Perceived Affordance, Usability and Online Sales:
One of the most important goals of web site usability testing is finding and fixing perceived affordance issues. You can increase your usability, conversion and thus your web site Return on Investment (ROI) by improving perceived affordance.
What’s perceived affordance? For web site owners, it’s the art and science of designing objects like ‘buy now’ buttons in such a way that your web site visitors know just by looking at it that they can click on it.
One of the most important functions of web site usability testing is to evaluate the perceived affordance of links and buttons. By testing and optimizing perceived affordance of critical objects, such as “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons, web sites can dramatically increase conversion, and thus ROI.
Definition of Perceived Affordance:
According to Don Norman, the Godfather of design and usability and the author of the book “The Design of Everyday Things,” the concept of perceived affordance is defined this way;
“The word “affordance” was originally invented by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal).
What the designer cares about is whether the user perceives that some action is possible (or in the case of perceived non-affordances, not possible).
In product design, where one deals with real, physical objects, there can be both real and perceived affordances, and the two need not be the same. In graphical, screen-based interfaces, all that the designer has available is control over perceived affordances. The computer system, with its keyboard, display screen, pointing device (e.g., mouse) and selection buttons (e.g., mouse buttons) affords pointing, touching, looking, and clicking on every pixel of the display screen.”
According to William Gaver, there are three categories of affordance:
By evaluating the design elements that communicate perceived affordance for various objects in your web site, you can determine which category an object fits, and if wrong, take steps to correct it.
Perceived Affordance is Critical for Your Web Site Success:
When you think about your web site, your ROI in fact lives or dies on your ability to successfully manipulate design to improve perceived affordance. Your web site is primarily a one-way pipe of information, the majority being visual information (with the potential for some audio). You provide the visual information, and your web site visitors consume and comprehend it (or at least try to).
Because the primary interaction that takes place on your site is one-way visual, you must be zealous in your attempts to understand and evaluate how well you are communicating perceived affordance. Testing and optimization of elements that impact perceived affordance should be your number one goal, because it directly impacts your conversion rates, and thus your web site’s ROI.
Actions your web site visitors take such as mouse clicks or typing characters, although very important, are never going to happen unless you provide clear, consistent and effective visual clues about how to take actions. You do this by continually testing and optimizing the crucial elements of your site that establish and communicate perceived affordance.
Examples of Perceived Affordance in Buttons:
Let’s examine a few examples of perceptible perceived affordance in action. In order to visually communicate that a button is clickable and will enable the site visitor to take action, it is necessary to use design to visually separate, distinguish and illuminate a function.
As demonstrated above, Amazon.com uses many design elements to generate high perceived affordance of their “Add to Shopping Cart” button, including use of:
- Strongly contrasting yellow button color
- Only use of that yellow color on the page
- Heavy outline border around button
- Round strongly contrasting icon of shopping basket
- Text in button “Add to Shopping Cart”
- Larger font for button text
- Elongated shape, round on left side, squared on right side
- Gradient fill in top of button to visually mimic 3-D shape
- Dark blue background color for surrounding box
Another example is eBay, which creates a high perceived affordance of the “Buy It Now” button.
For eBay, the “Buy It Now” button uses multiple design elements to effectively communicate perceived affordance:
- Strongly contrasting blue button color
- Only use of that blue button color on the page
- Largest sized button on page
- Text in button “Buy It Now”
- Larger font for button text
- Strong contrasting colors, white text on blue background
- Dark gray background color for surrounding box
To provide contrast, let’s examine use of design elements that appear to provide a function, but in fact do not. This is known as false affordance, and can work against web site visitors.
False Affordance:
A false affordance is an apparent affordance that has no real function. False affordance is a major contributor to lower web site conversion and lost online sales. This is because a false affordance breaks the faith a web site visitor has in the web site’s functional abilities, and causes doubt and confusion.
Example of a False Affordance:
In this example, the prominently displayed “Featured Gift” and photo of the toy seem to indicate that more information about the toy might be available by clicking, but where? Web site visitors who come across the display are left wondering, because no clear action button seems available for this toy.
