22 Cheap or Free Web Usability Tools, Part 1: An Introduction
By Craig Tomlin
You can increase your website's conversion rates and improve your sales by conducting usability testing to find and fix the places where your customers are abandoning your site. By incorporating usability testing before, during, or after development, you can achieve incredible gains. For example, usability guru Jared Spool, a founder of User Interface Engineering, has documented a case where usability tests and changes to a button increased a site's annual revenue by $300 million. He calls it the $300 Million Button.
There are two general types of usability testing:
1. Expert reviews — A trained professional in human-and-computer interaction reviews a website or application based on existing user-experience best-practices but takes into consideration variations required to meet specific user needs or business requirements.
2. Performance testing — Actual users, or people who match typical website users, are tested in a carefully developed series of tasks on a website. The session is one-on-one: A moderator provides the test instructions while the participant tries to accomplish the tasks. The participant is recorded (via audio, video, and screen interaction), and task failure points are documented and analyzed.
Both types of testing deliver an analysis of where the task-flow errors are occurring; an evaluation of the severity of each error; and a set of recommendations for ways to eliminate the error, thus increasing task-flow completion.
TODAY'S CHEAP OR FREE USABILITY TESTING TOOLS
In the past few years, tremendous growth has occurred in the development of usability testing tools for usability professionals. An increasing assortment of tools is also being created with the nonprofessional in mind, enabling designers, developers, and others to be able to access and analyze the same data that had been the domain of the usability pro.
A word of caution: Having access to usability testing tools and using them effectively to make corrective website improvements can be two different things. Just as a doctor should evaluate an X-ray, an expert's analysis of the data is invaluable, as are the subsequent recommendations based on the data.
THE FIRST SIX USABILITY TESTING TOOLS
In this article, I will discuss six of 22 cheap or free usability testing tools (in alphabetical order). As with any tool, each has a specific purpose based on uses that best fit usability-testing needs. Not all tools do the same thing; those that are similar nevertheless have differences that, depending on the circumstance, make one better than another at that moment. Finally, there are pros and cons with each tool that I'll briefly describe, along with current pricing information.
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You can increase your website's conversion rates and improve your sales by conducting usability testing to find and fix the places where your customers are abandoning your site. By incorporating usability testing before, during, or after development, you can achieve incredible gains. For example, usability guru Jared Spool, a founder of User Interface Engineering, has documented a case where usability tests and changes to a button increased a site's annual revenue by $300 million. He calls it the $300 Million Button.
There are two general types of usability testing:
1. Expert reviews — A trained professional in human-and-computer interaction reviews a website or application based on existing user-experience best-practices but takes into consideration variations required to meet specific user needs or business requirements.
2. Performance testing — Actual users, or people who match typical website users, are tested in a carefully developed series of tasks on a website. The session is one-on-one: A moderator provides the test instructions while the participant tries to accomplish the tasks. The participant is recorded (via audio, video, and screen interaction), and task failure points are documented and analyzed.
Both types of testing deliver an analysis of where the task-flow errors are occurring; an evaluation of the severity of each error; and a set of recommendations for ways to eliminate the error, thus increasing task-flow completion.
TODAY'S CHEAP OR FREE USABILITY TESTING TOOLS
In the past few years, tremendous growth has occurred in the development of usability testing tools for usability professionals. An increasing assortment of tools is also being created with the nonprofessional in mind, enabling designers, developers, and others to be able to access and analyze the same data that had been the domain of the usability pro.
A word of caution: Having access to usability testing tools and using them effectively to make corrective website improvements can be two different things. Just as a doctor should evaluate an X-ray, an expert's analysis of the data is invaluable, as are the subsequent recommendations based on the data.
THE FIRST SIX USABILITY TESTING TOOLS
In this article, I will discuss six of 22 cheap or free usability testing tools (in alphabetical order). As with any tool, each has a specific purpose based on uses that best fit usability-testing needs. Not all tools do the same thing; those that are similar nevertheless have differences that, depending on the circumstance, make one better than another at that moment. Finally, there are pros and cons with each tool that I'll briefly describe, along with current pricing information.
No tag for this post.
