Cheerios Test

Marisol Cano

February 10, 2024

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 Introduction
Cheerios is a cereal brand that offers a large variety of different cereal
flavors. It is most known as a healthy breakfast option that is convenient for
everyone. Cheerios offers cereals that are great tasting and nutritious and is
known to reduce cholesterol. The Cheerios website allows consumers to get a
great experience of what the company has to offer. It provides a warm family
environment that aims to satisfy and gain loyalty from its customers.

A usability test is intended to determine the extent an interface facilitates a

user’s ability to complete routine tasks. Typically, the test is conducted with a
group of potential users either in a usability lab, remotely (using e-meeting
software and telephone connection), or on-site with portable equipment.
Users are asked to complete a series of routine tasks. Sessions are recorded
and analyzed to identify potential areas for improvement to the web site.

A usability test was used to conduct an onsite analysis of the website. In this
test 2 computers were used to capture the participant’s comments and to
track the navigation through the website. The test participant and data logger
were both present during this usability test and logged the experience of the
participant. The session captured the participant’s navigational choices, task
completion rates, comments, overall satisfaction ratings, questions, and
feedback.

Executive Summary
This usability test was conducted on February 8, 2024, at the Martinez
Residence. The purpose of this test is to gather data and feedback about a
consumers experience of the Cheerios website. This test is used to test the
effectiveness and features of the Cheerios website to see if it aligns with the
consumers’ wants.

One participant took part in this test. The participant thought that the website
was appealing to the eye and easy to navigate. They were engaged with the
wide variety of cereal flavors that the company had available on the website.

The test identified only a few minor problems including:

 Lack of pictures when click on each product
 Too much text under product description
 Wording slightly too big
This document contains the participant feedback, satisfactions ratings, task
completion rates, ease or difficulty of completion ratings, time on task, errors,
and recommendations for improvements. A copy of the scenarios and
questionnaires are included in the Attachments section.

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 Methodology
Sessions
The participants were recruited because they lived at my home, and they
were available at times that were needed. Overall, the test took
approximately 38 minutes to conduct, and the participant was asked to go
through the Cheerios website and was asked a series of questions about her
experience using the website.
Some pre-questionnaires included information about the participant’s age,
gender, occupation, and how many hours a week she spends on the internet
with uses including the web and email, and what her favorite websites to
access are. She was also asked if she had ever visited the Cheerios website in
the past.
Her post-questionnaires included her thoughts about the effectiveness of the
Cheerios website and her overall experience with the website. She was asked
how satisfied she felt with the website as well as how easy and hard it was to
navigate.

After each task, the administrator asked the participant to rate the interface
on a 5-point Likert Scale with measures ranging from Strongly Disagree to
Strongly Agree. Post-task scenario subjective measures included (see
Attachment B):
 How easy was it to find the Cheerios box personalization option?
 Ability to find the variety of Cereal options that are offered on the
website
 Ability to get nutrition facts of each cereal box

After the last task was completed, the test administrator asked the participant
to rate the website overall by using a 5-point Likert scale (Strongly Disagree
to Strongly Agree) for eight subjective measures including:
 Ease of use of the website
 How clear are the prices of each cereal?
 Difficulty in purchasing cereal directly from the website
 How easy it would be for most users to purchase directly from the
website.
 How easy is it for users to find a nearby store from which to
purchase the product
 How appealing was the home page
 Was the website filled with good information that have details about
the products
 Was the website organized in a good manner

In addition, the test administrator asked the participants the following overall
website questions:
 What the participants liked most.
 What the participant liked least.
 Recommendations for improvement.

See Attachment C for the subjective and overall questionnaires.

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 Participants
The participant was a 23-year-old female who works as a sales and customer
service representative at an insurance office. She was asked to participate in
this test on February 11, 2024.

Evaluation Tasks/Scenarios
The task scenarios were created by Marisol Cano
For Example
Test participants attempted to complete the following tasks:
 Find the sign-up option to receive the latest updates of the release of
new cereal flavors
 Find the nearest retail store that contains the flavor of Cheerios that you
desire.
 Find the personalization Cheerios box option.
Results
Task Completion Success Rate

The participant successfully completed Task 1 (find the sign-up option to

receive new flavor drop) a bot challenging and found Task 3 with no trouble.
It was a bit more difficult for the participant to complete task 2 because some
flavors didn’t have the option to purchase in a retail store and could only be
purchased through Amazon.

