10 Qualitative Tools to Improve Your Website
If you run or manage a website, you probably have experience with a web analytics package (like Google Analytics). These tools are great at answering the quantitative questions, the “what?” questions that every good webmaster should ask themselves. Questions like, “How many visitors did I have last month?”, “How many conversions?” and so on. However, they aren’t so great at giving you qualitative insight, the “why?” questions that are just as important. Questions like, “Why is my bounce rate so high?” and “Why are conversion rates so low?”.
The list below represents a compilation of some of the best qualitative tools out there, all of which you can start using to improve your website today. These tools will help you understand how users interact with your site and, most importantly, why they act the way that they do.
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Qualitative Tools to Improve Your Website
This list is certainly not comprehensive, nor is it meant to be. However, it is meant to give you a sampling of the wide variety of qualitative tools available. So what are you waiting for? Pick one from the list that you haven’t used before and give it a try, I guarantee you’ll discover a new way to improve your site.
01. Concept Feedback
The Rundown: Concept Feedback is a brand new community for designers, developers and marketers. Members can upload a concept (a website, logo, advertisement and more), specify an objective and start receiving constructive, actionable feedback from other members. A system of reputation points keeps users honest and helps prioritize advice. Sensitive concepts may also be posted privately for client or co-worker review. Best of all, it’s free!
The Benefit: Getting a second opinion on your work is never a bad idea. Concept Feedback hosts an active community with a lot of talented members willing to give you quality advice. Oftentimes, the reviews spark new ideas and provide a unique perspective that can help you improve your projects. The interface is easy to use and rather addicting!
02. Userfly
The Rundown: Userfly gives you the ability to watch videos of real users on your website. By adding a single line of JavaScript to your code, you can see every mouse movement and click your visitors make. The interface is easy to use and well designed. You can try it for free, but you’re limited to 10 captures per month. Basic plans start at $10 per month.
The Benefit: While watching videos of your users may seem a little creepy at first, it can provide you with insights that you would never have come up with using a quantitative analytics package. The first time I used it, I noticed a user get stuck on a page with a bad link. His mouse wandered back and forth until he finally abandoned ship. Needless to say, I quickly corrected the issue.
03. Five Second Test
The Rundown: Just like it sounds, Five Second Test is a “simple online usability test that helps you identify the most prominent elements of your user interface”, according to Angry Monkeys, the founding company out of Melbourne, Australia. Once you’ve posted a visual, random visitors can take part in a test where they are asked to write down the top 5 things they remember from your piece after only 5 seconds.
The Benefit: The concept is great, and the tool is easy to use and very simple. If you get enough people to take your test, you start to see some interesting patterns, including what people noticed most, and perhaps more importantly, what they didn’t. The only problem is, after 45 days, I only had 12 results. This could stem from a lack of users, or an overabundance of concepts. So, if you do try this tool (and I recommend it – it’s free!), make sure to take advantage of the invite tools to give your concept more visibility and better results.
04. Usabilla
The Rundown: Usabilla is a nice tool that allows you to collect feedback on wireframes, mockups or webpages. Participants point and click to share their opinion using markers and notes. Usabilla provides visual feedback as well as the reports and statistics to analyze the results. In their own words, “Usabilla provides you insight in the attitude and opinion of your users.” Although it is currently in beta, it’s also free, so get it while it’s hot!
The Benefit: The great thing about Usabilla is that it provides visual feedback. The tool is easy to use and administer, plus you can customize the questions asked based on your needs. One drawback is that, like Five Second Test, you are required to invite your own participants to provide feedback. If your network is relatively small, you may not be able to come up with the results you’re looking for.
05. Loop11
The Rundown: Loop11 is an online tool for gathering unmoderated usability testing. In a nutshell, the system is an overlay on your website which allows you to present specific tasks on your website to participants. For example, you might say, “Find the contact information on this website”. The user can then navigate the site and either select “Task Completed” or “Abandoned”. Reporting tools give you the ability to see statistics like task completion rate, time per task and most common navigation path. Sound valuable? It sure is, but it also comes with a $350 price tag. Fortunately you can try it once for free.
