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UXCamp DC 2012 (January 7, 2012)

Washington DC, USA

Presented By: UXCamp DC

UXCamp DC is an un-conference focusing on user experience for web, mobile and the real world. The agenda will be set when everyone gathers. Attendees are asked to participate by either leading a discussion, showing a demo, or just by adding to the conversation.

For more information: website | twitter

Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.

As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments.

And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration.

Project Adthenticate

Project Adthenticate is a hosted service for ad validation from Adobe that aims to help publishers become more efficient at launching their advertising campaigns.

Colorpilgrim

Colorpilgrim offers tools for creating color palettes. The ColorClipper bookmarklet lets you easily collect colors, and other tools let you create palettes from uploaded images or from scratch.

FormBakery

FormBakery is an incredibly easy to use app for creating forms. Just drag and drop the elements you need (text boxes, drop downs, radio buttons, and check boxes are all available), enter the email address where the form should go, and then enter the name and email address where forms should go, and export your code.

Easy Basket

Easy Basket is a free Ajax shopping cart that works with PayPal and Google Checkout, and includes drag-and-drop functionality. There’s also a WordPress plugin version.

Draftest

Draftest lets you set up tests to let your clients rate designs so you can get an idea of what styles they like most.

Breakpoints.js

Breakpoints.js makes it possible to define breakpoints for your responsive designs, and will trigger custom events when the user’s browser enters or exits these break points.

Above content used as part of coursework assignment - to view original article click here

Video Marketing:

1. Create videos that research proves will do well on the sites you are marketing to. Usually funny videos and tutorials tend to do well.

2. Decide what video marketing stance you are going to approach with your video marketing: Cut the video and add branding before something funny or interesting happens to redirect the viewer to your site. Or allow the entire video shown to allow for more viewers and impressions.

3. Initiate streaming rich media ads on videos.

4.Purchase pre-roll or post-roll ads on videos.

5. Distribute your video across these multiple video sharing sites.

Conversational Marketing

6. Leverage sites like Sponsored Reviews in order to create a viral buzz online regarding your brand.

7. Join as many forums as you can adequately sustain a quality contributor.

8. Get to know who the industry voice is for your niche and post comments on there blogs.

9. Contribute to online groups like google groups and myspace groups.

10. Market yourself by adding a blog.

11. Use advanced techniques to gain RSS subscribers for maximum exposure.

Pay Per Click

12. If you have a larger budget create an account on the top tier pay per click networks, Google, MSN and Yahoo!.

13. If you have a smaller ad budget go with Google and some tier 2 and tier 3 networks.

14. A great way to get branding is to get those impressions. Try giving 3^rdtier networks a try but know that conversions may be lower on 3^rd tier networks.

15. Utilize keycompete to get a good base on competitor PPC advertising.

16. Do extensive keyword research to find optimal exposure and converting keywords.

17. Try to find niches and keyword markets to target that are not as heavily competitive but are highly trafficked so your cost per click will be way down.

18. Mind your ad quality.

Social Media Marketing

19. Stay as ethical as you possibly can.

20. To successfully leverage your social media for online marketing you need to really be active in your communities, ergo is best to have power accounts on a few social media sites rather then trying to manage many of them across multiple networks. Find your niche.

21. Initiate social bookmarking campaigns online.

22. Create content to support edits in wikipedia.

Email Marketing

23. Team with companies with double opt in lists

24. Sponsor mailing lists with companies who have a wide subscriber base.

25. Try to leverage DBA lists

26. Setup a network of sites geared towards lead generation. By capturing these leads you can use them for yourself or sell them to leading lead brokers.

Mobile Search Marketing

27. Create a click to call campaign

28. Develop a mobile version of your site.

29. Include jump links below your content as normal navigation on a mobile search page can cause problems when viewing on mobile devices.

Search Engine Optimization

30. Optimize all title tags and meta data according to your rev mix.

31. If you are having problems ranking internal pages for there given keyword terms consider developing an effective silo.

32. Develop search engine friendly html sitemap.

33 Develop quality internal linking structure.

34. Create optimized html source code.

35. Create optimized robots.txt

36. Create optimized XML sitemap.

Affiliate Marketing

37. Create accounts in the 2 major affiliate networks, link share and commission junction.

38. Evaluate your competitions affiliate program

39. If you do not have an affiliate option for your services or products then think about creating one because the chance to have others advertise your products and services is a great way to get exposure and build your branding.

