The Trouble With Live Chat

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By Fred Brown
CRM Buyer
Part of the ECT News Network
10/27/11 5:00 AM PT

Live-chat queue times hover around 6 minutes, and an average live-chat engagement takes more than 18 minutes to complete. And "complete" doesn't always mean "successfully complete." Even after patiently waiting and engaging for nearly 20 minutes, users with more difficult questions are often told to pick up the phone.

Fast, easy and accurate -- ask any consumer to describe good customer service and that is the likely response you'll receive.

Traditionally, people have reached out to call centers, confident that a well-trained customer service representative would have the knowledge to fill in the blanks. But moving away from the computer and picking up the phone is an annoyance. And long hold times have come to be a given.

Online channels are the new top choice for people looking to find information, conduct business, make purchases, complete membership registrations, plan trips and more.

We live in an age of instant gratification, and customers are impatient. If they don't find what they're looking for on a company's website, they bolt (just check your own site's 'time-on-site' and bounce rates to see the ugly truth). This is especially true for online commerce, which consistently shows a 57% abandonment rate if customers can't find the answer they're looking for.

So, how can companies keep customers on their sites and allow them to have meaningful, valuable interactions? The answer is surprisingly simple: Provide them with the information they really need in a timely manner. In fact, quick query resolution is the top reason consumers will rate a customer experience as excellent, according to research from Avaya.

Consumers Want to Be Self-Reliant

Online chat can help. Online chat's lack of channel shift is a major step forward in terms of convenience, and live-chat agents certainly provide an easier path to knowledge than most website search boxes are capable of offering -- but it's not flawless. When reps are managing multiple conversations at a time, delays are inevitable, and that's frustrating for users who expect instantaneous, 1-to-1 service.

To make matters worse, most live-chat reps are so inundated with the same types of questions that they end up investing more time familiarizing themselves with scripted answers than on developing specialized knowledge of the organization they serve. No wonder just 25 percent of customers surveyed say online chat meets their expectations.

In a perfect world, the solution would be to increase the size of your live-chat staff. As most organizations have found, though, there's no end to user appetite for the service. It's a victim of its own success: People with questions that they consider too trivial to justify a phone call have no such hesitation when it comes to live-chat. Queue times hover around 6 minutes, and an average live-chat engagement takes more than 18 minutes to complete.
And "complete" doesn't always mean "successfully complete." Recent studies show that even after patiently waiting and engaging for nearly 20 minutes, users with more difficult questions are often told to pick up the phone to get their question answered. This is true for interactions with companies of all sizes, including large corporations.

These points are not to imply that investment in live-chat is bad. It's definitely a step in the right direction, but there is plenty of room for improvement. With the massive adoption live-chat is seeing, the opportunity is ripe to increase its ability to provide the fast, accurate answers that customers want, right at their point of need.

Live-Chat Meets Its Match

Recent advances in virtual agent technology are making an amazing degree of enhancements to live-chat possible.

When implemented as the first point of contact for your Web customer service system, virtual agents can easily answer all of your commonly asked tier-1 and tier-2 questions. They're capable of serving millions of users simultaneously, and always meet increased demand with ease. They provide information immediately, work 24/7 and never get sick. Training is accomplished by simply updating their knowledge base. They're even able to serve customers in multiple languages. Virtual agents have been proven to increase site engagement. And, most importantly, they serve up information in the most natural way possible: by engaging the user in a conversation.

For more difficult questions, an advanced virtual agent is able to determine immediately if it doesn't know the answer and seamlessly escalate the user to live-chat, even providing a conversation history to quickly bring the live-chat operator up to speed.

Never Miss an Opportunity Again

Perhaps most importantly, virtual agents reduce live-chat reps' queues. Suddenly, users with specialized questions no longer have to wait to chat. And, since reps are no longer burdened with answering the same questions repeatedly, they can spend more time with the customers who require higher touch service, greatly reducing the need to send users to call centers for answers and giving them time to capitalize on revenue-generating opportunities.

The cost of implementing a virtual agent to complement live-chat centers is minimal when compared to attempts to improve service by increasing staffing. Once implemented, the cost is just a fraction of live-chat, which averages US$5 per contact.

