Tools To Improve Your Website’s Usability
By Sivakumar K. Filed in Tools
Usability testing is test conducted to collect feedback and information from your website’s visitors or regular readers that can be very useful for future website revamp, enhancement or other adjustments. Designers and developers may have created websites according to specifications, but ultimately it is the users who will decide its creditability (how far it is usable), the highlights of the site and what does it lack of.
How to know whether a visitor likes your website? Usability tools provide an answer to this by tracking user’s actions. The tracked data gives you a precision of what a user like about your site, which area is the most prominent, most used and places which most users avoid. Do not underestimate the data collected because these figures can significantly boost up your site’s performance in terms of sales conversion rate, click-through and more.
There is no right or wrong time to improve your site. Usability test can be execute when you realize you need an improvement for your website or when you find that your site does not attract as much visitors anymore. Here are some of the best tools (web services) that tracks user’s actions in various methods and the output (end result) will deliver you the information you’ll need to improve your website’s usability. Some of them may not be free but there is always a price to pay for a good return. Have fun hunting for the right tool you need!
4Q Online Survey
Is the user really satisfied with the website? 4Q Online Survey, a free solution which gives you a complete detail about the visitors on your site such as why visitors visit your site, do they complete the tasks in a correct way and if not it will state out the reason what is stopping them. This survey can create a tremendous response among the customers.
Attention Wizard
Attention Wizard is a visual tool for landing pages which helps you increase your conversion rates and easily identify landing page problems. It operates on advanced artificial algorithm to stimulate human visual processing and attention. It also creates an attention heat map which predicts where a user will browse during the first few seconds of their visit. The results produced are 75% correlated with eye tracking and mouse tracking approaches. Comes in three versions of Lite, Pro and Pro Unwatermarked
ClickDensity
A full usability tool kit which adds more functionality than heat maps where the data from the real time visitors is use to improve information architecture, optimize link/advert placements, analyze/enhance stickiness and lastly, test/refine the content process. It tells you exactly where the users are clicking.
A small JavaScript code is provided when you sign up and when a visitor access the site, a small additional file is automatically downloaded which happens only once and which communicates all clicks that the user makes. Comes with a free trial version which can be later upgraded to any premium plan starting from ₤2.50 to ₤200.00.
ChalkMark
Chalkmark allows you to quickly create a project to take up a survey or test among the users on your UI prototype i.e. decide on what the user’s attempt, upload any image if necessary, view the results or the heat maps of each task and know how many users skipped the task. You can either sign up for free and access to three tolls or get access to unlimited tasks and tools on a monthly or annual basis.
ClickHeat
An open-source software under GPL license which is a heat map of hot and cold click zones on an HTML page with a keyword to define the page with JavaScript. It groups similar pages, tracks CSS layouts, and features a low logging activity
Clixpy
Clixpy tracks almost everything from your visitors such as mouse movements, clicks, scrolls and form inputs. The actions can also be recorded which is useful as to find out the features which the users find easy or difficult, which feature attracts them the most and find out the reason why the users leave the site. This helps to optimize landing pages and helps you convert visitors to clients.
Concept Feedback
Concept Feedback gets quick website reviews, design, usability and marketing feedback from online professionals of the community. A Public Feedback is from the web professionals that belong to the community who give you an overall result. For Private Feedback, you can invite specific user to give u a feedback and also upload unlimited images then organize the results. An Expert Feedback is feedback from the experts in design, usability and marketing fields which can help you out in any circumstances.
Premium plans depend upon the number of concepts and users selected and a trial version included for free which can be used for 1 concept with 3 users.
CrazyEgg
CrazyEgg improves your sites usability by tracking pages i.e. what visitors do in your website, heat maps to track the clicks, Confetti to track the advanced things like Top 15 referrals, search terms, browser etc. Overlays, Lists, also let you block your system from data capturing, archive reports, Email notification and RSS notifications.
Feng GUI
Feng GUI stimulates human vision and creates heat maps predicting what a human will look for the first 5 seconds. Feng GUI Dashboard also offers a pre testing service for designers and developers to predict the performance by analyzing the levels of attention, brand effectiveness and replacement. It can identify the weak spots within an advertisement to improve and pulls out the key movements.
Five Second Test
Five Second Test helps you improve your landing pages and focusing on the key elements on your website through a set of questions which the users complete within five seconds and collect all the responses gathered. The set of questions are based on the screen-shot you updated. You can sign up for free to create your own test but might not get any responses. Other plans start from $20 for 100 responses and get a maximum of $200 for 1000 responses with unlimited public and private tests with faster results
Google Site Search
Google Site Search allows users to search your website through the Google Site Search. A hosted search solution which helps to display ads-free search results, increase the website conversion and sales, reduce support costs by enhancing self service, customizes the search box with flexible prices which is based on the number of queries and website addresses.
Kampyle
Kampyle gathers the insight and turns into action through Feedback and Form Analytic solutions. Gathers feedback from customers of what they think about your site, Feedback Dashboard & Reports to understand the real insights from user’s feedback and reply to Feedback through automatic or personalizes responses to strengthen your connection with users.
OpenHallway
OpenHallway creates usability data by recording the users either remotely or locally then share the results with your clients. It creates a scenario with the instructions specified for the recording link where the user’s screen and voice are recorded and will be upload to your account.
Silverback
A software for usability testing for designers and developers which captures screen activity, records the tester’s face and voice. Has a Batch Export feature to save any selected sessions, tasks or projects and marks any noteworthy moments.
Site Tuners
SiteTuners are the creators of Attention Wizard. It guides you through the process in Conversion consulting as why there are problems in landing pages. They review your problems and answer your specific conversion related questions. After the review, they complete the process and present a text summary of the conversion issues. Through Land Page Testing they will decide the right optimization method, implement the changes and analyze the results and help you in getting the best conversion rate improvement quickly and easily.
TechSmith
Morae is a software created to understand your customer’s experiences and gather the insights clearly. Captures every move of the testing session through a web cam or digital camera and provides hard data and examples. One advantage in using Morae is, instead of analysis and reports, it automatically calculates and presents the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction.
Webnographer
Webnographer functions as a remote usability tester which collects the data, tests any website or web application or prototype in its natural environment gathering their actionable metrics. Captures the user’s thoughts through questionnaires. Prioritizes the previous data gathered and improves wherever necessary.
Webtrends
Optimize focuses on realizing the potential of your market and delivering the right content to the right people. Their approach to site optimization is done in 4 steps staring with a General Testing which is against all traffic, second step is testing your optimal content against key aspects like time of day, geo targeting, return against new visitor. Third step is to determine the optimal by segments and trying to target the maximum and personalize the content optimized by using the insights by marketers.
Website Optimiser
Website Optimizer, a free website testing and optimization tests and optimizes site’s content and design. This increases the value of the website and increases your revenue by driving more conversions and identifies the most effective elements of your website through A / B Split and multi-variable testing. Requires minimal IT support to save your time, and faster speed and the graphical reports tell you the important aspect which is impacting or affecting your website.
These are the tools which we found useful, if you have come across any other interesting tools, share with us :)
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