The Benefit: Loop11 provides the context that both Userfly and ClickTale lack, however, by its nature, participants must be invited and are not live visitors. Despite that, Loop11 helps you understand typical behavior on your website and is great for improving navigation and conversion paths. If nothing else, give the free trial a spin and see what you can discover about your site and how people use it. What you find may surprise you.
06. UserTesting.com
The Rundown: Like Loop11, UserTesting.com provides unmoderated usability testing, except this time they provide the users. The premise is simple, you provide the demographic you’re looking for, the number of users you would like and what tasks you want them to perform on your site. When the testing is over, you can access videos (usually 15-20 minutes each -watch a sample) that allow you to watch and listen to the participants, as well as read a written summary describing the problems they found. Prices start at $29 for a single user.
The Benefit: UserTesting.com is great because it makes live user testing affordable. I recently used it on one of my websites and came across some interesting insights that I would have otherwise overlooked. It’s not fully disclosed as to how they find their participants, but fortunately they provide a one-year money-back guarantee.
07. Crazy Egg
The Rundown: CrazyEgg is an advanced heatmap tool. For those of you unfamiliar with heatmaps, they provide a visual representation of where your visitors are clicking. Over time, you start to see how your users are interacting with your site. With CrazyEgg, you add some JavaScript to your website and setup a test for a specific page on your website for a defined amount of time. Once the test is complete, you can view the page in a variety of formats, including overlay, confetti, list and heatmap (see a demo). Basic plan starts at $9/month which includes 10,000 visits across 10 different pages.
The Benefit: Unlike the heatmap offered in Google Analytics, CrazyEgg shows each and every unique click on your page. It also allows you to segment clicks by traffic source, giving you some powerful information. The best thing about a visual is that you can come to an educated conclusion quickly, without wading through data and numbers. I was able to make some minor, but important, changes to my homepage after just a few minutes in CrazyEgg. So whether you use CrazyEgg or not, you should give heatmaps a chance.
08. Kampyle
The Rundown: Kampyle is a small tab that sits at the edge of each web page, allowing you to collect, analyze and manage your website visitor’s feedback. The feedback form is easy to use and its simple structure lets you organize feedback in to various categories, like bugs, suggestions, compliments and site content. Real time reports let you analyze the data and a built-in response system makes it easy to respond to customer inquiries. The free package includes 1 form and 50 items. Basic packages start at $99 per month.
The Benefit: Whether you are interested in actively administering usability tests or not, Kampyle is a passive tool that gives your users the opportunity to provide feedback on each page of your site. With Kampyle’s reporting tools, you are able to get feedback 24/7 from real visitors. Having it present on every page gives you a better understanding of your website, it’s bright spots, as well as needed improvements. Unfortunately, for those of you with a pretty website, the large orange tab might not be a welcome addition.
09. ClickTale
The Rundown: Like Userfly, ClickTale gives you the ability to watch videos of real users on your website. However, ClickTale also provides a number of extra features, including heat maps, link analytics and form analytics. The reporting tools are impressive, and go in to great detail, sometimes more than you need. While they do offer a free plan, paid subscriptions start at $99 per month.
The Benefit: One drawback, and common complaint about both Userfly and ClickTale, is the lack of context (meaning audio or user intent). While it would be ideal to understand why a user chose the path that they did, something is better than nothing. In the end, ClickTale provides a lot of bang for the buck if you can take advantage of the data it provides.
10. Google Website Optimizer
The Rundown: Google Website Optimizer (GWO) is a free website testing and optimization tool that lets you test and optimize site content and design. Upload a few variations of a web page and GWO will serve them in an alternating pattern to your visitors. Behind the scenes, GWO’s reporting tools are monitoring which combinations lead to the highest conversion rates. At the end of the test, you’ll have a definitive result, allowing you to continually optimize your designs and improve site performance.
The Benefit: While GWO may not be a purely qualitative tool, it should be one of the most important in your toolbelt. Using some of the tools listed above, you can come to better conclusions about which designs and layouts should work best, but GWO provides a real-life litmus test. GWO takes the guesswork out of design and gives you a virtual laboratory to test your assumptions.
