A Powerful Tool for Testing a Site Structure

Tree testing is a usability technique for evaluating the findability, labeling and organization of a website’s structure. This technique closely matches the navigational experience a visitor would have on your site.

A large website is typically organized into a hierarchy (a “tree”) of topics and subtopics. Tree testing provides a way to measure how well users can find items in this hierarchy.

Unlike traditional usability testing, tree testing is not done on the website itself. Instead, a simplified text version of the site structure is used. This ensures that the structure is evaluated in isolation, nullifying the effects of navigational aids, visual design, and other factors.

A typical tree test works like this:

  1. Participants are given a “find it” task (e.g., “Look for brown belts under $25″).
  2. They are shown a text list of the top-level topics of the website.
  3. They choose a heading, and are then shown a list of subtopics.
  4. They continue choosing (moving down through the tree) — drilling down, backtracking if necessary – until they find a topic that satisfies the task (or until they give up).
  5. Participants do several tasks in this manner, starting each task back at the top of the tree.
  6. Once several participants have completed the test, the results are analyzed for each task.

Want to Learn More?

Learn more about Tree Testing in these articles: