Testing, testing, testing. It’s all about testing. Good usability is key to the success of any web site and web app. And sometimes, when your company has a regular staff to do this work, opinions turn in time to be very biased, and well, that’s just about normal. Iconshock wants to give you some free and commercial alternatives so you can refresh your point of view and add some cool ideas to your projects. There are many apps out there but we just selected different usability test approaches with their finest exponents, both commercial and free.

Free  Online solutions

Five Second Test

This web gives your screenshots to random users and conducts with them a series of memory and click tests, so the results are not software based, but human. Very very fast and reliable, you can even share your screenshots with friends so they can be part of the testing. We think this is the best free choice.

Feng-Gui

Ultra quick! Creates automatic heat maps based on an image you provide. It also has a commercial product with many more features. Used in conjunction with “five second test” you can obtain some pretty definitive results.

Online Commercial Solutions

Usertesting

For $126 dollars they give your website (not a screenshot) to 5 real life users, chosen accordingly to your intended market and demographics. ($561 for 20 users) Testers record video feedback while they use your site and the company delivers the video and a written report. Cheap usability testing in real life environments. Pretty good, but I won’t recommend only relying on this to achieve good usability. Besides, you can ask some friends to do the same thing for a beer!

Loop11

For $350, they offer you a similar testing approach to the one used by usertesting.com. The difference is that your projects have up to 1000 test users from all fields (friends, pro UX guys, normal users) and the reports are much more thorough. They allow you to conduct remote unmoderated tests. You create your test, invite users and voilá! you get the data. Check out their testimonials, they have IBM, Cisco, 20th century fox and other big shots.

Crazyegg.com

This is a more robust solution aimed at websites that revenue from massive traffic. To use “crazyegg” you need to include a script in your webpage, unlike the previous services listed here. They give you heat maps, click tests, overlays with click statistics, list reports, live reports and many more. They basically make reports based on everything users do with your website, like mouse movements, forms and clicking. The data is recollected among your actual users. Pro service is $99 a month and you can track up to 250.000 visitors and track 100 pages at once.

IntuitionHQ

They take a totally different approach than the previous competitors. While other services give you data upon fairly generic usability tests, (mouse movement, clicks, etc…) “intuitionhq” conducts tests based upon what exactly you want to know about your website. Why? because you make your own tests! They only provide a platform where you can build your custom tests. Ex. Click on where you think you will be able to log off? Is it easy to access our archived posts? You provide the guinea pigs. Only for $5 per test.

Userfly

Very original approach for usability testing. It does not analyze your data. For $200 a month, you embed a javascript code in your webpage and it will record the mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes of 100000 of your users. It’s pretty incredible, because, as their demo suggests, it’s just like as if you were looking over your users shoulder. With “userfly”, you become a real spy on your visitors. If your interested, they got a basic free plan that tracks 10 visitors and keeps the recordings for 30 days.

We have seen many interesting options for usability testing here. And the pricing is pretty good for what they offer. Each solution has a different approach and it just depends what do you want to know about your website. But… I must say, you always have an alternative… Whenever you dig the music or not, punks gave us an interesting lesson thirty years ago… you can always DO IT YOURSELF! If you are an organized, methodic and productive developer/designer (unlike me) you can always perform your own tests following some simple rules.

How to perform your own usability tests

Done alone or in conjunction with the above applications, this can give you valuable amount of data about your designs, showing you the right way to please visitors and users. And the best of all… it’s free! (well, almost)

1. Prepare your questions

Prepare your questionnaire ahead of time, with very specific objectives in mind. You just don’t want to have random thoughts scattered all over your moleskin. There’s a good online app out there called surveymonkey that can help you out.

Learn about your tester’s background. Inquire about their age and scholar level. Ask which are their favorite sites, and ask them where do they get their information. Do they use social networks? Where do they work? How do they meet friends? Maybe ask their income? All this info is crucial to design your user experience.

There are many things you have to specially tailor to your needs. Besides the generic info, you have to be objective based and search for info that you know is going to improve your site and will only concern you and your team. Where do you expect to find the login link? Do you prefer list posts or analysis posts? Like tutorials or freebies? Is the main logo obtrusive?… feel comfortable with our black background?, etc… you have to dig in and think what info you really need.

2. Recruit your guinea pigs.

Go to cafés. Ask your friends and family. If you are like me, ask your long list of failed relationships. Everyone’s opinion is valuable when you are recollecting data. Wanna look interesting? Ever attracted women by going to a park with a cute dog? well, you can do something similar with your website! Think of it as a lovely chow chow that you want everyone to cuddle, go to a Starbucks… to a mall with wi-fi. Anyplace is good to recruit possible users. Even a bar!

If you lack of real life social skills, or you are surgically attached to your chair, you can always look for people at craglist or a chat.

3. Perform you tests.

You can perform your tests remotely by sending the questionnaire by Email, or post a poll at your site. Or you can use Surveymonkey. Use whatever method you feel is the easiest for both you and your testers.

Perform “in situ” tests. Be there with your user and record him with a cell phone or an amateur video camera. Don’t ever tell the user what to do. Ask him why did he/she do this or that. Look at their reactions. make a screen cast of the session using software like Xscreencapture, Evernote, Camstudio or Capture Me. Take notes. make them talk more about what they feel uncomfortable about than what they like about your site.

4. Analyze your data

Organize everything. make tables. Cross-reference. Watch your recordings and learn from them Look at the users faces, you will be surprised at the feedback you will find from a smile or a slight glance. Don’t overlook anything, since all data is useful to build up a decent conclusion.

Repeat as much as necessary. Don’t let your delusions of grandeur get in the way and over test. Just like everything in life except sex, you have to find the just measure.

Ok… end of line here. Hope you can use all this info for your designing/developing advantage. Until next time!