One Of The Biggest Problems That Websites Have Is The Interference Of Data Categories And Tags When Designing Websites. 

For this purpose, website designers, especially user experience designers, use a technique called Tree Testing and Card Sorting.

The tree test is one of the most widely used tests in user experience design to evaluate the findability of information and topics in creating site structure and site menus.

This test and the card test allow you to design an attractive site that suits users’ needs. In this article, we are going to review these concepts.

What is the tree test?

To clarify the discussion, let us mention an example. Suppose you have an online business based on a store site. A store that sells electronic equipment of different brands online. Now we come to the following essential questions:

•  How are other product groups placed together in the site menu?
•  Based on what hierarchy and terms and labels should be used to classify the categories?
•  Is it better to organize products based on their brand or the product type and specific features of each product?
•  Is it better to include the known name of the products such as network, laptop, computer, etc. in the site’s menu, or two general categories of household and commercial products?
•  How many subsections should each category be divided?

These are important and key questions that, if answered accurately, will allow you to design a user-friendly website that plays a role in the best user experience.

More precisely, as long as the user is confused or the categories are too many and vague so that the user has to navigate between different types, the site will not achieve much success. A solution called Tree Test was invented To solve this problem. Tree testing is a quick, easy, and cheap way to evaluate site structure in the early research and design stages.

The results obtained from the above test will help you understand how long it takes users to reach their desired content. To be more precise, the tree examinations A “usability test” enables you to evaluate the architecture of the content on a website. The tree test will show how easy it will be for the user to find the topics or which part of the website confuses the user. Some sources call the above method reverse cart sorting.

 Users will generally only find the topics they want on a website when it is designed based on good information architecture, accurate categories, and well-ordered content.

In general, tree testing is a user experience research method suggested to evaluate the ability to find content in a website or program and assess the site’s structure.

And in a tree test, users are given a plain text version of the site’s information architecture in the form of a hierarchical classification structure called a tree. They are then asked to complete a set of tasks with that information. Their ability to complete tasks determines how efficient a website’s content classification is.

What is card sorting?

Before we examine tree testing, we must address another important concept related to tree testing and user experience. This important concept is called “card sorting,” a user experience research method in which participants group ideas or information into categories based on what makes absolute sense to them. Different types of card sorting can be used in person with paper cards or virtually through a digital card sorting tool.

The card sorting technique aims to understand what the website audience is thinking and whether they correctly understand the information they are receiving.

Using the obtained results, user experience researchers can make informed decisions about the level of website interactivity, content grouping, and labeling decisions. Card sorting is an excellent exercise for understanding users’ mental models and a helpful way to validate the information with real people.

What are the differences between tree testing and card sorting?

The critical difference between tree testing and card sorting is that tree testing is suited for a specific purpose. In contrast, card sorting is based on generating ideas and evaluating user mental models, concepts, or information architecture. The strength of tree testing is its focus on site hierarchy evaluation. While card sorting refers to content classification with tree testing, each technique looks at this issue from different angles and is used in various stages of website design.

Tree testing and card sorting are special in user experience research, but knowing the right time to use each of the above methods is very important. However, when using card sorting and tree testing techniques.

For example, when conducting thorough user research, gather ideas about how to structure the Information Architecture through Open Card Sorting, then confirm the validity of the proposed information architecture through tree testing or Closed Card Sorting.

Like packed card sorting, tree testing can be used to evaluate information architecture; Therefore, these two techniques are used in parallel. Also, open card sorting is used to generate ideas, and tree testing is used to test the hypotheses.

Why is tree testing essential in website design and user experience?

Tree testing plays a vital role in increasing the audience of websites and is very similar to the card sorting technique. In the open card sorting method, you can only have one level of sorting; in tree testing, you have multiple levels of navigation. Tree testing is useful for testing ideas before committing too many resources to operationalize designs. It is an effective way to validate and gain detailed insights from users who have tried the website.

The main reason for using a test tree is to test how information architecture works. You can identify user experience issues during the test tree, collect data for future benchmark tests, and discover where the design is weak.