You have what your customers are looking for, and both you and the customer want to make finding "it" easier. Virtual agents do just that, enabling both you and your customers to make the most efficient use of time, turning potential into actual, and matching demand with resources. 

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Fred Brown is CEO of Next IT.

10,000 Hours of Practice

 I think I MIGHT have sent a similar article, but I can't find it SO. I like this observation about behavior, that innate talent doesn't mean you'll succeed. That practice does make perfect. It also explains why we're all at varying levels of expertise at any given time...we've all spent varying amounts of time learning in any given area.

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In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. How does Gladwell arrive at this conclusion? And, if the conclusion is true, how can we leverage this idea to achieve greatness in our professions?
Gladwell studied the lives of extremely successful people to find out how they achieved success. This article will review a few examples from Gladwell’s research, and conclude with some thoughts for moving forward.

Violins in Berlin

In the early 1990s a team of psychologists in Berlin, Germany studied violin students. Specifically, they studied their practice habits in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. All of the subjects were asked this question: “Over the course of your entire career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practiced?”
All of the violinists had begun playing at roughly five years of age with similar practice times. However, at age eight, practice times began to diverge. By age twenty, the elite performers averaged more than 10,000 hours of practice each, while the less able performers had only 4,000 hours of practice.
The elite had more than double the practice hours of the less capable performers.

Natural Talent: Not Important

One fascinating point of the study: No “naturally gifted” performers emerged. If natural talent had played a role, we would expect some of the “naturals” to float to the top of the elite level with fewer practice hours than everyone else. But the data showed otherwise. The psychologists found a direct statistical relationship between hours of practice and achievement. No shortcuts. No naturals.

Sneaking Out to Write Code

You already know how Microsoft was founded. Bill Gates and Paul Allen dropped out of college to form the company in 1975. It’s that simple: Drop out of college, start a company, and become a billionaire, right? Wrong.
Further study reveals that Gates and Allen had thousands of hours of programming practice prior to founding Microsoft. First, the two co-founders met at Lakeside, an elite private school in the Seattle area. The school raised three thousand dollars to purchase a computer terminal for the school’s computer club in 1968.
A computer terminal at a university was rare in 1968. Gates had access to a terminal in eighth grade. Gates and Allen quickly became addicted to programming.
The Gates family lived near the University of Washington. As a teenager, Gates fed his programming addiction by sneaking out of his parents’ home after bedtime to use the University’s computer. Gates & Allen acquired their10,000 hours through this and other clever teenage schemes. When the time came to launch Microsoft in 1975, the two were ready.

Practice Makes Improvement

In 1960, while they were still an unknown high school rock band, the Beatles went to Hamburg, Germany to play in the local clubs.
The group was underpaid. The acoustics were terrible. The audiences were unappreciative. So what did the Beatles get out of the Hamburg experience? Hours of playing time. Non-stop hours of playing time that forced them to get better.
As the Beatles grew in skill, audiences demanded more performances – more playing time. By 1962 they were playing eight hours per night, seven nights per week. By 1964, the year they burst on the international scene, the Beatles had played over 1,200 concerts together. By way of comparison, most bands today don’t play 1,200 times in their entire career.

Falling in Love With Practice

The elite don’t just work harder than everybody else. At some point the elites fall in love with practice to the point where they want to do little else.
The elite software developer is the programmer who spends all day pounding code at work, and after leaving work she writes open source software on her own time.
The elite football player is the guy who spends all day on the practice field with his teammates, and after practice he goes home to watch game films.
The elite physician listens to medical podcasts in the car during a long commute.
The elites are in love with what they do, and at some point it no longer feels like work.

What’s Next?

