I have become obsessed. All I can think about is usability. I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse but it occupies my mind constantly. All day I dream about….usability.
This has been sparked by a few recent developments. Some conversations with colleagues (shout out to Jon from Tuitive Group again) sparked my interest but some new tools have really changed the way I look at websites.
I am coming to see usability as the other side of the Internet Marketing coin. Getting people to your site with good search engine marketing/optimization (SEM/SEO) is a good start. Getting them to make convert is the other half of the battle. How do you know what problems they are encountering? What are they looking for that they can’t find? Why are they bouncing back to Google? This is where usability comes in.
In my search to be better equipped to provide this service for our clients I have found 3 valuable web-based usability tools.
The first is GetClicky.com.
I’ve been using this service for a while and it has steadily stolen ground from the ol’ Analytics standby Google Analytics. Get Clicky has some real advantages to Google and I won’t go into all of them here. The main thing I like about Get Clicky is that it forces me to see visitors as real people. The Visitor and Spy views are really good at creating a narrative. Where Google Analytics is strong on numbers, Get Clicky is strong on story. You feel like you are getting a snap shot of who the person is more so than other services. Here’s a screenshot of the Spy view for the Small Box site. The Spy view is a real-time feed that shows activity as it happens on the site.
Cost: $100 a year for a premium account (recommended)
Bottom line: Get Clicky forces me to see visitors as people and to see their visits as a narrative.
The second is FeedbackArmy.com
With this service I can get 10 real human beings to answer up to 6 questions about a website for only $10. I have already used this service with a number of clients and my Small Box website. Albeit some of the responses come from outside the US and you have to be a little suspicious of that feedback since I think usability and design is somewhat related to culture. I usually ask, as one of the 6 questions, what country they are coming from to help filter the responses and give more weight to the ones from the US since most of my clients are targeting the US market. Still the outside-US responses are often helpful. I would like to have the option to not publicly display the results but I would hope that option is in the works.
Cost: $10 for 10 responses. $20 for 23. $40 for 50.
Bottom line: FeedbackArmy.com gets you real human feedback for a fraction of the cost of doing “real” user tests.
Related: Check out 10 responses for SmallBoxWeb.com
The Third, and most interesting one, is UserFly.com
UserFly does screen captures of your visitors. You embed some code on your site and it captures real users using your site. Where their mouse goes, what they click on, how long they stay on each page, etc. A little creepy I know but useful, very useful. You can tell when someone is looking for something that they can’t find. Shortly after installing the software on our SmallBoxWeb.com site we noticed that people were clicking on our “Team” images in hopes of getting the contact form but getting, instead, the profile page for that person. So we made a change, now the image of the team member opens the contact form, and started seeing a nice little uptick in contacts from the site.
Cost: $25 for 1000 captures
Bottom line: UserFly.com is quickly becoming an indispensible tool for understanding how users really use a website.
userfly.com from Chris Estreich on Vimeo.
What are your favorite usability tools?
Thanks for the tools Jeb, will definitely put them to use. Nice job on the IMSP website as well! Looks good.
Dania