Task Completion Rates

Participant Task 1 Task 2 Task 3

1 √ - √

Task Ratings
After the completion of each task, participants rated the ease or difficult of
completing the task for three factors:
 It was easy to find my way to this information from the homepage.
 As I was searching for this information, I was able to keep track of
where I was on the website.
 I was able to accurately predict which section of the website
contained this information.

The 5-point rating scale ranged from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly

agree). Agree ratings are the agree and strongly agree ratings combined with
a mean agreement rating of > 4.0 considered as the user agrees that the
information was easy to find, that they could keep track of their location and
predict the section to find the information.

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 Ease in Finding sign-up option for latest releases
The participant found this task a bit more difficult because she had to kept
scrolling and going back and forth from the pages to find this option. It didn’t
take her long, but she said that she had to constantly scroll through a few
pages to finally find it.
Participant gave a rating scale of 4 (Agree)

Finding nearest retail location

The participant found this task the most challenging because she found that
quite a few of the cereal options didn’t have the Cheerios boxes in stores and
could only be found on Amazon
Participant gave a rating scale of 3 (Neither Agree nor Disagree)

Personalization box Option

The participant found this task the easiest because it was one of the first
messages on the home page.
Participant gave a rating scale of 5 (Strongly Agree)

Test 1 – Mean Task Ratings & Percent Agree

Ease – Location in
Task
Finding Info Site
1 – Sign- up Option 4.0 3.0
2 – Find nearest retail
3.0 4.0
store
3 – Personalization Box 5.0 5.0

*Percent Agree (%) = Agree & Strongly Agree Responses combined

Time on Task
The testing software recorded the time on task for each participant. Some
tasks were inherently more difficult to complete than others and this is
reflected in the average time on the task.

The task took approximately 47 minutes to complete.

Task 1 took 3 minutes
Task 2 took 5 minutes
Task 3 minutes took 8 seconds.
For example:
Time on Task
P1
Task 1 3 min

Task 2 5 min

Task 3 8 sec

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 Overall Metrics
Overall Ratings
After task session completion, participants rated the site for eight overall
measures. These measures include:
 Ease of use
 Frequency of use
 Difficulty of keeping track of where they were in the site
 How quickly most people would learn to use the site
 Getting information quickly
 Homepage’s content facilities exploration
 Relevancy of site content
 Site organization

There was only one participant, so she was confident with her responses.

See table below.

Post-Task Overall Questionnaire

Strongly Strongl Percent

Disagree Neutral Agree
Disagree y Agree Agree

Thought Website
1 100%
was easy to use
Would use website
1 100%
frequently
Found it difficult to
keep track of
1 100%
where they were in
website
Though most
people would learn
1 100%
to use website
quickly
Can get
1 100%
information quickly
Homepage’s
content makes me
1 100%
want to explore
site
Site’s content
would keep me 1 100%
coming back
Website is well
1 100%
organized
*Percent Agree (%) = Agree & Strongly Agree Responses combined

4.6.2 Likes, Dislikes, Participant Recommendations

Upon completion of the tasks, participants provided feedback for what they
liked most and least about the website, and recommendations for improving
the website.

Liked Most
The following comments capture what the participants liked most:

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 The participant liked the organization of the website and the variety that the
company has to offer, not only in flavors but also the different recipes that can be
made using the products.

Liked Least
The following comments capture what the participants liked the least:
The participant said that the thing that she liked the least is that she couldn’t
see the prices of each product.

Recommendations for Improvement

She recommends adding the pricing of products and selling the products
directly from the Cheerios Website.
Recommendations
For example:
Find Organizational or Individual Funding Information (Task 2)
Task 2 required participants to find organization funding (Test 1) or individual funding (Test 2).

Change Justification Severity

 Add prices of each box
 Make description shorter and
less text under each product
 More images under product
such as box from each side
Participants suggested that adding prices would Low
make it more convenient to know how much each
product would cost.
Participant believed that adding smaller or
narrowing the description section of the product
would be better because she thought that the
wording was too enlarged.

Conclusion
The participant found the website easy to navigate and well organized. She
thought that it was visually appealing and felt like it was warm and inviting,
especially for families with young children. She thought it was very
informative and didn’t expect to see so many flavors of the cereal, she was
definitely surprised by the wide selection of cereal and all the recipes that can
be made from using cereal.

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