A common tool many web site designers use is to make the image of the product clickable. But that is not the case here.
In fact, there is no action available, the image of the toy is not clickable, nor is the heading “Featured Gift.” There is no way to navigate to the featured toy using the visual designs offered, thus the connection with a “false affordance.”
There are many types of designs that can lead to false affordance, some of the more common being:
- Objects that look like buttons, but are not
- Photos of objects that are not links, especially if place with photos that are links
- Placing a blue outline around an image or link, yet no link is present
- Underlined text that is not a link
- Use of blue in text that is not a link
- Form data entry fields that are not active
For web site owners, false affordances are extremely damaging, and cause many more problems than simply lost clicks to a particular item.
By prominently displaying a false affordance on the home page, a web site causes damages including:
- Lost faith (visitors wonder – “is this clickable, what about this, or this?”)
- Lost focus (visitors spend more time trying to solve a navigation problem than shopping)
- Lost sales (frustrated visitors will often not complete their task)
- Lost trust (many visitors will simply leave the site – never to return)
Finding and fixing false affordances should be a high-priority job of every web site owner, especially those who own eCommerce sites – as false affordances cost lost visitors, conversion and sales.
Poor Design and Hidden Perceived Affordance:
As with false affordance, poorly designed techniqes can hurt perceived affordance and can cause major performance issues for web site owners as well. This is referred to as Hidden Affordance. In the case of poor design, visual clues that a link or function is present are not displayed as visually separate, distinguished and illuminated.
Example of poor perceived affordance:
The example above demonstrates a site that provides web site visitors with a display of products available for purchase. However, the function associated with “Checkout Now” – in this case a link to an online order form – is poorly displayed because it has minimal visual clues as to it’s function, and thus has low perceived affordance.
Among the perceived affordance problems with the “Checkout Now” button are:
- No button shape around the text
- Yellow text color is not a strong contrast against the white page
- No underline when mouse rolls over text
- Text in button visually close to “Back to results text”
- Missing a background color to call attention to location
- Upper left location not typically associated with ‘continue’ action
Improve Perceived Affordance with Testing:
So how do you improve your web site objects perceived affordance – with testing and re-testing. There are four primary types of testing that can be used to analyze and optimize perceived affordance. They are:
- Expert Usability Review – Also called a “heuristic review.” This review uses expert analysis of interaction devices such as buttons, links and related functions against industry standards and best practices. The best form of an expert usability review is to receive several, since each expert might focus on unique aspects that grouped together form a better picture of what needs to be improved and why.
- Usability Testing – Using 1-on-1 moderated testing, a web site owner can quickly find problems with task flows for critical tasks. These often involve issues with perceived affordance. Because usability testing only needs about 7 or so participants, and because it uses real web site visitors, and can be done very quickly and for low cost, usability testing is a great way to find issues with perceived affordance. It is the only method a web site owner can use to determine the “why” of an actual web site visitor’s behavior.
- A/B Testing – Two different versions of a button, link or related object can be tested on your web site at the same time using a traffic split. 50% of the traffic goes to the version that has the “A” version (the original version of the object usually) and 50% to the new test “B” version. After enough statistically significant results are captured, a winner can be picked based on interaction rate. A/B testing is pretty reliable, assuming enough traffic is present. However, it won’t tell you the “why” of the visitor behavior, and of course it might negatively impact your conversion if the “B” test version is worse than the original version.
- Multivariate Testing – For sites with large amounts of traffic, multiple versions of objects can all be tested at the same time. This allows for rapid analysis and iteration of the best possible combination of elements. The downside to multivariate testing is it needs lots and lots of traffic to establish statistically significant results. In addition, as with A/B testing the “why” of visitor behavior won’t be know, only which combination of elements performs the best.
