Once you've had a chance to set up and conduct your card sort, it's time to start analyzing.

To view the card sort analytics, head into your card sort project. If you click on the "Participants" tab, you'll be able to view each of the participants responses.

View the individual responses by clicking on the purple icon to the right of the participants name. When you click on that button, a popup will appear that outlines where that participant grouped each card.

To view all an aggregate of the analytics, click on the "Analytics" tab. You'll see 5 options across the top Cards, Categories Merged Matrix, Similarity Matrix, Dendrogram.

The first tab "Cards" will show you each of the cards and what categories participants sorted the cards into and the frequency in which they sorted those cards into certain categories.

The second tab "Categories" will outline each of the different categories and what cards participants sorted into those categories.

Pending what type of card sort you decided to conduct, the categories tab will look different. For example, if you conduct an open or hybrid card sort, you'll have the ability to merge categories. However, for closed card sorts, you won't be able to merge categories. Learn more about the difference between an open card sort, closed card sort, and a hybrid card sort.

If you've conducted either an open or hybrid card sort you'll want to organize and analyze your research by merging some of the categories together. There are a few reasons why you'll want to merge categories. For example, participants might have spelling typos when creating categories. When you are reviewing you notice one category called "Grocery" and another category called "Grcery" and you realize they are the same category and the participant just misspelled the category name.

Another reason you'll want to merge categories is that categories have similar purposes. For example, if one participant creates a category called "Health & Wellness" while another participant creates a category called "Health" and a third participant creates a category called "Health and Wellness" as the researcher you realize that all three categories are really the same and you want to merge them together so you can analyze the cards together.

Lastly, if multiple participants create the category "payments" it will appear as multiple different categories. To combine them, you'll need to use the "merge" feature.

To merge two categories together, select the check box to the left of the category names and the "Merge Category" will become active.

When you click the blue "Merge Categories" button, you'll be asked the new name of the category you'd like to create. Go ahead and name the new category and click the blue "Merge" button.

The new merged category will have a blue line to the right of the category.