40. Incentavize your affiliate deals to attract the affiliate and the consumers.

Banner Advertising

41. Examine potential sites demographics.

42. Get media break outs

43. Consider Portal Advertising

44. Weight your cost per acquisition model between the cost of CPM and CPC banner advertising.

Application Marketing

45. Create a marketing campaign on Instant messangers

Contextual Advertising

46. Initiate a PFI (pay for inclusion) campaign for in bound links with sites like Text Link Brokers.

47. Consider Pre Sale pages or Hosted Marketing packages.

On to offline Marketing

48. Clothing is one of the best ways to market a product and service on and offline. By creating clothing that is branded with your logo and services you can ad this clothing line to online shopping sites and having people wear your clothes with your branding obviously increases your brand awareness.

My last and final tip is to make sure that everything you do can be tracked and measured via an accurate web analytics system. If you can afford it I would recommend click tracks. If that is to expensive for you then you might consider web trends. Many of these tips can not only improve your online marketing success but can increase the value of your own site allowing you to be paid much more for your sponsored reviews..

Homepages are the most valuable real estate in the world. Each year, companies and individuals funnel millions of dollars through a space that’s not even a square foot in size. For good reason. A homepage’s impact on a company’s bottom line is far greater than simple measures of e-commerce revenues: The homepage is your company’s face to the world. Increasingly, potential customers will look at your company’s online presence before doing business with you — regardless of whether they plan to close the actual sale online. (Update: ourstudies of B2B usability found that this is the predominant behavior of business users.)

The homepage is the most important page on most websites, and gets more page views than any other page. Of course, users don’t always enter a website from the homepage. A website is like a house in which every window is also a door: People can follow links from search engines and other websites that reach deep inside your site. However, one of the first things these users do after arriving at a new site is go to the homepage. Deep linking is very useful, but it doesn’t give users the site overview a homepage offers — if the homepage design follows strong usability guidelines, that is.

Following are ten things you can do to increase the usability of your homepage and thus enhance your website’s business value.

Make the Site’s Purpose Clear: Explain Who You Are and What You Do

1. Include a One-Sentence Tagline

Start the page with a tagline that summarizes what the site or company does, especially if you’re new or less than famous. Even well-known companies presumably hope to attract new customers and should tell first-time visitors about the site’s purpose. It is especially important to have a good tagline if your company’s general marketing slogan is bland and fails to tell users what they’ll gain from visiting the site.

2. Write a Window Title with Good Visibility in Search Engines and Bookmark Lists

Begin the TITLE tag with the company name, followed by a brief description of the site. Don’t start with words like “The” or “Welcome to” unless you want to be alphabetized under “T” or “W.”

3. Group all Corporate Information in One Distinct Area

Finding out about the company is rarely a user’s first task, but sometimes people do need details about who you are. Good corporate information is especially important if the site hopes to support recruiting, investor relations, or PR, but it can also serve to increase a new or lesser-known company’s credibility. An “About <company-name>” section is the best way to link users to more in-depth information than can be presented on the homepage. (See also my report with70 guidelines for the design of “about us” areas of corporate websites.)

Help Users Find What They Need

4. Emphasize the Site’s Top High-Priority Tasks

Your homepage should offer users a clear starting point for the main one to four tasks they’ll undertake when visiting your site.

5. Include a Search Input Box

Search is an important part of any big website. When users want to search, they typically scan the homepage looking for “the little box where I can type,” so your search should be a box.[Make your search box at least 25 characters wide,] so it can accommodate multiple words without obscuring parts of the user’s query.

(Update: Based on more recent findings, my recommendation is now to make the search box 27 characters wide. This and other new guidelines are covered in my tutorial on Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability at the annual Usability Week conference.)

Reveal Site Content

6. Show Examples of Real Site Content

Don’t just describe what lies beneath the homepage. Specifics beat abstractions, and you have good stuff. Show some of your best or most recent content.

