Navigation and information architecture (IA) are the backbone of how users experience your digital product. Together, they determine whether someone can smoothly interact with your site – or gets lost in a tangle of menus and unclear paths. When conducting UX testing, focusing on these two elements is critical for ensuring your users can find what they need and fulfill tasks without friction.

Navigation testing explores how well users move through a site or app. Are they clicking where you expect? Can they complete tasks easily? Are they backing out in frustration? Meanwhile, information architecture delves into how your content is grouped, named, and structured. Poor IA leads to poor usability – even if the visuals look polished.

With platforms like UserTesting, you can record real users attempting to navigate your site, which helps identify usability gaps in areas like:

• Category clarity – Are your content buckets intuitive? Are users misinterpreting labels?
• Menu usability – Are your hover/fly-out menus easy to use on desktop and mobile?
• Findability – Can users locate products, features, or key information quickly?

Testing these elements helps you keep your digital experience aligned with users’ mental models – the way they expect information to be organized. When IA and navigation work well, users feel confident and in control. When there are breakdowns, it’s often because labels don’t match expectations, menu hierarchies are too deep, or content is buried under ambiguous headings.

Even small IA mistakes can cause big problems. For example, a shopping site might list 'Headphones' under 'Accessories', but users expect it under 'Audio'. Mislabeling can cause users to bounce – not because your product isn’t good, but because they couldn’t find it.

That’s why clear navigation testing using tools like UserTesting, combined with thoughtful information architecture, is so important. It ensures that your UX doesn’t just look good – it works well and meets real user expectations.

Ultimately, UX testing succeeds when it helps you understand not just what users are doing, but why. That’s where experienced researchers, like SIVO’s On Demand Talent professionals, can provide crucial guidance – ensuring your IA strategy is tested in ways that connect user behavior to your business goals.

DIY research tools like UserTesting are powerful, especially for teams looking to act quickly and run website testing in-house. But while the technology makes testing easier, interpreting results correctly – and designing tests that surface the right insights – can be more challenging than it seems.

Many teams new to UX testing unknowingly make small mistakes that lead to weak or even misleading results. Here are some of the most common issues users face when conducting navigation and IA research using UserTesting or similar platforms:

1. Vague or Misleading Task Instructions

One of the most common pitfalls is asking users to perform tasks in ways that unintentionally lead them toward the correct answer. For example, asking users to “Find a laptop under $500” may result in feedback on product filtering, but doesn’t tell you whether your menu labels or categories are intuitive. If tasks are too leading, you miss the chance to learn how users naturally browse your navigation.

2. Ignoring Underlying IA Issues

High abandonment rates or user confusion in a test aren’t always UX design problems – often, they stem from poorly structured information architecture. When teams lack IA expertise, it’s easy to misinterpret the data and focus on superficial fixes like changing button colors, rather than step back and re-evaluate menu logic, category structure, or content grouping.

3. Skipping Label Clarity Checks

Many UX testing projects overlook whether users actually understand and interpret labels as intended. Without testing for category clarity directly – for instance through card sorting or tree testing – teams often make assumptions about language that don’t match the user’s mental model.

4. Inconsistent User Panels

Another issue with DIY platforms is inconsistent user demographics. If the panel doesn’t represent your actual users – for example, testing B2B navigation with general consumers – results can lack relevance and steer decisions in the wrong direction.

5. Analysis Without Expertise

Lastly, even when you gather rich data, it’s not always clear how to turn that data into action. DIY testing platforms don’t offer personalized context or strategic interpretation. That’s where On Demand Talent comes in. Research professionals with deep UX and IA expertise can help you:

• Design better tests that target true IA and navigation pain points
• Ensure consistent, relevant panel makeup
• Identify not just what isn’t working – but why
• Translate findings into actionable site improvements

By bringing in flexible, specialized help, you gain the benefit of rapid DIY testing – without compromising research quality. It’s faster and more cost-effective than hiring full-time, and unlike freelancers, the insights professionals in our On Demand Talent network are deeply familiar with business-focused research outcomes.

In short, platforms like UserTesting are only as effective as how well you use them. With the right mix of smart tools and experienced guidance, UX testing can drive real improvements in your site’s usability, organization, and ultimately, performance.

One of the most overlooked – yet crucial – aspects of navigating a digital experience is how intuitive your labels, menus, and categories are. When testing website navigation in a tool like UserTesting, it’s common to miss the root cause of user confusion: unclear terms and disorganized menu structures that don’t match mental models. Poor category clarity directly affects findability, leading users to bounce or feel lost.

Start With Tree Testing and Card Sorting

Before diving into usability tests, it's helpful to run a card sorting study. This helps expose how your users naturally group information and what terminology they use. Follow it up with tree testing to see if users can actually find content using your proposed structure – without the visual design of your interface getting in the way.

