Improve Site Usability Easily without the High Cost

Site usability is one aspect small and medium web retailers are overlooking when measuring ROI or return on investment. One of the reasons for this is the wrong notion that landing page optimization is costly, and for the big players out there. Contrary to this is the fact that there are a lot of free online resources web designers can tap in helping improve site usability for business clients.

SEO is just one part of the job. Web design is another. And this is most essential when we talk about site conversions – whether that is to increase sign ups, subscribers, or outright online sales. No matter how much traffic you get out of a winner search engine marketing campaign, all boils down to how the users behave on your pages to perform your desired action.
Here are some resources you can use to improve website usability quick and easy – plus it’s without the high price tag.

Google Website Optimizer
Don’t worry about making it perfect. Brainstorm a few site variations and try them out on real visitors with Google Website Optimizer. If you don’t have this tool setup, get it now. This is one tool that lets you test and learn different variations of banner ads, promotions, design and immediately understand which version is driving the best results. On top of that, this is fully integrated with Google Analytics and it is completely free! Need I say more?

UserTesting.com
UserTesting.com uses the Web 2.0 crowdsourcing model to dramatically drop the price of usability testing. It lets website owners easily get pre-screened users to rapidly do usability testing of their websites. It only costs $29 and the results are typically ready in an hour. You get a Flash video of a user speaking their thoughts as they browse your website and a written summary where that same user tells you what they liked, disliked, and what would have caused them to leave your site.

Chalkmark
Want to test the design or UI prototypes with real people? You can use Chalkmark to get powerful insights from real people to tweak navigation and layout. As the results roll in, heat maps for each task are dynamically generated. Clusters of clicks are combined to give percentage read outs. You can quickly run a test on your UI prototypes to answer any nagging questions about usability. You can get a 30 day plan for $109 and create unlimited tests and surveys.

Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg lets you create tests to figure out what people are doing on your website. You can enter the URL of the page you want to track, enter how long the test will run and CrazyEgg will provide one line of JavaScript that can be applied to your site. You can see all sorts of heapmaps and overlays to figure out what people are clicking on and, more importantly, not clicking on your website. For $19 a month, you can track up to 25,000 visits per month. Or for $99 a month you can track up to 250,000 visits per month.

Five Second Test
Five Second Test helps you easily identify the most prominent elements of your user interfaces. People use five second test to locate calls to action, optimize landing pages, and run A/B tests. Basically, you can upload images that will be reviewed by random Internet users. Users view the image for just five seconds then click on the screen to indicate areas of the images that caught their attention. Using text fields provided on the screen, they describe what they saw on the places they clicked. This works from the basic principle that visitors have a very short attention span and they typically don’t spend more than five seconds before moving on to other parts of the page. Therefore, you need to get their attention on the most prominent aspect of the offer in those five seconds. This is a free service and can help you identify opportunities with your ad or other image units.

Website design is an integral aspect of your marketing strategies. It is not something fancy, simply meant for attraction and impression. Website design is almost as important as your online marketing campaign. Be wise to consider the subject of site usability when you talk in terms of cost and profit. Before you know it, that simple call-to-action button could simply be the key to your online sales success.