7. Begin Link Names with the Most Important Keyword

Users scan down the page, trying to find the area that will serve their current goal. Links are the action items on a homepage, and when you start each link with a relevant word, you make it easier for scanning eyes to differentiate it from other links on the page. A common violation of this guideline is to start all links with the company name, which adds little value and impairs users’ ability to quickly find what they need.

8. Offer Easy Access to Recent Homepage Features

Users will often remember articles, products, or promotions that were featured prominently on the homepage, but they won’t know how to find them once you move the features inside the site. To help users locate key items, keep a short list of recent features on the homepage, and supplement it with a link to a permanent archive of all other homepage features.

Use Visual Design to Enhance, not Define, Interaction Design

9. Don’t Over-Format Critical Content, Such as Navigation Areas

You might think that important homepage items require elaborate illustrations, boxes, and colors. However, users often dismiss graphics as ads, and focus on the parts of the homepage that look more likely to be useful.

10. Use Meaningful Graphics

Don’t just decorate the page with stock art. Images are powerful communicators when they show items of interest to users, but will backfire if they seem frivolous or irrelevant. For example, it’s almost always best to show photos of real people actually connected to the topic, rather than pictures of models.

Above content used as part of coursework assignment - to view original article click here

The core web accessibility ‘standard’ is the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) ‘Web content accessibility guidelines 1.0′ created in 1999 to explain how to make Websites accessible to people with disabilities. The guidelines are based on a series of checkpoints prioritised into three levels:

Priority Level 1 – ‘Must’ or level ‘A’
These are essential for basic accessibility. Failure to implement these design rules will mean many potential users will not be able to use your Website at all

Priority Level 2 – ‘Should’, or level ‘Double-A’
If your Website violates these rules it will make it difficult to use the Website, but not impossible

Priority Level 3 – ‘Ought’ or level ‘Triple-A’
Implementing these design rules will improve accessibility to a high standard demonstrating real commitment to excellence

For an accessible e-recruitment site there are elements of level 2 accessibility that need to be implement such as accessible form design, clear navigation and meaningful hypertext links, which are discussed in more detail in later sections. It is a realistic goal for an organisation to fully meet level 2 accessibility standards as part of on going web development plan. Level 1 accessibility should be seen as a transitional phase, especially as it is not guaranteed to be seen as the minimum legal requirement in the future under relevant legislation such as the DDA.

Section 508

There are also a number of other guidelines in use, such as Section 508 in America.

Section 508 requires Federal departments and agencies that develop, purchase, maintain, or use electronic and information technology to ensure that Federal employees and members of the public with disabilities have access to and use of information and data, comparable to that of the employees and members of the public without disabilities – unless it is an undue burden to do so.

Bobby

Bobby is an automated testing tool for checking the accessibility of your web pages. Including a series of icons you can use if you meet the relevant criteria, it has equivalent icons for the three levels of W3C accessibility and Section 508

Above content used as part of coursework assignment - to view original article click here

Heuristic evaluation is a form of usability inspection where usability specialists judge whether each element of a user interface follows a list of established usability heuristics. Expert evaluation is similar, but does not use specific heuristics.

Usually two to three analysts evaluate the system with reference to established guidelines or principles, noting down their observations and often ranking them in order of severity. The analysts are usually experts in human factors or HCI, but others, less experienced have also been shown to report valid problems.

A heuristic or expert evaluation can be conducted at various stages of the development lifecycle, although it is preferable to have already performed some form of context analysis to help the experts focus on the circumstances of actual or intended product usage.

Benefits

• The method provides quick and relatively cheap feedback to designers. The results generate good ideas for improving the user interface. The development team will also receive a good estimate of how much the user interface can be improved.
• There is a general acceptance that the design feedback provided by the method is valid and useful. It can also be obtained early on in the design process, whilst checking conformity to established guidelines helps to promote compatibility with similar systems.
• It is beneficial to carry out a heuristic evaluation on early prototypes before actual users are brought in to help with further testing.
• Usability problems found are normally restricted to aspects of the interface that are reasonably easy to demonstrate: use of colours, lay-out and information structuring, consistency of the terminology, consistency of the interaction mechanisms. It is generally agreed that problems found by inspection methods and by performance measures overlap to some degree, although both approaches will find problems not found by the other.
• The method can seem overly critical as designers may only get feedback on the problematic aspects of the interface as the method is normally not used for the identification of the ‘good’ aspects.

