Why it matters for a small business site
Watching real people try to book or buy on a prototype shows where they get stuck, while a change still costs minutes rather than a rebuild.
How to check yours
- Give someone a task (“find the price of a deep clean and book it”) and watch without helping.
- Note every hesitation, wrong click and question.
- Fix the biggest problem and test again.
What good looks like
It covers the main journeys from start to finish, looks close enough to the real thing that people react honestly, and gets tried by people who don’t know the project.
Common mistakes
- Testing only with colleagues who already know how it works.
- Polishing the look before checking people can finish the task.
- Explaining the screen to testers, which hides the problems.
- Treating the prototype as finished and skipping the tests.