By Bob Olejar
Your team knows where every button goes. That makes your team a poor substitute for someone encountering your investor landing page for the first time.
Before buying more traffic, watch likely readers try to use the page without your explanation. Ask whether they can understand the business, find the information they need and take a suitable next step. Record what happens before deciding what to change.
This is a practical usability review, not an investment solicitation or a test of whether someone will invest. It can reveal confusing steps. It cannot establish investor demand, predict funding or replace offering-specific review.
Start with a question the session can answer
“Do you like our website?” produces opinions. A more useful question is: “Can a new visitor find the recorded presentation and tell whether it answers their question?” The second question gives your team something observable.
Choose one journey for the first round. Perhaps the visitor wants to understand what the company sells, find an approved document or request a conversation. Do not combine every possible audience, device and task into one session. Write down what you are testing and what remains outside the exercise.
The UK Government Digital Service describes moderated usability testing as observing people attempting tasks. Its guidance recommends relevant participants, neutral task instructions and a consistent discussion guide. The method below adapts that approach to investor communications; it does not import UK offering rules into a U.S. or Canadian campaign.
Recruit readers who do not already know the answer
A designer can confirm that a button works. A colleague can spot a typo. Neither observation tells you how an unfamiliar reader will interpret the page.
For this exercise, seek people who resemble the intended readers in the questions they bring and their familiarity with the subject. Do not describe them as qualified investors merely because they participate. Eligibility, offering access and investment decisions remain separate matters for the appropriate process and advisers.
Explain that you are testing the page, not judging the participant. Obtain appropriate permission for any recording. Limit collected personal information, restrict access to notes and use a test environment with dummy details for forms. Never ask someone to make a real investment, submit identity documents or expose financial information for a usability session.
Use three tasks: understand, find and act
Give the participant a believable situation, then let them work. Avoid naming the button, pointing at the menu or explaining what the headline was supposed to mean.
- Understand: “After reviewing this page, how would you describe the company’s business to someone else?” Listen for what they understood, what they inferred and what they still cannot explain.
- Find: “You want more detail before deciding what to do next. Show me where you would look.” Observe the information they choose rather than steering them toward your preferred asset.
- Act: “Suppose you wanted to ask the company a question. Show me how you would do that.” Stop before a real booking or submission unless a clearly isolated test process has been arranged.
Ask participants to explain what they are looking for as they work. If they become stuck, record where and why before helping them continue. Assistance changes the result: a task completed after a hint is different from one completed independently.
Separate the observation from your explanation
“People do not trust the business” is a conclusion. “The participant opened the company overview, returned to the landing page and asked who would answer a call” is an observation. The second record gives your team a specific question to investigate.
For each task, note the starting point, device, visible page version, participant action, relevant words and whether help was needed. Keep interpretation in a separate field. If the person cannot find a document, possible causes might include its label, location or an expectation that it would arrive by email. Do not decide which explanation is true simply because one matches the team’s existing preference.
A small qualitative round is useful for finding issues to examine. It is not a representative conversion-rate study. Record the number and type of sessions accurately; avoid turning one person’s difficulty into a claim about all visitors.
A hypothetical example: the call request
Imagine a company page with a button labeled “Continue.” In a test, a participant expects it to open a document, but it opens a scheduling form instead. They return to the page because they are not ready to book.
The useful finding is a mismatch between the label and the destination. A reasonable next test would use a clearer description such as “Schedule a conversation with the company,” provided that accurately describes the process. The team would then observe whether unfamiliar readers understand the destination before clicking.
This example is hypothetical. It does not show that a particular label increases registrations, investments or trust. Nor does it justify removing necessary information, consent or account protections in pursuit of fewer steps.
Turn findings into a short repair list
Separate broken journeys from preferences. An unavailable document, misleading destination or form that cannot be completed deserves a different response from a participant preferring another photograph. Describe the issue in terms of the reader’s task.
Assign each correction to an owner and a page version. Where a change touches offering materials, claims, data collection or access controls, involve the responsible reviewers before release. Retest the changed journey instead of treating a design approval as evidence that the problem disappeared.
Keep related work connected. The campaign planning guide helps define responsibilities and the visitor journey. The webinar and CRM guide covers the operational steps around a presentation and subsequent questions.
Copy this session worksheet
- Research question: What uncertainty should this session resolve?
- Participant context: What relevant familiarity and needs does this reader bring?
- Page version and device: What exactly did they use?
- Neutral task: What were they asked to accomplish?
- Observed behavior: What happened, including assistance?
- Interpretation and uncertainty: What might explain it, and what remains unknown?
- Proposed correction: What will change, who owns it and who must review it?
- Retest result: Could a new reader complete the changed task independently?
What the CEO should take away
Before asking whether the landing page looks persuasive, ask whether someone can use it without a member of your team translating it. Approve a specific research question, observe the journey and give the resulting repairs clear owners.
Usability findings and campaign performance answer different questions. A repaired page can make a task clearer without proving that an audience wants the investment. Keep that distinction visible when discussing the results.
Method source: Government Digital Service: Using moderated usability testing (published February 21, 2017; updated October 3, 2017; reviewed for this article November 6, 2026). The investor-page worksheet and hypothetical example above are original CloutHero commentary.
For help organizing your team’s investor communications process, visit CloutHero’s contact page or email contact@clouthero.com. Explore our educational guides for related planning resources.
Educational marketing and operational guidance only; not legal or investment advice.