Now that we’ve reviewed the trends uncovered by Gladwell’s research, what can we do about it? All of us want to be great at something. Now that we know how other achievers have gotten there, what can we do to join their ranks?
One approach: We could choose a field and practice for 10,000 hours. If we are currently working in our target profession, forty hours per week over five years would give us ten thousand hours.
Or… We can look at the question in reverse. Where have we already logged 10,000 hours of practice? What is it that we do really well? What tasks do we perform so well that people ask: How did you do that? Sometimes when we fall in love with practice we don’t even recognize it!
If you’re running a company, what does your company do better than anybody else? What is it that the individual members of your company do better than anybody? How do you create an environment that gives everyone on your team the opportunity to practice?

Conclusion

Business is tough, especially now. Yet even in the midst of a challenging economy, there are individuals and companies that prosper beyond all expectations. Practice plays a major role in success.

Suggested Reading

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. Through interviews and statistical analysis, Gladwell determines why some people and organizations achieve success far beyond their peers.

About the Author

Raymond T. Hightower is president of WisdomGroup, creators of outstanding web-based software. WisdomGroup leads the open source user group ChicagoRuby and we created the annual WindyCityRails conference.

Research Guidelines You Won’t Find in a Textbook

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By Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain

Published: October 3, 2011

“There are some key principles you should keep in mind that you aren’t likely to discover in any textbook….”

We meet a lot of people who do user research, but don’t have a research background or extensive training in research. Sometimes they are UX designers or graphic artists at a company that doesn’t have researchers. Sometimes they are people in small startups who are looking for some indication of the right direction to take. Sometimes they are just people who are new to research, don’t yet have a great deal of experience, and need guidance.

If you find yourself in such a position, there are some key principles you should keep in mind that you aren’t likely to discover in any textbook or research manual. Learning any skill involves both knowledge from books and what you learn through some form of personal mentorship in which you can receive feedback on your work. Research is a complex skill, and people who are just getting started need both knowledge and guidance to gain mastery. We’ve tried to distill what we think are the most important concepts that we emphasize when we’re mentoring new researchers. They are principles that we have discovered through our years of experience, and we’ve found that they apply in all instances.

Make Friends

“Forming an understanding of the people who will be using your product is much more important than just knowing their individual thoughts on a design concept or user interface.”

Research is a social activity. Many people have a vision of researchers as stoic intellectuals in white lab coats, sitting and observing people from behind one-way mirrors. The reality is quite different. User research is a process in which you communicate with people so you can learn about their lives and their needs. In the long run, forming an understanding of the people who will be using your product is much more important than just knowing their individual thoughts on a design concept or user interface.

The only way that you’ll be able to gain this understanding is if you can put participants at ease and talk to them as real people rather then just using them as a means of improving your product. The best way to connect with participants is to take your time and get to know them as people before you dive into your research protocol. Ask them questions about their lives, their jobs, and how their day is going. You need to get to a level deeper than just superficial chitchat. You want your communication with research participants to feel like you’re talking to a good friend.

Keep in mind that you have two goals: first, to help a person feel relaxed and comfortable, so he or she will open up and communicate freely; second, to learn as much as you can about their lives. This understanding can provide invaluable insights that can help you to better form your questions, as well as interpret their answers. For example, if a person reports that he doesn’t see any value in a product and you know about his life, you can ask him about potential use cases that he may have overlooked. If someone is being vague in his answers to your questions, you’ll know how to direct him toward making a definitive statement by applying the concept to a specific example in his life.

More specifically, if you were testing a product that lets users find their parked car, but a participant mostly rides his bike and parks his car for days at a time, you might ask whether he sometimes has difficulty remembering where he’s parked his car three or four days ago. The participant might not have immediately thought about applications for this product because he doesn’t drive often, but by suggesting an important use case, you may help the participant look at the product from a different perspective. This data can inform both design and marketing strategies.

Don’t Answer Questions

“The purpose of research is to gather information, not to provide it. When people ask you questions, your instinct is to try to answer them, but you must resist this urge, because it will interfere with your ability to get accurate and actionable data.”

The purpose of research is to gather information, not to provide it. When people ask you questions, your instinct is to try to answer them, but you must resist this urge, because it will interfere with your ability to get accurate and actionable data.