 The following are the key benefits of tree testing :

•  Test the usability of the website navigation.
•  Evaluate the effectiveness of website navigation.
•  Evaluate the tagging done on the website or web-based application.
•  Learn more about user mental models.
•  Validate ideas before putting them into action.
•  Prioritize the issues carefully.

How is the tree test done?

If you are a website developer, we suggest you do the tree testing technique to implement a detailed plan. The steps to do this are as follows:

Step 1: Prepare a research plan and include questions in it

The first step in implementing the test tree is to create a research plan by the needs of the website administrator regarding the research objectives. Ensure all site design team members are up to date on the test and understand what the test means. Also, it is essential to define the research questions and send the timeline to the development team.

For example, if the test results show that the design you have prepared is not the way to go, you should allocate enough time to make appropriate changes and redesign the test. After preparing the plan, the site structure evaluation process begins. To do this, you need to define tasks for team members and define key metrics that you will record to analyze the data collected.

During the tree test session, only the text version of the site is provided to the participants, who are asked to perform tasks to find specific items on the site. These sessions usually last between 15 and 20 minutes; in each session, the participants complete about 15 jobs.

Step 2: Define the tree structure

Delineation of the tree structure based on categories, subcategories, and pages in the website or web-based application should be done. The vital principle is that subcategories are correctly specified to reflect actual user behavior. If you want to test a specific area of ​​the website, make sure your target audience has a good understanding of that area. With the above approaches, you get practical information that will significantly help you review the results.

Step 3: Provide a set of goal-based tasks

Prepare tasks for participants to find the text they want in the tree based on a top-down pattern. The above approach is just like usability testing. The vital principle is to write tasks correctly. For example, if you want to test your product’s landing page discoverability, you can set up a study to see what pattern participants use to land on the landing page.

Step 4: Encourage participants to perform tasks

When preparing the test tree, you need to consider the participants and the number of people. The number of participants depends on various factors, such as the type of experiment you are conducting, your product’s target group, and the project’s goal. Melanie Bassett, Shopify’s chief user experience researcher, recommends at least 50 users test the tree.

Use to identify user behavior patterns and patterns that are clear or ambiguous. The key to selecting the right participants is to take the time to understand your target audience and determine who will be most impacted if you make changes to your design. Mario Ted, FedEx Express’s senior website user experience researcher, says:

“Let’s say you’re designing a website that different professionals will use. “If you’re going to build a website that meets all their needs, you need to test the tree with participants with these specialties.”

Step 5: Specify the tree test method

Tree testing can be performed in person or remotely using online tools such as Maze. The advantage of face-to-face testing is that you can ask participants why they made confident choices. Remote testing is also beneficial due to its ease of use and speed; Testers only need a web browser to perform tasks.

In the sixth stage, the trial run.

At this stage, a trial test should be performed before the official tree test session to determine if the final examination will be as expected. You should conduct a pilot test with a limited number of team members. Once you’ve set up the real tree test, ask someone to perform the tasks like an actual participant to ensure things are going well.

Step 7: Run the tree test

Give the tree test to the participants based on your prepared survey questions. Questions can be set in textual, graphical, or demographic form so that users can answer them accurately. Once participants have completed the test, you can begin analyzing the results and making design decisions. If you want to test different versions of the same tree, use split testing and compare the results of the new tree with the old version.

Step 8: Understanding the results of the tree test

After the participants have completed the test tree and the results have been recorded, you can analyze the results. Typically, the metrics you can use to analyze a test tree are success rate, directness, the average time to complete a task, and the path users take.

Why is the test tree proper?

By doing this test, you will find out how well the website’s structure helps users find the topics. If participants constantly struggle to find issues, your website structure has a severe problem.

Also, with this test, you can check the paths the user takes to reach his goals. With this description, we have to say if the user fails to find the topic he is looking for on the website and gets confused, he will quickly leave the website.

When should we do the above test?

In general, you should consider using this test whenever you plan to prepare the information structure that is going to be implemented on the website, and you are looking to evaluate the categories that you have specified.