Conclusion, Increase Your Usability and Website ROI with Perceived Affordance
Perceived affordance is critical to your web site success, and to your conversion and ROI. Perceived affordance determines how well your interaction object designs communicate their function and use to your web site visitors. Poor perceived affordance hurts your web site interaction, conversion and sales and results in lower ROI. You can increase your ROI by conducting testing and optimization with the interaction objects on your web site. An excellent way to identify potential issues and optimizations of perceived affordance is with usability testing. Continual testing and re-testing ensures you are maximizing your potential usability, perceived affordance and thus ROI of your web site.
For more information about maximizing your web site’s perceived affordance and ROI contact me.
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My big list of 24 Web Site Usability Testing Tools
In the past few years, there has been massive growth in new and exciting cheap or free web site usability testing tools, so here’s my list of 24 tools you may need to use from time to time.
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:
- A Paper and Pencil
- Concept Feedback
- Chalkmark
- Clickheat
- ClickTale
- Clixpy
- Crazy Egg
- Ethnio
- Feng-GUI
- Five Second Test
- Feedback Army
- Loop11
- Mechanical Turk
- Morae
- Open Hallway
- Silverback
- Simple Mouse Tracking
- Usabilla
- UserFly
- UserTesting.com
- UserVue
- Google Analytics
- Google Website Optimizer
- Website Grader
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
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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.
Pros – Get 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
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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.
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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
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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).
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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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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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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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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 generage 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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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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Feedback Army
Another in the reviewer usability testing tools, Feedback Army enables researchers to share URLs with reviewers, who then make comments or answer questions about the web site or design. Because Feedback Army enables a URL to be shared, the reviewer can explore the web site – an advantage over Concept Feedback, which only displays an image.
The researcher can post questions about the web site or image, and then capture the responses back. There are no guarantees however about the quality or quantity of responses. To its credit, Feedback Army provides the ability to replace a bad comment with a new comment, and offers refunds if the researcher feels the comments were particularly unhelpful or off-topic.
Researchers can order 10, 25 or 50 responses per study.
There are other reviewer services springing up to offer Feedback Army some competition, including; 3rdPartyFeedback.com and EasyUsability.com, among others.
Pros – Easy and fast way to gather reviews about web sites or images. Pricing is very economical.
Cons – As with other services, the review quantity and quality can vary, and the researcher does not have the ability to follow-up with reviewers regarding their comments as they are exploring the site.
Pricing – $10 for 10 reviews, $23 for 25 and $40 for 50.
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Loop11
Loop11 is a unique usability testing tool in that it allows unmoderated remote usability testing using actual users. A researcher provides a simple task to a user, for example, finding a particular type of gift book for a relative on a book site, then tracking user interaction. The data is presented via reports of task completion rate, time on task, common fail pages, paths and a nice detailed path analysis for each users.
Loop11 does not require software to be loaded on a web site. As is mentioned on the Loop11 web site, this means remote unmoderated usability testing can be done on your competitor’s web site! Because real users are being tested, Loop11’s results will be accurate, or at least as accurate as the real users are.
With Loop11 a researcher can have up to 1,000 participants per test project. Each test project costs a $350.
Pros – Simple to use with no code required, provides real data from real users, can be used on any web site.
Cons – Unmoderated means not being able to ask the users questions about their decisions, the flat $350 fee might be high for researchers only needing to test 5-10 users.
Pricing – Flat $350 fee for each user testing project.
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Mechanical Turk
Mechanical Turk is Amazon’s human intelligence tasks service (HITs) expert review group. Reviewers join Mechanical Turk and volunteer to complete tasks. The reviewers are paid for each completed task.
For usability testing, a researcher could post a task of trying to find a book as a gift for a relative on a book site (as an example) and then receive the feedback from the reviewers as to how easy or difficult the task was to complete. As with the other reviewer services, there is no ability to ask the reviewer follow-up questions as they go through the tasks.
Other services mentioned for usability testing use the services of Mechanical Turk, but as mentioned these services do much of the leg-work for the researcher, meaning using Mechanical Turk directly is cheaper, but requires a bit more effort on the part of the researcher.
Pros – Provides fast and low cost reviewer network to gather usability feedback.
Cons – The researcher will be required to put a bit more effort into this service vs. others mentioned, requires an Amazon.com account for processing and payment. Quality will vary depending on the reviewer that chooses to complete the task.
Pricing – Very low cost, prices vary depending on the number of tasks a reviewer is asked to do, and the time the reviewer may take to do the tasks.
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14. Morae by Techsmith
Morae
Morae is a complete suite of usability testing tools for the Windows OS (a Mac version of Morae is not available), including a Recorder module which captures all user interaction (including voice, video, keystrokes, mouse movements, screen action, etc.), an Observer module for displaying sessions to remove observers, and the Manager module which is used to analyze, edit and package the resulting usability test.
Morae is sophisticated, and can do an amazing amount of research activities, which means there is a bit of a learning curve to actually using it. It’s not that it’s particular hard, it’s just that it takes time, and without reading the instructions researchers may not be aware of the full capabilities of Morae.
Morae is a software package that is priced at $1,495 for the Bundle of all modules, or $1,295 for the Manager module. The Recorder and Observer modules can be purchased separately at $195 each. Webcams, microphones and high-end video cards are necessary to record users and edit the resulting videos.
Pros – Morae is an entire usability testing lab in a box. Morae has sophisticated capture and analysis tools that make it extremely useful for usability researchers.
Cons – Morae is expensive, although discounts for students or educational institutions are offered. Morae is Windows only, Mac OS is not supported.
Pricing – Bundle is $1,495, or separately $1,295 for Manager, $195 for Observer and $195 for Recorder. Discounts are available for certain groups.
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OpenHallway
Open Hallway is a browser-based screen and audio capture device that enables usability researchers to conduct usability testing sessions remotely, then play them back later for analysis or demonstration.
Because Open Hallway is browser-based, there is no code for the researcher or the user to download.
Open Hallway is a very easy to use. Test recordings are located on OpenHallway’s servers, and can be downloaded for editing and further analysis. Only Premium account customers can download the videos (mp4 format only) for editing purposes.
Videos can be up to 10 minutes long, which might be a problem for some usability testing which might go longer. The makers of OpenHallway suggest that tasks be limited in scope so that the 10 minute video recording length won’t cause a problem.
The number of videos you can record and store depend on the plan you purchase. The videos are stored on OpenHallway servers, so if your account is closed all videos will be deleted.
There are a few minor issues of note with OpenHallway, for example the fairly common set up of using multiple monitors is not supported (the suggestion is to do testing on the primary monitor, which will be recorded). Likewise, high resolutions monitors might cause visibility issues when played back, and audio won’t be captured of the user does not have a microphone. IE 6.0 is not supported.
Pros – A very easy to use and easy to set up browser-based tool for capturing usability sessions remotely using screen capture and audio.
Cons – Only Premium customers can download video, maximum 10 minute recording time, not all monitor set-ups or browsers supported.
Pricing – $49 per month Basic (3 hours of recording storage), $99 per month Plus (10 hours storage) and $199 per month Premium (30 hours storage).
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Silverback
Silverback is a Mac-based software tool that enables the recording, analysis, editing and playback of usability testing sessions.
Silverback is $49.95, and a certain percentage of profits go to save the Gorillas.
Because of the low cost yet easy ability to record usability testing sessions, Silverback is a good usability testing tool for the office and the road, and completely replaces a more traditional and far more expensive usability testing lab.
Pros – Easy to use, very nice price usability recording software for Macs.
Cons – Sadly, Silverback is Mac only.
Pricing – Free for 30 days, $49.95 one-time payment.
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Simple Mouse Tracking
Simple Mouse Tracking is free click tracking software that can be used to capture and analyze the clicks users make while visiting a web page. Simple Mouse Tracking includes the ability to replay a real-time session, and tracks all mouse movements on an html page. Data is captured in a MySQL database for access.
Simple Mouse Tracking, as with the other click tracking usability testing tools, does not allow the researcher to ask questions of the user as he or she navigates the web site. However the ability to track hundreds or thousands of click streams will help a researcher better understand the existing navigation paths on the site.
