Usability testing and analytics make for a dynamite team, enabling us to learn about our users, track our goals, and troubleshoot unexpected problems. When it comes to troubleshooting, analytics tell us what pages or journeys are causing problems for users, and helps identify what areas we should focus on in usability testing. The usability tests will then tell us why users are behaving in those specific ways. Between the two, we can provide focused, user-specific recommendations for site owners.
In the case of Sophia (and many other UX practitioners like her) analytics show exactly how users are accessing the website. Though her background in UX, and her client’s customer know-how might have resulted in good assumptions about what to test, analytics showed them how people were using the website in a clear, unbiased way.
