12 Tools To Reevaluate And Analyze Your Web Design
Daniels Mekšs
Nowadays there are pretty many tools to analyze your site’s code and traffic, but there aren’t that much tools to evaluate design and accessibility. Personally, I think that best ‘tool’ to evaluate web design is other people feedback.
Surprisingly – there are just that type of tools available. Check them out together with some other useful tools and see if your design is easy accessible and practical. In this list less is more, you don’t need to much tools to analyze your web design, just few you really trust.
1. Google Website Optimizer
Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent. Using Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design, you can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert.
2. Firefox Accessibility Extension
The Firefox Accessibility Extension makes it easier for people with disabilities to view and navigate web content. Developers can use the extension to check their use of structural and styling markup that support functional web accessibility.
3. YSlow
YSlow analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the Firebug web development tool. YSlow grades web page based on one of three predefined ruleset or a user-defined ruleset. It offers suggestions for improving the page’s performance, summarizes the page’s components, displays statistics about the page, and provides tools for performance analysis, including Smush.it and JSLint.
4. Click Density
Find out where your visitors are clicking more than usual. And the clickdensity heat map will show at a glance the relative popularity of components on your pages.
5. Pagealizer
Pagealizer helps increase landing page conversion by showing relevant usage data and suggesting page design and landing page optimization. It shows in great detail how long people visit a page, bounce rate, how far visitors scroll down a page, and where visitors clicked.
6. Clixpy
Clixpy helps you find out which features are difficult to use and which are easy, where your users spend more time and why they leave your website. Clixpy can help you optimize landing pages and convert more visitors to clients.
7. Access Color
AccessColor tests the color contrast and color brightness between the foreground and background of all elements in the DOM to make sure that the contrast is high enough for people with visual impairments.
8. Check My Colours
Checkmycolours is a tool for checking foreground and background color combinations of all DOM elements and determining if they provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits.
All the tests are based on the algorithms suggested by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
9. Browsershots
Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different operating systems and browsers. It is a free open-source online web application providing developers a convenient way to test their website’s browser compatibility in one place.
10. Five Second Test
Five second tests are simple usability tests that help you measure the effectiveness of your designs.Conducting a five second test allows you to find out which parts of your designs are the most prominent. You can do this in two ways:
- Memory Test
You give users five seconds to look at your design and then ask them to remember specific elements - Click Test
You give users five seconds to locate and click on specific elements of your design
All you need to do is upload a design you want to test and choose the type of test you want to run. You will be given a unique link that you can share with friends and colleagues and have them do your test. Of course, you can always just let our random users do your test for really fast feedback!
11. Usabilla
Usabilla offers a fast and simple way to collect feedback in any stage of the design process.
Ask your users simple questions to collect valuable feedback and discover usability issues. Use our One-Click-Tasks to measure task performance. Users simply share their feedback by clicking anywhere on your website, mockup, sketch, or image. Measure time, collect points, and get valuable feedback with notes.
12. User Testing
UserTesting provides quick and cheap website usability testing. Website owners can access a network of pre-screened testers who are articulate and observant and who meet specified demographics. Give UserTesting your website’s demographic, and the service will select the right users to browse your site. All of this cost only $39 per test.
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Arthur Brown
Posted 629 days ago 13I’ve used both browser shots and Google Website Optimizer. Recently I used Website Optimizer to test the efficiency of our PPC landing pages. It was a simple A/B test. I typically use browser shots to test the look of the designs in browsers I don’t have installed, sometimes it does time out but its well worth the wait when it comes through. I’ll have to try the others.
Maxime De Greve
Posted 675 days ago 12Do not forget Verify App! Still in private beta but really great app!
Did a mood test for my webdesign of http://www.smokingcow.com , do the test here: http://verifyapp.com/o/331 and here http://smokingcow.verifyapp.com/tests/331 you can view the results.
What do you think about it?
sandesh
Posted 678 days ago 11Nice Share.I didn’t know about five second test.And as andrew said concept feedback is also great tool.
David
Posted 680 days ago 10This one is great too : http://launchlist.net/
Box Model Junkie
Posted 680 days ago 9Good List. I especially like yslow to see how my websites are performing and how I can improve them.
zoe
Posted 680 days ago 8Nice list – don’t post this comment, but you may want to have someone check your grammar before posting.
Mike
Posted 681 days ago 7Great list. I wish you could show some typical sites for A/B testing. That would be better.
Paul Olyslager
Posted 682 days ago 6Nice resource list. You’ve also mentioned ClickDensity, which is a very useful program mainly to track the clicks of your visitors, but I think you have loads of other great alternatives. Mouseflow for example is a powerful web analytics package that gives you plenty of statistics and features to play around with, including heatmap systems (scroll and click heatmap). The 5 second test is very useful as well, I’ve used it a couple of times myself. If I’m not mistaken, they even made a 10 second test as well?
Fernando Brito
Posted 682 days ago 5You forgot ClickTale! Check it out.
Jared Detroit
Posted 683 days ago 4I have to really look at Google website optimizer again. Five Second Test looks like a great site to really measure that first impression.
Another idea that I got from someone is to use young kids around 8 years old that you know. Get them on the phone and ask them to go to your website and ask them what they think about it. Your website should be easy enough to use for them and they will be brutally honest. Have them go to a few warm up pages before you take them to yours.
James Scott
Posted 683 days ago 3Great list of resources, looking forward to looking into them more.
Thanks!
Andrew Follett
Posted 683 days ago 2You could also try Concept Feedback (http://www.ConceptFeedback.com), a free web design review community. You can post your website for free and get quick, actionable feedback from other designers, developers and usability experts.
Jay Philips
Posted 683 days ago 1Great list. BrowserShots is awesome for any type of site, I’ve used it a few times.