Method

This method is to identify usability problems based on established human factors principles. The method will provide recommendations for design improvements. However, as the method relies on experts, the output will naturally emphasise interface functionality and design rather than the properties of the interaction between an actual user and the product.

Planning

The panel of experts must be established in good time for the evaluation. The material and the equipment for the demonstration should also be in place. All analysts need to have sufficient time to become familiar with the product in question along with intended task scenarios. They should operate by an agreed set of evaluative criteria.

Running

The experts should be aware of any relevant contextual information relating to the intended user group, tasks and usage of the product. A heuristics briefing can be held to ensure agreement on a relevant set of criteria for the evaluation although this might be omitted if the experts are familiar with the method and operate by a known set of criteria.

The experts then work with the system preferably using mock tasks and record their observations as a list of problems. If two or more experts are assessing the system, they should not communicate with one another until the assessment is complete. After the assessment period, the analysts can collate the problem lists and the individual items can be rated for severity and/or safety criticality.

Reporting

A list of identified problems, which may be prioritised with regard to severity and/or safety criticality is produced.

In terms of summative output the number of found problems, the estimated proportion of found problems compared to the theoretical total, and the estimated number of new problems expected to be found by including a specified number of new experts in the evaluation can also be provided.

A report detailing the identified problems is written and fed back to the development team. The report should clearly define the ranking scheme used if the problem lists have been prioritised.

More Information

Nielsen, Jakob. How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

Variations

Three to five experts are recommended for a thorough evaluation. A quick review by one expert (often without reference to specific heuristics) is usual before a user-based evaluation to identify potential problems.

If usability experts are not available, other project members can be trained to use the method, which is useful in sensitising project members to usability issues.

Above content used as part of coursework assignment - to view original article click here

An accessibility audit can, for example, be carried out in-house or can use external consultants. It can be entirely manual or, more likely, use automated tools to assist the manual audit. (An automated accessibility check is not a full audit. Passing such a check does not mean that a site is accessible.)

An audit can involve every page on your website or a sample of pages.

Choosing type of audit

The choice of audit type that is right for your site depends on many factors. There is no single “correct” web accessibility audit that meets all requirements. Factors that affect what sort of audit is right for your website include:

• how much expertise is available in-house;
• the size of the website; and
• the nature of the publishing system.

We are going to discuss two types of accessibility audit:

• external expert audit; and
• self-audit.

External expert audit

The preferred approach to web accessibility auditing is to buy in outside expertise. This approach has some strong advantages, such as:

• access to specialist expertise in web accessibility;
• an independent, external point of view;
• status of report enhanced by external, expert viewpoint.

In many cases, selecting external expertise for a web accessibility audit will be part of a tendering process. Running a tender for web accessibility auditing is described in more detail in section 9.  However, among the attributes that would recommend an external resource are:

• a track record of conducting accurate web accessibility audits;
• references available from existing clients;
• web accessibility as a core offering;
• suitable methodology and tools for conducting audits.

Self-audit

Self-auditing means that the site is tested by your own in-house staff. The advantages of this approach include the low cost and the fact that the staff are already familiar with the website. Self-audit can be included in quality management processes and carried out regularly.

However, it has disadvantages, including:

• it is difficult to find staff with the required skills;
• if skilled staff are available, they may be involved in managing your website and, therefore, may find it difficult to look at it afresh;
• an audit which uses in-house staff who are not accessibility specialists lacks the status of external, independent audit;

Self-audit alone is not recommended unless your organisation is large enough to provide skilled staff who have not been involved in operating the website and can maintain full objectivity in looking at it.

Self-audit is most useful as new content is being published to the website. It may not be practical to have new content audited externally on an on-going basis. Staff with responsibility for ensuring the accessibility of new content being published to the website should receive training in web accessibility and have access to appropriate tools and expert advice as required.

Automated auditing tools

Software can be very useful in testing website accessibility, but only up to a point. Most accessibility checkpoints cannot be verified by software alone. Of the 16 priority 1 checkpoints in WCAG 1.0, only one (12.1) can be verified automatically. All 15 others require human judgement.