Pros – It is a free tool with support of most browsers. Easy to use with nice real-time and database analysis of mouse movements and clicks.
Cons – Like the other click-tracking tools, Simple Mouse Tracking will not enable a research to ask the user why they are clicking, or not clicking, on page elements.
Pricing – Free
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18. Usabilla by Usabilla B.V.
Usabilla
Usabilla is a free (beta) unmoderated remote usability tool that enables researchers to collect feedback about a web page or image from users. In addition, Usabilla tracks where users click, which enables both click-tracking information to be captured, as well as qualitative data (such as; ‘please click on the part of the web page you like best’). Not only is click information provided, but researches can enable ‘notes’ so that users can share information about their opinions – such as why they clicked on a certain button, or what they expect to find next.
Usabilla then provides the researcher data results as visual reports of heatmaps or scatterplots of clicks. Data is also available for download as PDF, CSV, TXT or XML files for further analysis. In this regard, Usabilla can be used for three usability purposes; as a reverse card sort tool, as a click-stream recorder and as a qualitative tool for gathering user opinions and feedback.
Pros – Enables easy to set up and administer remote un-moderated usability testing. Can capture both quantitative and qualitative data. Currently in Beta it is free for usage for up to 500 participants.
Cons – As with other unmoderated usability testing tools does not enable the researcher to ask follow-up questions while the user is conducting the test.
Pricing – Free beta.
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UserFly
UserFly is an easy to use unmoderated remote usability tool that captures a user’s mouse movements, clicks and other screen interactions and enables researchers to play them back for analysis. With UserFly, a researcher places JavaScript on the web page or pages that he or she wants to test, then records the user’s actions, including form interactions. Data captured includes the page or pages the user interacts with, time on page (or task), and related data such as text entry, mouse clicks and scrolling.
Recordings are stored on the UserFly servers, and are stored for a maximum of 30, 60 or 90 days. Various monthly pricing plans are available which vary depending on number of captures per month and storage time of the captures. The more expensive plans offer a greater number of captures per month, and longer storage time for each capture. As with other unmoderated remote usability tests UserFly does not offer the ability interact with the user as they are going through the web page.
There are a few notes researchers should be mindful of, including the fact that this tool does not work with AJAX calls. However, on a positive note, coupled with a webcam and/or call-in number this can easily become part of a useful moderated usability testing tool.
Pros – Easy to use and inexpensive (or free) screen capture device.
Cons – Captures cannot be permanently stored and aggregate behavioral data is not available. No ability to interact with users as they are being recorded.
Pricing – $200 per month for the Enterprise Plan (10,000 captures per month and 90 day storage, https supported), $50 per month for the Business plan (1,000 captures per month and 60 day storage, https supported), $25 per month Pro plan (1,000 captures per month, 60 day storage), $10 per month Basic plan (100 captures per month, 30 day storage) and Free plan (10 captures per month, 30 day storage).
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UserTesting.com
UserTesting.com is a panel-based usability testing service that provides feedback from Testers regarding questions you ask them about your web site. Included with each test is a Flash video of the tester talking about their interaction with the site as they browse it. In addition to the video, a written summary by the tester explains what they liked or did not like about the site. Tests are normally done within one hour, and thus are quite fast.
Each test costs $29, however there is a pre-pay quantity discount available.
To conduct a test, the researcher enters basic information about the typical user that might use the web site, including gender, age, income and computer expertise. Optional technology requirements (such as requiring only Mac OS systems be tested) can also be added. UserTesting.com then provides at tester that most closely matchs your typical user profile.
A nice feature is the ability to rate each tester, which helps provide the researcher with some quality information about the feedback received from the tester. UserTesting.com does offer the ability for researchers to use their own testers, instead of the panelists, the cost is the same ($29 for each test – users who participate are paid $10 by UserTesting.com).
Pros – Fast and affordable panel-based usability review. Includes video of tester walking through the site, plus written summary.
