers and they work 100 % independently.
How it works
Learn how to do tree testing step by step
Tree testing method is very user-friendly. We will help you and guide you to set the first study in just a few steps.
Before you start, think about the objectives of testing and the KPIs. Then you can build a tree, create tasks and launch the study.
Share your tree testing study with the world. Just send testers a study link, recruit them through your own social media channels, or turn visitors directly from your site into testers through our recruiting widget. Time-consuming? You can order testers from a user panel.
How many testers found the correct answers? Results show whether the hierarchy and wording of your tree structure matches user expectations. See how testers move through your tree – including where they get stuck.
TREE TESTING FAQ
Most frequent questions and answers that we heard over time.
There are many user uxperience/usability research software solutions nowadays. Most of the features are the same, but there are some minor differences. You can check our tools reviews page and get more insights.
There is no single right time. You can incorporate tree testing anytime into your UX activities. It can helps when designing an information architecture, but also if you want to check whether it works fine or have some holes in it.
Another often asked question. They are definitely more of a complementary tools, not competitive. You get the best results if you use both in your UX cycle, but they should be used in a various stages of the cycle. That’s why tree testing is often called an inverted card sorting. You can read more about the similarities and differences in our How it works page.
In general we recommend to have at least 30 people finish your study, ideally 50, so that the results you get are relevant. You should definitely read more about what to focus on when recruiting in the Recruiting testers part.
Tree testing is very cost effective. Even the best online tools offer free plans for you, so you can conduct the study also with very tight budget. You can compare the pricing of the softwares anytime and choose the best one for you.
No. Even if you don’t know any coding, you can create and launch the test all by yourself.
Definitely. The results are served in well readable form for anyone. They are full of colourful graphs and charts, so that you can also get the point visually. You can also get a PDF reports, that you can read offline.
Definitely! That’s why you are here, right? You found the right place. No matter what industry are you in or what’s the size of your project, we are sure you want your site to be as user-friendly as possible and that is what tree testing can help you achieve. So? Learn more about Tree Testing Method.