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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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:
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!
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.
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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Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 16:25
I’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.
Saturday, July 17th, 2010 14:41
Do 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?
Thursday, July 15th, 2010 07:07
Nice Share.I didn’t know about five second test.And as andrew said concept feedback is also great tool.
Monday, July 12th, 2010 13:28
Nice list – don’t post this comment, but you may want to have someone check your grammar before posting.
Monday, July 12th, 2010 05:04
Great list. I wish you could show some typical sites for A/B testing. That would be better.
Sunday, July 11th, 2010 09:55
Nice 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?
Sunday, July 11th, 2010 07:30
You forgot ClickTale! Check it out.
Saturday, July 10th, 2010 06:55
I 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.
Friday, July 9th, 2010 23:45
Great list of resources, looking forward to looking into them more.
Thanks!
Friday, July 9th, 2010 23:05
Great list. BrowserShots is awesome for any type of site, I’ve used it a few times.
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Jay Philips
Friday, July 9th, 2010 23:05
Great list. BrowserShots is awesome for any type of site, I’ve used it a few times.
Paul Olyslager
Sunday, July 11th, 2010 09:55
Nice 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
Sunday, July 11th, 2010 07:30
You forgot ClickTale! Check it out.
Jared Detroit
Saturday, July 10th, 2010 06:55
I 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
Friday, July 9th, 2010 23:45
Great list of resources, looking forward to looking into them more.
Thanks!
Mike
Monday, July 12th, 2010 05:04
Great list. I wish you could show some typical sites for A/B testing. That would be better.
zoe
Monday, July 12th, 2010 13:28
Nice list – don’t post this comment, but you may want to have someone check your grammar before posting.
Arthur Brown
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 16:25
I’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
Saturday, July 17th, 2010 14:41
Do 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
Thursday, July 15th, 2010 07:07
Nice Share.I didn’t know about five second test.And as andrew said concept feedback is also great tool.
David
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 04:30
This one is great too : http://launchlist.net/