For example, one of the WCAG checkpoints is to ensure that information does not rely on colour perception. Suppose you have an online appointment booking system on your site and it shows a calendar with available slots marked in green and unavailable slots in red. Some people with colour blindness cannot distinguish red from green so, unless it also shows the words “Available” and “Unavailable” or some suitable symbols, those people will not be able to tell which is which. An automated test might be able to tell that the colours red and green are used but not whether they are used for information purposes or whether additional methods are employed to give the same information. This requires human intelligence.

Automated auditing tools are best used by experts who can interpret their results accurately. In particular, auditors need to be able to quickly identify false positive and false negative results from the tools.

Software tools are more reliable in checking that a website is valid – that it conforms to standards for page markup- than for checking accessibility. Since valid markup is an important component of accessibility, software tools are useful for auditing this.

The WAI provides guidance on selecting web accessibility evaluation tools and also maintains an extensive list of such tools.

As promoters of user insight in design, it’s therefore unfortunate that recording people secretly is unworkable in most real world situations. Much more importantly, as an aspect of scientific research, recording people in this manner is unethical. Today I’ll be considering why this is so, and look at how to do ethics correctly.

Ethics is an important element of user research, because scientific research without restraint can, and has, harmed people. Consider the experimentation that Dr Mengele performed on humans in concentration camps – his position was that it was serious work and furthering our knowledge scientific and biological knowledge for the benefit of humanity. So does the scientific merit justify these experiments? Consider also the research into Shock Therapy, as documented by Naomi  Klein – where subjects were subjected to seizure-inducing electric shocks, in order to ‘cure’ conditions such as bipolar disorder or catatonia. Subjects were often not in a position to give informed consent, which is an aspect of ethics we’ll be looking at.

It’s highly unlikely our research into user-insight will touch these morally-dubious boundaries, yet scientific research has since formalised many rules in order to prevent research becoming ethically wrong. Hence it’s important, when working directly with users, to be aware of ethical considerations.

So what ethical considerations do we need to follow when working with users?

Primarily there is the issue of informed consent. Consent is the idea of giving permission for research to take place, and the results be presented in a manner defined in the agreement. For consent to be informed, the participant has to have a clear understanding of the facts, implications and consequences of the research. Hence, we can see in the electroshock example given above that subjects, often in catatonic states, were unable to give their informed consent for being participants in research. As researchers, informed consent often has to be given before the research/observation begins, and again after to ensure that the participant is fully aware of what they are agreeing to.

We can see that informed consent becomes difficult to apply when working with special groups, such as children or people with certain disabilities. However it is these cases where the correct application of consent is particularly important, due to the vulnerability of the groups!

A second aspect of correct ethical procedure is allowing users to change their mind and leave during a study, without necessarily giving a reason. Although this has the potential to introduce a bias into the results (since your user group will be restricted to only willing participants), this has benefits in the validity of the data received – an unwilling and unhappy participant may intentionally disrupt an experiment.

Changing your mind…

As a part of this, the participant also has to have free choice over being involved in the experiment – it’s important to consider factors such as social pressure when understanding whether a user is truly free to participate.

Last of all, a guideline when working with real people is ‘Don’t be evil’. Google’s motto, though not always met by their actions, should be a guiding principle in all endeavours – the people you are working with are real people, and their wellbeing is morally more important than your research. Hence we can understand why the Stanford Prison Experiment, which looked into the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or a guard yet descended into abuse, was prematurely stopped.  Research should be terminated

Yes, even you Doctor Badman

This issue becomes less clear-cut in certain cases. What if your research would harm the participants, but make life better for millions of others? Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Spock thought so. However, for usability experts, a good rule of thumb is to consider the experiment from the participant’s viewpoint, and only involve participants in ways you yourself would be happy to perform.

Above content used as part of coursework assignment - to view original article click here

Gone are the days of using expensive recruitment firms, labs and massive amounts of time to create, deploy and report on usability tests.

By using these usability testing tools and others like them, you have for the first time a complete set of tools designed to tackle almost any usability research job.

From recruiting real users (with tools such as Ethnio) to conducting live one on one remote moderated tests (UserVue) to analyzing results of usability changes using A/B testing (Google Website Optimizer), there is a plethora of useful and usable tools to conduct usability testing.

Why usability testing helps:

But what good is conducting usability testing, how can it help?