Watch for These Evaluation Red Flags

When analyzing results in DIY tools like UserTesting, watch out for these signals:

• Users pausing or hesitating before clicking a menu item
• Frequent use of search when navigation should suffice
• Repeating the same path multiple times without success
• Feedback like “I wasn’t sure what ‘Solutions’ meant”

These signs suggest your information architecture (IA) might not align with user expectations – a common problem in UX testing when labels are developed internally without user feedback.

Let Users Explain Their Thinking

To go beyond surface clicks, prompt users to explain their thinking aloud. Questions like “What did you expect to find under this label?” or “Why did you click there?” provide insight into navigation testing decisions, so you can tweak terms or reorganize categories accordingly. Even seemingly simple label changes can have a big effect on menu usability.

Don’t Skip Category Validation

Once you’ve made changes, re-test. Often, DIY website testing efforts stop after the first run, and companies implement what feels right without validating again. A second round of testing helps catch lingering findability issues and ensures your updates improve the user experience in measurable ways.

Improving structure and terminology based on actual user input is vital to solving information architecture challenges in UX. But understanding what to test – and what to fix – requires planning and experience, which leads into the next challenge: knowing when to bring in help.

Even the most intuitive online testing platforms like UserTesting have a learning curve. While DIY tools have opened the door to rapid research, getting truly accurate, actionable insights often requires more than the platform alone can provide. That’s where On Demand Talent makes a meaningful difference.

Why Product Teams Sometimes Hit a Wall

Running a navigation or information architecture test may seem simple on the surface. But once the videos roll in, many teams find themselves unsure how to:

• Ask the right questions to uncover root causes
• Dive into session recordings and identify patterns
• Translate user feedback into clear next steps
• Spot deeper IA issues hidden in surface-level confusion

Without enough UX research background, it’s easy to misread signals or draw the wrong conclusions – especially when testing more complex experiences.

How On Demand Talent Helps Build Research Confidence

On Demand Talent from SIVO gives you access to seasoned insights professionals who know how to get to the “why” behind user testing problems. They can step in to:

Plan your testing: Clarify research objectives and design tests that deliver usable findings.

Analyze results: Look beyond surface clicks to uncover real information architecture problems or lapses in menu usability.

Coach your team: Help your internal staff better understand how to use DIY research tools like UserTesting effectively – building long-term capability.

Whether you need short-term support or an embedded partner to scale your insights function, On Demand Talent offers flexible options without the long hiring cycles of full-time staffing – no weeks of sourcing or onboarding required. Our experts are ready to hit the ground running.

Unlike traditional freelance platforms or consultants, our professionals are vetted for deep expertise and real-world experience in UX testing, category clarity analysis, and more. That ensures quality and consistency without compromising speed or flexibility.

If you're unsure whether you're getting enough out of your DIY research efforts, On Demand Talent can bring clarity – and confidence – to your testing programs.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, many companies face a common research dilemma: how to deliver quality insights on tighter timelines and budgets, without trading off accuracy. Tools like UserTesting help teams move fast, but scaling your insights output without sacrificing depth often requires expert support and smarter workflows.

Speed vs. Accuracy Doesn’t Have to Be a Trade-Off

It’s a myth that “fast” means “shallow.” With the right research plan and talent in place, you can deliver insights that move with the business – while still being rich and reliable.

Consider a fictional example: A mid-sized e-commerce brand used UserTesting to update its navigation labels. The internal team ran a few unmoderated tests, made headline changes, and published the new layout. Click-through rates improved slightly, but bounce rates spiked. Why? Users missed entire product categories hidden under vague menu terms. A seasoned insights expert stepped in, restructured the testing tasks, and helped the team interpret patterns that pointed to deeper IA problems. Within two weeks, the company course-corrected with confident, data-backed updates.

This kind of support is exactly what On Demand Talent unlocks.

Maximizing Your Investment in DIY Platforms

You've already invested in DIY usability testing tools. Ensuring that investment pays off is about optimizing how you use them. On Demand Talent helps you:

• Run faster cycles by jump-starting strategic test design
• Gain quick-turn analysis without waiting on bandwidth from overloaded in-house teams
• Keep flexibility in headcount while bringing strategic clarity to every test

This paired approach – speed + expertise – helps avoid common missteps, like focusing too much on UX metrics alone and overlooking root causes of information architecture challenges in UX.

Build Long-Term Capability While Solving Today’s Needs

The goal isn't just to outsource research, but to build smarter research teams. On Demand Talent acts as a capability builder, helping your team learn how to run sharper tests, interpret results more confidently, and champion insights that drive results.

From diagnosing navigation testing issues to refining content findability, the right expert guidance bolsters team performance across the board – all while maintaining the resource efficiency DIY platforms promise.

If you want to move fast and stay smart, blending DIY tools with expert support is the way forward.