5 Kick Ass Free/Cheap Voice of Visitor & Usability Tools
Web Analytics can provide you all the information you need about the “what” and “how” piece of the visitor interaction on your website. Reports like goal completion, internal search keywords can tell you what visitors do on your website. Similarly, pathing report, next page and fallout report can be used to determine how visitors interact with your site. The missing link is the “why” piece and until we know why visitors perform certain action we can never make truly optimized changes to our campaigns or website pages.
In a sales cycle, it is important to get feedback from the prospect and on the website the visitor feedback is the key.
There are large numbers of usability testing tools available online but I have prepared a list of five most useful low cost tools that you must consider in your web optimization efforts. Some of these can be used for a month and some of them can permanently sit on your website.
1. Usertesting.com –
“Low cost usability testing” is their tag line, and indeed you can’t get any cheaper than $29.95. The setup process is pretty simple, and you can access your test results within few hours.
Benefits:
- Low cost
- No installation required
- Easy setup
- Quick turnaround time
- Instant access to voice of visitor data. (Surveys can take weeks or sometimes even months)
Enhancements required:
- Fewer demographic options available
- Missing industry specific tester selection
2. Uservoice.com –
The tool is designed to generate product / service ideas from voice of visitor. It can also be used for creating a discussion / feedback forum. Top companies like Nokia, Sun and Sony are using it. The basic version of Uservoice is free and a low cost $19.95 per month version has unlimited forum option.
Benefits:
- Get instant feedback on product/service/website
- Engage customers
- Free product ideas from customers and visitors
Enhancements required:
- Requires code installation on website
- Forum monitoring
- Time required to collect good data depends on the site traffic
3. 4qsurvey.com –
4qsurvey is a simple web survey tool and can be used to improve overall web visitor satisfaction. iPerceptions are voice of visitor data specialist and 4Q survey tool is their free offering.
Benefits:
- Totally free
- Get answer to the four most important web questions
- Analytics data available in account section
Enhancements required:
- Requires code installation on website
- No support ( They provide support for the paid product)
- Cannot add customize questions
- Popup based data collection mechanism
- Minimum recommended sample size to draw conclusion for any web survey tool is 500
4. Kampyle.com –
Kampyle is another survey tool with a non obtrusive data collection system. This software requires visitors to enter comments in separate categories. The feedback form is fully customizable and the software comes in web & software based versions.
Benefits:
- Did I mention free
- Live support
- Non obtrusive data collection process
Enhancements required:
- Visitors can ignore the data collection button easily
- Requires extra efforts from visitors
5. Fivesecondtest.com –
Currently, in beta test, this is an ultimate tool focused on designers to get instant feedback for their design work. The tool is designed keeping in mind that on an average a person spends no more than 5-8 seconds on any web based advertisement. It’s great for optimizing the home page and making it more attractive.
Benefits:
- Simple interface
- Innovative
- Designer friendly
- Instant feedback from online users/designers
Enhancements required:
- Web designer focused
- Slightly technical
- Five second is not enough time to provide a good feedback
Please provide your comments, feedback, or tweets here.
Here is a list of other helpful blog posts -
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Is Web Analytics Right for My Small Business?
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[...] the Voice of Visitor/Customer Data Posted by Sameer August 2, 2009 The concept of Voice of the Visitor / Customer data analysis was originally developed by the promoters of Total Quality Management (TQM) back in [...]