As an example of the benefit of usability testing, Jared Spool, usability guru and leader of User Interface Engineering, has described how simple usability testing and subsequent changes to ONE button increased online revenues for a major eCommerce web site by about 300 Million Dollars, in one year.  This is known as the $300 Million button.

By using today’s low cost usability testing tools, usability researchers can spend a fraction of the cost to obtain results that are close to the traditional usability testing facility results that used to cost thousands.  And just as significant, results can now be gathered and analyzed in a matter of an hour, vs. the days it used to take.

Caution! These usability testing tools aren’t for everyone

Of course, just because the tool is free, or practically free, doesn’t mean just anyone can and should use the tool.  As with most other tools, the analysis and the recommendations about what to do based on the reports takes expertise.

As with other professionals such as dentists or doctors, it’s the knowledge that comes with training and years of experience that guides the hand that uses the tool.

List of 24 usability testing tools:

1. A Paper and Pencil
2. Concept Feedback
3. Chalkmark
4. Clickheat
5. ClickTale
6. Clixpy
7. Crazy Egg
8. Ethnio
9. Feng-GUI
10. Five Second Test

1. A Paper and Pencil

Flickr Image courtesy Bryan Veloso via Creative Commons license

Paper and pencil you say?  The most powerful and dirt cheap of usability testing tools says I!  The reality is using a paper and pencil to draw interfaces, wireframes, cards for card sorts and a host of other usability mechanisms is an extremely fast, extremely effective way to conduct usability testing.

Paper and pencil are amazingly simple to use, communicate quite effectively, are so low cost you probably have them all over the office and home, and are just about as cheap as dirt.

You can’t go wrong using paper and pencil to help conduct early prototype usability testing, it’s a great way to get quick, fast and meaningful results at a rock-bottom price.

Pros – Cheap, fast and extremely effective

Cons – Early design stage testing only, not for use in testing interaction

Pricing – Very cheap to free

Back to the Usability Tools list

2. Concept Feedback

Concept Feedback

Concept Feedback was and is designed as a way to gather input and feedback from experts about new designs for marketing or advertising purposes.  However, this tool can be used by web site designers and usability researchers to gather information about potential new web site designs, or interfaces.

It works quite simply, you submit your concept to the expert community, and reviewers provide their suggestions, recommendations and input about your design.  You then judge the quality of their responses by taking into consideration each reviewer’s quality score, higher scores mean more people consider this reviewer an expert, which means their advice might be worth more.

This community of experts is available free of charge, and because each reviewer can be graded by others it offers a means to determine the quality of each opinion you receive.

ProsGet free expert advice in a very quick manner.  In addition, you can follow-up (and/or network) with the reviewers.

Cons – From a usability testing perspective the reviews are not conducting actual tasks (they’re viewing an image), which means interaction feedback is not possible. In addition, there’s no guarantee the reviewer’s opinions reflect the actual user experience once the site is live.

Pricing – Free

Back to the Usability Tools list

3. Chalkmark by Optimal Workshop

Chalkmark

To quote the site: Do people know where to click? Quickly run a test on your UI prototypes to answer any nagging questions about usability.

Chalkmark provides a means of sharing an image with a user to gather feedback on where the user would click to perform a task.  From a usability testing perspective, this is the same concept as a reverse card sort, which means the terminology and navigation is tested to ensure users know where to go to accomplish a task.

The method for sharing images is easy, the test image is uploaded to Chalkmark.  Next, a survey URL is produced by Chalkmark which usability researchers can share with testers via an email, or on a web site.  A researcher provides a brief description of the task that needs to be accomplished, and the tester clicks on the image where they think that task would be.  The clicks are recorded by Chalkmark, and a realtime display of a heatmap showing the location of the clicks is provided to the usability researcher.  The time each click takes is also recorded.  Reports can then be downloaded by the usability researcher as a PDF file.

Pros – Records clicks and displays realtime data.  A major advantage is the ability for usability researchers to provide Chalkmark invitations to actual users via email or on a website.

Cons – Unfortunately, researchers are unable to ask participants the ‘why’ of where they clicked, which is a critical component of reverse card sorts.

Pricing – Free account can be used as long as you like, and creates surveys with up to 3 tasks.  30 Day Plan is $109 for unlimited numbers of surveys & tasks.  Annual Plan is $559 for unlimited surveys and tasks.

