Why Content Creators Should Test Their Designs
Creating content is one of the best ways to reach your audience and create the interactions that you want. But, to create good content you need to have an in-depth understanding of your viewers and users. Without a deep understanding of who the audience is and what content they are looking you might be publishing your designs to no one.
Understanding what the user knows, thinks, and feels about the design of your content goes a long way in helping content creators consistently produce great content. This is where testing your designs and asking users for their opinions on the design comes in.
The Importance of Testing Designs
Most of the time when you test a design you are conducting a user test, this means you are evaluating your design with real users, and with the results, you can create user-focused content. This method of evaluating designs and content allows a content creator to gain a better understanding of the user’s feelings and opinions on the design. It will help a content creator produce designs that the audience likes and interacts with the most.
When you test a design before you publish the content design you are addressing any problems immediately. You won’t have to spend time backtracking or changing things that you ‘think’ might be the problem. The test gives you real feedback on your designs that show you if it is perfect and ready to be published or if the design needs some work. Either way, the users will tell you what is good or bad.
Advantages of Testing Designs
Remove bias: When you, a content creator make a design for a new post or campaign you probably fall in love with it or at least like it enough to create it. But the users might not agree. A simple test of your design will give you the feedback you need to have confidence that you will get interactions and put the decision in the hands of your fans. You might think this is expensive and time-consuming, it’s not, but we will get into that later.
Increased Interactions: Testing the design of content gives you an understanding of how appealing and attractive the design is. The goal is to get people to like, comment, and share, right? So why not make sure people like the design before posting it. When you test a design and ensure that the people responding to the test like your design you are more likely to increase interactions when you do post.
Save Time: Especially when starting out or changing the design of your content you might have a lot of options. The traditional way is probably to choose a design at random and see if it works, then choose another if it doesn’t work. By testing the designs, you can quickly find the best one and save yourself a lot of time down the road.
How To Test Content Design
A lot of content creators think that user testing is expensive and time-consuming. While some platforms do still take a lot of time and are expensive, the concept is evolving and doesn’t have to take as long or cost as much as you might think.
The platform we are going to focus on is Poll the People, they are an emerging business that focuses on Pre-live A/B testing. This kind of testing can be applied to a lot of areas including concepts, content, and user experience. For content creators Poll the People has the ability to test images, headlines, and overall design.
The platform provides users with templates that make it easy to create the test in minutes. The overall process of creating and running a test takes about an hour, giving a content creator more time to focus on more important things. Poll the People also has a great user panel of thousands that not only choose the design they like the most but give you a detailed explanation on why they like that design.
Once the test is quickly created and run you will be directed to the platform’s easy-to-use results page. This is where you are able to digest the feedback and find the most actionable insights that help you create great designs moving forward. With charts, graphs, and written explanations you have all of the information to make a decision.
Traditionally, testing content design took days or weeks and would cost more than most people are willing to pay. Now, you can ask a hundred users for their opinions on designs for under $50 and in less than an hour. This makes Pre-live A/B testing much more practical for content creators.
Tips for Testing Content Design
Set a Goal For the Test: The test needs to have a clear goal, you need to know what you want to get out of it. Having a specific goal like “Understand what parts of this design are the most appealing” will help you sift through the feedback and find the most useful insights.
Only Test Two Options At A Time: When you run a test keep it to two options. Even though you might have a lot of designs only asking the users to choose between two will help get better feedback and give you the best answer. If you have more than two variations, run multiple tests to find the best possible design.
Ask the Right Questions: Like creating a goal for the test, you need to ask the right questions to get valuable insights. Questions like “Which design would you be more likely to share?” or “What design is most appealing?” will help you to achieve your goal.
Conclusion
As a content creator, you are constantly looking at reports on how your post, engagement, and strategies are working, so why not get a better understanding of what will work before posting. Understanding what your audience wants and the designs that will result in the most engagement through testing will help you to create amazing designs and content with feedback from users.
Now that you know the importance of testing content designs and have some tips on how to quickly and cost-effectively test your designs, you are on your way to success. If you are trying to get into the content creation game or just want to change your designs, testing will be a big help. Poll the People is a great place to get started, it is faster, less expensive than traditional platforms, and offers free signups.
