Test, Test, Test…

The proposed solution aims to help users efficiently gain comprehensive information about local cultural events and plan their trips accordingly. The incorporated cultural event information would serve as a hook for users to visit the website. In addition, the website will provide premium services where users can subscribe to receive discounts on certain events and merchandise. Moreover, the geographical location has been set at Xiamen (厦门), not only to narrow the scope, but also because localization enables comprehensiveness and serves as a strength of the website. Further validation of critical assumptions of what will engage the users and encourage them to pay for premium membership has to be conducted as follows.

Efficiently gaining the needed information about local cultural events is the main functional requirement that needs to be validated. Additionally, it is of high importance to test whether users are willing to be a member of the website and subscribe to the premium service. Both usability test and AB test will be conducted to obtain feedback for the validation.

Usability test
Five tasks were designed to test the ease of use in gaining information about cultural events and joining the membership:
1. Find the details of an exhibition/lecture/workshop (randomly choose one category and ask the participant to find that category)
2. Find the related articles/reviews of a particular event
3. Find the information about souvenirs/merchandise of a particular event
4. Upload a review
5. Register and log in

Three post-test questions were also designed to obtain recommendations for improvement:
1. Please rate the overall process: 10 as very satisfied, and 1 as very dissatisfied.
2. Are you willing to subscribe to premium membership of this website?
3. How do you think the website can be improved?

A/B test
An A/B test was designed to test whether an advertising box showing the benefits of subscribing to the premium membership can trigger more registration, login, and subscription form submission.

The original version is without the advertising box, while the variant was added an advertising box with a CTA button on the homepage. By clicking the CTA button, users will be directed to the registration page.

You can find more information here.