Back to the Usability Tools list

4. ClickHeat by LabsMedia

ClickHeat

Another in the usability tools that track where users click, ClickHeat provides an interesting display method of results via heatmaps.  But unlike other usability tools, ClickHeat is a free OpenSource tool that can be deployed on your web server.  This provides a major advantage, which is actual users will be providing the data that drives the click maps.

For WordPress users, there is a very interesting WordPress ClickHeat Plugin that enables ClickHeat to be integrated with your WordPress website.  This provides anyone with the ability to gather real data from actual users about where they click on a website.

Pros – First, ClickHeat is free, so the price is right.  Second, ClickHeat tracks real users trying to conduct real tasks on your website, this kind of information is priceless.

Cons – There are rather specific server requirements and a few other restrictions that must be understood.  As with other click map tools, there is no way to ask users why they clicked where they did, or what they expected to find by clicking.  For large sites with massive amounts of data, there is not currently a way to download database formatted data for analysis.

Pricing – Free

Back to the Usability Tools list

5. ClickTale

ClickTale

Another in the click map type recorders, ClickTale offers a very interesting twist.  ClickTale is a paid hosted service that tracks user keystrokes, mouse clicks and moves and the time it takes for users to move around a web page.

Single user sessions are saved as a movie with a large round circle around the user’s cursor so it’s easier to see.  A nice feature is the ability to show aggregated data in the form of heat maps or as reports.  The heat maps display red hot zones where most users spend longer periods, and blue or cold areas where your users spend the least amount of time.

A very nice feature is the Form Analytics tool which displays aggregate form field information.  This information includes time of field completion, the number of entries and clicks as well as which form fields have the highest abandonments, or take the longest to complete, or have the most back-tracks due to errors or confusion.

A final nice feature is the ability ClickTale provides to assist I.T. teams with finding and repairing hard to find form bugs.

Pros – All in all ClickTale is a nice recording tool for capturing and analyzing your real user data as your site visitors complete tasks and enter form information.  The ability to analyze either heat maps or aggregate data provides additional methods for evaluating the usability of a site or form.  The form analytics tools is a very helpful feature, especially for eCommere web sites.

Cons – As with other click tracking tools, ClickTale does not enable a usability research to ask the users the “why” for the actions they took (or did not take).  There is no permanent access to recordings, and extra JavaScript code is required for each page the usability researcher wishes to use ClickTracks on.  A minor but somewhat confusing issue is the broad array of pricing subscriptions and plans available.

Pricing – Can be somewhat confusing with monthly, 6 month or annual pricing among Free, Blogger, Bronze ($99/mo), Silver ($290/mo), Gold ($790/mo) and Enterprise packages.  Each comes with specific support options, number of pageviews, domains tracked, and recording history time.  The Free plan is very bare-bones and does not, for example, allow playback of all of the pageviews a user visits during a session (only the first 2).

Back to the Usability Tools list

6. Clixpy

Clixpy

Another in the quickly growing category of user movement recorders is Clixpy.  Clixpy is a very low cost tool (starts at $5 for 100 captures) which tracks what users do on a web site including mouse movements, clicks, scrolling and form inputs.  As with the other monitoring services, JavaScript code is added to the web site code, which enables Clixpy to record user movements.

Clixpy will not track form fields with input type-password but Clixpy will track everything else.  It is possible to manually add attributes for Clixpy to not log credit card numbers, but as with all such recording services caution should be used when ensuring privacy and security of sensitive user data.

Pros – The pros of Clixpy include the incredible low cost and the ease of use of the tool and Clixpy web site.

Cons – The cons include the lack of larger scale aggregate reporting that will be required of more frequently visited web sites and the inability to explore with users the “why” of what they did.

Pricing – Clixpy costs $5 for 100 recorded sessions, $10 for 200, $20 for 600 and $30 for 1,000.

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7. CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg is a popular click tracking usability tool which has the ability to display a large number of interesting data based on clicks.  These data displays include heatmaps of the more popular locations of clicks on a page, lists and overlays.  An interesting tool I find useful is Confetti, which provides user details for each click on a page, by rolling your mouse cursor over each dot that represents a user click.  CrazyEgg is easy to set up, using JavaScript which you place on each page you wish to have tracking on.

