# Site testing: five users

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/site-testing-five-users/74469>\
**Category:** Community Building\
**Created:** [November 20, 2017, 11:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/site-testing-five-users/74469 "2017-11-20T23:28:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![outofthebox](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/outofthebox/32/83708_2.png) [@outofthebox](https://meta.discourse.org/u/outofthebox)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 11:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/site-testing-five-users/74469/1 "2017-11-20T23:28:37Z")

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Hi Friends, as you test the usability of your sites, here’s an interesting insight:

> **[Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-with-5-users/)**
>
> Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.

It makes the process feel far more manageable to me!

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**Author:** ![HAWK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/hawk/32/86627_2.png) [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2017, 11:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/site-testing-five-users/74469/2 "2017-11-20T23:42:30Z")

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I think the real key is to _keep on_ testing. All CMs should make this part of their monthly routine. Run your golden paths to make sure you haven’t introduced friction for users that you’re unaware of because you haven’t tried to sign up since you launched the site.

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**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 12:26am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/site-testing-five-users/74469/3 "2017-11-21T00:26:10Z")

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Yes I have covered this in multiple forms:

> **[Low-Fi Usability Testing](https://blog.codinghorror.com/low-fi-usability-testing/)**
>
> Pop quiz, hotshot. How do you know if your application works? Sure, maybe your app compiles. Maybe it passes all the unit tests. Maybe it ran the QA gauntlet successfully. Maybe it was successfully deployed to the production server, or packaged into...

> **[Usability On The Cheap and Easy](https://blog.codinghorror.com/usability-on-the-cheap-and-easy/)**
>
> Writing code? That’s the easy part. Getting your application in the hands of users, and creating applications that people actually want to use – now that’s the hard stuff.
> 
> I’ve been a long time fan of Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think. Not just...

Also, [complaint driven development](https://blog.codinghorror.com/complaint-driven-development/):

> You don’t need to find all the problems. In fact, you’ll never find all of the problems in anything you test. And it wouldn’t help if you did, because of this fact:
> 
> > **You can find more problems in half a day than you can fix in a month.**
> 
> You’ll always find more problems than you have the resources to fix, so it’s very important that you focus on fixing the most serious ones first. And three users are very likely to encounter many of the most significant problems related to the tasks that you’re testing.

The above statements by Steve Krug (whose [Don’t Make Me Think book](https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability-ebook/dp/B00HJUBRPG) I basically worship) are deeply, profoundly true. If you only ever learn one thing about usability, make it this fact.