How to test a site for usability with hundreds users and get genuine feedback?

[Stefan-Thorpe]

My question is twofold; firstly is there a recommended company that I could use to get feedback on my site usability. Ideally I would like this company to arrange a focus group of a couple hundred people that fit into the right demographic and organise a report on the opinions of the group and the issues faced.

Secondly an in-house understanding of usability

Now I would like to think that when I review a site for usability I am not biased in any way. But I believe that if I look at the page that I have created or even collaborated on that I will always miss usability issues as I frankly think my/our creation is amazing. I'm interested to know how people rank and check their site usability and what factors rank highest in their assessments i.e. the tools you use and how you use them.

[Stefan-Thorpe]

Thanks for the suggestion I was hoping for something a bit more substantial. I suppose I was wondering how the Big Boys in the industry achieve usability test. I once read that Tesco spent some 40000 GBP on usability where would a corp that size get its focus group? Not that I have that kind of budget.

[JXTGroup]

I've used feedbackarmy.com in the past.

[emediaSEO]

If you just want to see a few users on your site you can try usertesting.com.  I have gotten pretty good feedback from them that I hadn't considered before.  But it is definitely not done on the scale you are talking about for the first part of your question.