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Those are some very useful and helpful tools, thanks for sharing them! I’ve used ClickTale and CrazyEgg before for testing various aspects of my sites and blogs, but I had not seen several of the others. Thanks a ton
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you might also want to take a look at http://www.pagealizer.com landing page analysis tool.
really helping tools for improve our e-business. thanks
Very Helpful tool thanks
Hi! You should also check Web Log Storming, an interactive desktop log analyzer. It’s different than other similar tools, as it allows to literary browse through statistics, change filters “on-the-fly” and to drill-down to the level of individual visitors.
I might be biased, but seriously, once you try it (free for 30 days), you might find other well-known web analytics tools poor and uninformative, some would even say: useless.
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One thing I don’t get, userfly gives you 100 recordings a for $10 a month, while clicktale gives you 400 a month FOR FREE!!
Bit of a no-brainer…
Thanks for sharing
Very nice post indeed! Thanks for collecting and putting them up here. Bookmarked.
voted for this in reddit. really like the link, but above all others, a good statistics service is much needed!
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Thanks for including Kampyle in the list.
Kampyle integrates with Google Analytics (via API) to allow our customers one accumulative view of both “what” and “why”at the same place. You can read more about it here: http://blog.kampyle.com/post_332.
Excellent list, thanks for compiling.
Shared on facebook and twitter
I tried out Usabilla. Really cool tool! I’m going to test it out with my new client overseas. Should be a simple way to receive feedback. Thanks for the tip on the program. Great post!
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Thanks for sharing such a good collection of tools with there nice explanation .
Those are some great tools. It’s always important to have a quality check in addition to looking at your numbers. Great post.
Great list. I will take a look at them and sign up for your feed.
So I wonder if we could take an of these scripts and run them as load tests or automated regression tests. hmm
Troy
thanks for sharing. really very helpful tools to optimize website or a blog.
Nice article.
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Great list of tools here. Thanks for posting this.
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Testing the usability of your site is one of the smartest things you can do. Usability involves making a website’s interface easier to use and simpler to understand, so that the user’s experience is as enjoyable as possible.Very helpful post. It is a very important aspect of web development process but due to less budget or knowledge people ignore the usability.
These are some great tools. Thanks for putting them up.
Brilliant set of resources! thanks for sharing
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Nice list!
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We have just released (quietly) http://www.intuitionhq.com – easy and quick usability testing. And it’s a great way to engage your clients stakeholders in the design process
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thanks, great tools.
Thanks so much for the very useful collection,I tried Userfly very, useful for every web developer.Recommended it
Excellent list of web analytics tools here. A few I’ve heard of before, but want to look into usabilla and usertesting.com
Usability is key to engaging and converting visitors. Thanks for putting this together.
-Travis
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Good list! For more unique information about your visitors try http://www.beencounter.com With beencounter you can know if your visitors have been to your competitors site and even act upon it.
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Great post. You might also want to add Fast-Feedback.com and GetSatisfaction.com to the list.
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If you truly want to improve your website use Getingate’s Web commenting tool. This is the new generation of commenting tools. The tool interfaces with facebook allowing your users to publish the comments they leave on your website on their facebook wall – which increases your website exposure. In addition, the tool advertises your website in all the other websites using this tool. Compared to that, Disqus and all others are just old school.
“Concept Feedback” posted in this article is definitely one of the best tool to get close to customers needs. Thanks
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Another good way to promote your website in social networks is to use our Social Web Commenting tool. See a short presentation here: http://www.getingate.com/Tour.aspx
Using our Social Web Commenting tool, we connect your website to social networks and promote it using viral marketing. The tool is completely FREE.
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These tools are amazing – I plan to try out a few of them.
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Really freat collection so I’ve made it a digg!
thanks thanks thanks!
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Great usability testing tools list, thanks! I would recommend not also to test already made website but also to test the changes you think you have to do using HTML prototypes. There are many tools to do that but I’d like to recommend Justinmind Prototyper (http://www.justinmind.com) that also export to HTML so it can be test by the tools you mentioned in this post.
Thanks for this excellent information
I have seen valuable content about internet business here and hope this topic will be popular day by day as it is opportunity for online income.
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Thank you for sharing. These tools are very helpful.
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Great article!
It’s nice to see collections of useful tools in improving website.
Thank you for sharing dude
Great list thanks for sharing bookmarked and share
Thanks for sharing. You may also want to take a look at http://www.controlcentral.ca/. Thanks,Nicholas Hughes
thank you for providing great information about improving website tips.