5 Quick Tests to Run on Your Library Website

Easy ways of improving your library website without user research

Posted on February 10, 2025 in Blog Posts

How well is your library website working for your users? Even if you don’t have time right now to conduct user research (like user interviews or a usability study), you can still run five tests to ascertain the health and user-friendliness of your website.

#1. Is it accessible?

In other words, does your website work for users who utilize assistive technology, like screen readers for blind/low-vision users? Here’s one way to check: plug your URL into the WAVE tool, which is an automated accessibility checker. It checks websites for basic accessibility features, ensuring access for users with disabilities and/or assistive technology. Pay attention to the Errors and Contrast Errors, as those are the flags that you will definitely have to fix.

Examples of errors:

• Images missing alt text (you can add this in your content management system)
• Contrast error (for example, light gray text on a white background is hard to read)

I love the WAVE tool and use it daily, but I’ll be the first to note that automated accessibility checkers can only catch ~30% of possible accessibility errors. It can’t detect whether the page’s title accurately reflects the content, for instance. Still, it’s a great place to start.

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#2. How does it look on Google?

A colleague recently pointed out that when she searched for “hunt library hours,” Google was sending her to a library hours page for the year 2503. No, it wasn’t a user error—and it turned out that Google was sending users to hours pages for all sorts of years, from 1506 to 2542. We surmised that the search engine was trying to do something “smart” by predicting the salient part of the URL, but our users were the ones suffering the consequences.

We diagnosed the problem by simply searching for our library’s name (and variants of it) plus “hours” in Google, both with logged-in accounts and in incognito/privacy mode. Google personalizes search results using mysterious methods, so we each saw different results, including the wacky hours pages.

Try this with your own team (whether or not Google is attempting to transport your users into the distant future). As you examine the search results page, consider:

• What is the page description that appears below your library website’s title?
• Which sub-links are listed, if any? (These are the five or so extra search results below a primary search result. These might be Hours, Locations, etc.)
• Are the hours that Google reports for your library accurate?
• Are there any undesirable pages of your website listed in the top 10 results?

Some of this you might have control over. For example, you can sign up for a Google My Business account and “claim” your library location to edit the hours. But you don’t have a lot of control over which sub-links might be listed. Still, it’s good to see what your users are encountering.

#3. How does it look on a phone browser?

About 60% of general web traffic comes through phones these days. At your institution, you’re probably only using a desktop computer to do your work. But when was the last time you looked at your library’s website on a phone?

Here’s what to look for:

• Is the page sized correctly? Is it too wide to fit in the mobile browser’s window?
• Can you tap all the buttons and links? Make sure they’re not too close together or overlapping.
• How easy is it to do typical tasks, like finding a book or logging in?
• Do web forms work well? For example, if users log in with their library card number, does the number pad show up (ideal) or is it a regular keyboard?

#4. Do all the links work?

Library websites are not immune to entropy. All links will break at some point. But before I get us too bogged down in the futility of it all, let me suggest that you combat disorder by regularly scanning your website for broken links.

The W3C Link Checker is a fabulous tool. Paste in a URL, wait patiently for a few minutes, and then look at the results to see how many 404s and other errors your website generates.

There’s an option to “Check linked documents recursively.” If you want to check a good chunk of your library website for broken links, try setting the recursion depth to two or more.

#5. Is it down for everyone, or just me?

Sometimes, it appears as though your library website is offline. Don’t panic yet! It might just be your home or workplace network.

Enter the aptly named DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com. Paste in a URL for a quick check to see if someone outside of your network can access your library’s website.

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