CrazyEggs reporting features capture the location of the click on the page, referrer information including search terms (handy for SEO folks too), operating system and related information.  Reports can be shared via a read-only link.  In addition, you can download the data and use it in Excel or databases.

Pros – Pretty cheap, and has a nice array of data and reports to help you visualize your click traffic.

Cons – As with the other click tracking software, CrazyEgg demonstrates the location of the click, but not why the users decided (or didn’t decide) to click.  Clicks are tracked on a single page only, so gathering session click data on multiple pages or multiple hours or days of a single user set of visits isn’t included.

Pricing – CrazyEgg has a 30 day money-back guarantee, is priced on a monthly basis: starting at $9 per month for the basic plan to $19 per month for their Standard plan, and $49 (Plus plan) to $99 (Pro plan).  As you move up in plans, you increase the number of trackable visits, and you can track more pages.

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8. Ethnio

Ethnio

Ethnio is not a data usability testing tool, instead it’s a tool usability folks can use to find and recruit real web site users for a live remote test.

Ethnio works by adding some JavaScript code to the page you wish to do the recruiting on.  It displays a survey which they call a screener to your web site visitors, asking them to participate in a brief usability test.  If a participant completes the screener and meets your requirements, you are alerted to the fact that you have a live candidate ready for testing.  From there you can use GoToMeeting or UserVue etc. to connect to your user and conduct your remote moderated test.

Pros – Ethnio solves the problem of trying to find your real web site users to participate in usability testing.

Cons – Enthnio only works if your researchers are actually ready and able to conduct the test.  Separate screen sharing services are required to actually run the test.

Pricing – First 20 recruits are free, 200 recruits is $400 and 2,000 recruits is $800.

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9. Feng-GUI.com

Feng-GUI

Feng-GUI is a very interesting usability testing tool in that it does not use real users.  Instead, it uses algorithms to simulate a real user, in this case to generate eye tracking studies.  The principle of Feng-GUI resolves around their belief that human eye movement can be replicated based on variable on the page, along with typical actions the average human makes.

To use Feng-GUI you upload an image you would like to have eye-tracking conducted on.  Feng-GUI then generates eye tracking heat maps using their artificial intelligence algorithms that predict what a human eye would when presented with the image.  Overlay heatmaps, hotspots and Gaze Saccades (the path your eye draws as it moves around the page) are presented to the usability researcher.

I like to think of Feng-GUI as being a low cost alternative to more expensive human-based eye tracking studies, but with the knowledge that you’re dealing with algorithms, not people.

Pros – Great way to have a cheap alternative to human eye tracking studies.

Cons – Feng-GUI is predictive only in the extent that the algorithm enables it – meaning you are not dealing with data from your actual users.  Images have to be uploaded, so html pages must be screen-captured and there is no interaction with web site functions.

Pricing – Free (one image & one heatmap), $50 for 50 images, $225 for 250, $400 for 500 and $700 for 1,000 images.  A web services API is also available.

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10. Five Second Test by Angry Monkeys Pty Ltd.

Five Second Test

Five Second Test is a tool that enables researchers to upload images and have people provide feedback about the image – but the people seeing the image are only provide 5 seconds to take in the image.

The five second test, because it only lasts 5 seconds, is supposed to mimic the process the typical web site visitor uses to determine what the site is about, and whether he or she will stay there, or move on.

Two versions of the five second test are offered, the first is a visual demonstration of the just the page, the other version is a click test where the researcher can ask the user to list 5 things about why they clicked.  With five second test a researcher can choose to display his or her image to the random reviewers that visit Five Second Test, or if the image is more sensitive in nature the researcher can invite select viewers to take the test.

It should be noted that Five Second Test does not include the ability to rate a reviewer’s feedback, such as is possible with Concept Feedback, also, reviews have no data about the people (if they selected Random viewers) such as their age, expertise with the web, etc.

Pros – Five Second Test is free, and it utilizes the concept of displaying an image in only 5 seconds to determine what, if anything, viewers will see and or react to.

Cons – For random viewers, there is no ability to judge each reviewer by the quality of their typical answers – nor is there information about the type of person completing the five second study.

Pricing – Free

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