Cons – No ability to ask follow-up questions while the tester is conducting the test. Panelists may not be an appropriate fit for niche audiences.
Pricing – $29 per test, prepayment savings available for larger quantity buys (10 tests or more).
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21. UserVue by TechSmith
UserVue
UserVue, by TechSmith (makers of Morae usability testing software) is a web-based remote moderated usability testing tool that enables researchers to connect, interact with and record users remotely. UserVue’s VoIP feature is available in the United States and Canada only.
Unlike other remote usability testing tools, UserVue enables the all-important one-on-one interaction between a usability moderator and a test participant via phone (or chat), and includes the ability for remote observers to watch the test as it happens.
An additional nice feature is UserVue recordings can be analyzed and edited using Morea’s Manager tool, if you have already purchased it. UserVue is a subscription-based model that costs $149 per month for access by a single moderator.
Pros – Easy to use and cheap remote moderated usability testing tool that enables and records one-on-one sessions, including the ability for observers to watch the tests.
Cons – UserVue is not available for participants with dial-up internet connections. VoIP phone connections are available for the United States and Canada only.
Pricing – A single seat subscription is $149 per month.
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Honorable Mention – Usability testing tools
Although these technically might not be classified as usability tools by some, each of these three tools provides a wealth of data about a web site that can and should be analyzed by a usability researcher.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an easy to use, free, and very handy usability testing tool that provides a comprehensive set of web site data tracking and analysis tools. Usability researchers seeking to understand usage information for a web site can use the reports to identify behavior, trends, and any red-flag issues. Data includes user sessions, visits, page views and much more.
Because it’s free and provides a good set of web data, Google Analytics should be used by any web site owner that does not already have a web analytics tool. Usability researchers who want to understand existing user behaviors can use this tool to gather a great amount of usage statistics and reports. A nice feature for eCommerce web sites is the ability to identify conversion events and pages, which will provide an easy to use yet powerful set of data around eRetail lead flow, order-flow and sales statistics.
However, as with all other web analysis tools Google Analytics will not identify the ‘why’ of user behavior (that’s left to follow-up 1-on-1 usability testing sessions).
Pros – Free comprehensive web metrics reporting tool.
Cons – Data does not provide the ‘why’ of user behavior.
Pricing – Free
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Google Website Optimizer
Google Website Optimizer is a free A/B and Multivariate testing tool that enables usability testing of various ‘what if’ scenarios. For example, using Google Website Optimizer a usability researcher can test two versions of an online order form, to determine if the usability improvements made to the form really did improve conversion rates.
The way Google Website Optimizer works is simple and easy to set up. The usability researcher can set up experiments, as they are called, in which two different versions of a web site page can run at the same time. HTML code is provided which will be added to your existing web page code. Then, with the test turned on the traffic to that page will be split, 50% of traffic going to page ‘A,’ and 50% to page ‘B.’ After enough visits have been recorded the performance of the two pages can be analyzed and a winner selected using the simple reports that are part of the package.
Because it’s free, easy to use and has real users conducting real tasks Google Website Optimizer is a very handy tool for conducting testing on web sites. As with all web site analysis tools however the ‘why’ of the user behavior may not be known, and further exploration via on-on-one usability testing sessions may be required.
Pros – Free easy to set up and use A/B or Multivariate testing tool.
Cons – Won’t identify the ‘why’ of user behavior.
Pricing – Free
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Website Grader
Website Grader is a free and handy SEO usability tool that can help researchers identify issues in a web site that might need to be addressed. Website Grader analyzes 22 key indicators of SEO success, including on-page and off-page factors.
The reason Website Grader is helpful for usability researchers is because usability changes to the structure or content of a web site will impact SEO components. Thus, when making usability changes to a site it’s a good idea to check those changes with Website Grader, or related tools that evaluate SEO health of a web site.
Pros – Free and fast SEO website grader tool.
Cons – SEO factors only, does not provide user behavioral data.
Pricing – Free
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Conclusion – 24 Usability Testing Tools
As mentioned, the recent increase in the number of low-cost or free usability testing tools has lead to exciting new opportunities for usability researchers. Now more than ever in the past usability testing can be conducted easily, quickly and efficiently – without the expensive travel or facility charges that used to be required.
And because of the great variety of usability tools now available, usability researchers have unprecedented opportunities to evaluate, analyze and make recommendations for web site improvements. This benefits the web site owners, the usability researcher and the users, which is truly a win-win-win!
If you’ve not seen your favorite usability testing tool listed above leave a comment – so that we can all learn more about the latest and greatest usability testing tools.
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The 3 Pillars of Successful Web Sites
There are three pillars that comprise the foundation of any successful web site, including your web site. For your web site to be effective it must perform well before the visit (at the awareness stage), during the visit (the evaluation phase) and during the finding, ordering or buying phase (the action phase).
I call these the 3 Pillars of Success, take any one of these three pillars away and your website will not perform to its full potential:
The 3 Pillars of Web Site Success
To be successful, your web site must be:
- Findable – SEO, paid advertising, links, quality content
- Trustable – Persuasion, emotion and trust
- Usable – Usability, web metrics
1. Findable – SEO, Paid Advertising, Links, Quality Content:
For your web site to be effective, it must be Findable. This includes using search engine optimization best practices to ensure the site can be found and indexed by search engines. This is a critical and often overlooked component of web site success.
“If Google can’t find your site, your site does not exist.”
SEO guru Bruce Clay and Susan Esparza wrote an excellent book detailing how to perform search engine optimization: “Search Engine Optimization All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies.” Applying search engine optimization best practices means your web site is easy for search engines to find, index and qualify from a quality standpoint.
Being findable also includes paid advertising with tools such as email, SEM, using Pay Per Click or Pay for Performance online advertising media, impression based ads and related online marketing tools such as affiliate networks and social media conversations. Traditional advertising also applies, including radio, TV, direct mail and more.
Another component of being Findable is using a good quality linking strategy and set of tactics. Remember that the web (internet) is exactly like a spider web, in that spiders use interlinked threads to create the structure of their web – and to enable navigating quickly and efficiently to any area in the web they need to go.
So too the internet uses connected threads of information to link similar topics and concepts. The links to your site on the internet is the structure and the navigation system – which in this case is used by all of your web site visitors, including the all-important search engines. The more high-quality links to your web site, the more Findable you are.
Finally, the last, but perhaps most important element of being Findable is having high quality content on your web site. Your site must be worthy of being found, which means it must provide high-quality information that is helpful and useful.
Don’t underestimate the power of other web sites (even competitors!) linking or pointing to your high quality content as a powerful mechanism for your web site being found.
Findable tools:
- SEO – Easy for search engines to find & navigate
- SEM – Advertising where your prospects are
- Paid Media – Pay for performance including affiliates
- Social Media – Connected conversations
- Links – Highways to your site
- High-quality Unique Content – Worthy of being found
2. Trustable- Using Persuasion, Emotion and Trust to Influence Behavior
Once you have web site visitors, you must influence them to take action – this is the Trustable component. To influence your visitor’s decisions and get them to commit (order, buy, contact you, whatever your web site success metric is) they must trust you and your web site.
By utilizing the science of persuasion to optimize the content, graphics, positioning and related elements of your web site, you will be influencing your web site visitor’s behavior. Done well, this makes your site more Trustable, believable and will influence more of your visitors to take more actions.
Human Factors International calls this PET; for Persuasion, Emotion and Trust and offers persuasive techniques courses to teach you how to design using persuasive methods.
Trustable and the Psychology of Persuasion
A leading expert in the field of Persuasion and how to influence people is Robert Cialdini, former Professor of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University.
Cialdini’s study of psychology and how influence is used to change human behavior resulted in a popular book, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.”
In essence, his research defined 6 elements of influence that can be manipulated to persuade and influence people’s behavior. Using these elements on your web site effectively will enable you to influence your web site visitor’s behavior, resulting in more actions and thus more web site profit.
Trustable Tools – Cialdini’s 6 elements of persuasion and influence:
- Reciprocity – People have a tendency to return a favor. If I scratch your back, you’ll scratch my back, or as in LinkedIn, if I give you a recommendation you’ll most likely give me one.
- Commitment and Consistency – When a person commits, either in written or audio form, he or she will be far more likely to follow-through with their commitment. Once we commit, we seek to fulfill that commitment (some call it honor) because failing to do so causes us cognitive dissonance – which is when our actions do not match our desired goal. As an example, agreeing to quit smoking is a commitment which if later broken, causes us ill feelings about ourselves (cognitive dissonance).
- Social Proof – All of us are to a certain extent followers, if you see people around you suddenly start running in one direction, it’s highly likely you’ll start running too. Amazon uses social proof very effectively with their “People who bought this item also bought…”
- Authority – Authority figures such as police or firemen are obeyed because you have built-in authority following tendencies. Even when you may know an order is wrong, or goes against your beliefs, you are likely to follow the order – consider the disaster that was Enron as an example of following authority figures.
- Liking – The odds are your friends can easily influence you to do things that a stranger or acquaintance could not do. Pyramid marketing schemes like Amway are founded on this principle; that your friend can influence you and a group of others to buy products that a stranger at your door could never do.
- Scarcity – Limited time offers, limited quantities or other forms of scarcity have a tendency to cause you to take action. An example of this being the special sales that occur for only a few hours early in the morning the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S., causing large numbers of shoppers to stand in lines waiting for stores to open at unlikely times like 4 or 5 AM – something they would normally never do.
3. Usable – Applying usability and metrics analysis
Once Trust and a desire for action have been instilled in your web site visitor, the 3rd pillar – Usability comes into play. Usability means making the tasks of finding things, ordering or buying on your web site as easy and simple as possible.
You must apply usability best practices to make it as easy and fast as possible to take action, and complete the transaction or ordering or purchasing with no errors or confusion. Usability best practices are applied at this point to make sure task flows have minimal problems.
Usability testing of the order flow is crucial, anything that interferes or causes user confusion must be eliminated, else abandonments and lost sales. Usability testing of the rest of the site is also important, if your web site visitors have trouble getting to the order flow – there is no order flow.
The usability author Steve Krug wrote a book that defines the goal – “Don’t Make Me Think.”
Put simply, make it brain-dead simple for your web site visitors to accomplish their tasks, especially the tasks of ordering or buying from your web site.
Web metrics is the other tool that is required to find and address any usability issues. Tracking critical KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) as well as funnel abandonments, time-on-task, error rates and related performance indicators will point to places of poor or under-performing tasks.
An excellent source for information about metrics and analysis is Avinash Kaushik– “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day.” But just tracking is not enough – the analysis of the metrics must lead to follow-up actions, otherwise there’s no point in tracking the metrics. And this leads us into my next point…
A final note – Testing
In no event should you consider the above 3 pillars to be one-time only events. It is critical that on-going testing be conducted, including methods such as A/B testing and multivariate testing to try new ways to make it easier for your web site visitors to become customers.
An excellent resource for further information about A/B and multivariate testing is Bryan Eisenberg’s “Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer” which although focused on Google’s A/B tool can be applied to any web site tool for testing purposes.
Conclusion – 3 Pillars of Successful Web sites
For your web site to be successful, it must have the 3 pillars, and must do these better than the competition. To be successful, your web site must be:
- Findable – SEO, paid advertising, links, quality content
- Trustable – Persuasion, emotion and trust
- Usable – Usability, web metrics
The continuous process of evaluating, testing and optimizing these 3 pillars is what separates the successful (and profitable) web sites from the unsuccessful web sites.
For more information about the 3 pillars of web site success, or for an evaluation of your web site’s 3 pillars, just contact me. As a consultant I’m glad to help you increase your web site profits by evaluating and recommending improvements to your 3 pillars.
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