I’ve seen people doing user research explain a product or user interface to a participant, including all of its features and how it operates. This prevents your having the opportunity to get a participant’s immediate reaction to the product. Instead of explaining a product’s value proposition to a participant, ask the participant What do you think this is? What do you think you would use it for? This lets you get an idea of how clearly a product conveys its concepts. If they are unclear, you can then explain the product and ask participants how you could make the ideas clearer.

When testing user interfaces, present participants with scenarios for tasks that would motivate them to try to figure out how to use the user interface properly on their own. Here’s an example: You’re moving into a new apartment, and you need to sell a couch that you aren’t going to take with you. How would you go about doing that? If a participant asks, Do I go to auctions? Don’t answer the question! Just note his response and tell him to feel free to try things. If a participant notices something in a user interface and asks you, What’s this over here? you should respond, What do you think it is? What would you expect it to be? Try to be like a therapist and always answer a question with a question.

It is more important for you to get a sense of participants’ impressions and reactions to user interface elements than for them to understand every aspect of a user interface. Try to keep in mind that customers won’t have you sitting next to them in the real world. It’s important to try to replicate that reality during research.

Don’t Try to Sell a Product

“If you point out all of the great things about a product, people will tend to agree with your opinions rather than form their own and tell you about them.”

When you’re doing research, you want to make sure you get an idea of the value that a product provides to users. In fact, conscientious researchers would recommend radically altering or even cancelling a project if they learned that users would not want it or use it. If you point out all of the great things about a product, people will tend to agree with your opinions rather than form their own and tell you about them.

As you are going through your research protocol, make sure you document participants’ natural reactions in the course of their first exposure to a product. As we mentioned earlier, try to see whether they can understand the product on their own, then examine their reaction to the product’s value proposition. You’ll tend to see a variety of reactions, ranging from This is amazing, it’s going to change my life! to I don’t think this would do anything for me at all. Be sure to obtain this information—or you could be in for a significant beating when you release your product to the market. If you identify problems early, you’ll have the opportunity to pivot before devoting any more resources to something that is unlikely to take off.

To do this successfully, you must establish your impartiality. We actually inform people that we didn’t design a product and that we are performing the research to provide an objective opinion. We also inform participants that the goal of a research study is to improve the product rather than to make sure that we are on the right track. This helps to put them into a mindset of providing constructive feedback. As a researcher, you should foster this mindset and try to avoid influencing participants.

Conclusion

“Avoid influencing participants and keep your opinions to yourself.”

In this month’s column, we’ve covered three important guidelines that you’re most likely to learn on the job rather than in a textbook or manual. The higher-order guideline is to avoid influencing participants and keep your opinions to yourself.

Remember, the most important thing to gain through user research is a deep and meaningful understanding of your potential users. This can guide you through all aspects of development, including coming up with marketing and advertising strategies.

Of course, there is much more for researchers to learn, including how to generate actionable recommendations, fit into an agile development cycle, build compelling presentations, and communicate effectively with stakeholders, but those things are often better experienced firsthand. If there are any other essential guidelines that you think should be covered, we invite you to share them with everyone in the comments.

Comprehensive Review Of Usability And User Experience Testing Tools

Since our Q4 is all about piloting and measuring, I thought this was a timely article. If we have limitations in Target's tools, we may be able to "skin the cat" in other ways.

Smashing Magazine Feed • Cameron Chapman • 8 days ago

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100+ people recommend thi

Usability and user experience testing is vital to creating a successful website, and only more so if it’s an e-commerce website, a complex app or another website for which there’s a definite ROI. And running your own user tests to find out how users are interacting with your website and where problems might arise is completely possible.
But using one of the many existing tools and services for user testing is a lot easier than creating your own. Free, freemium and premium tools are out there, with options for most budgets. The important thing is to find a tool or service that works for your website and then use it to gather real-world data on what works and what doesn’t, rather than relying purely on instinct or abstract theories.

Free And Freemium Tools

A ton of free and freemium tools are out there to test your website’s usability and user experience. Many of them get you to use your existing visitors as a testing base, which can give you a very accurate picture of what users are experiencing when they use you website.
Ethnio
Ethnio enables you to intercept visitors on your website and recruit them to help you with research (you can offer incentives to make participation more enticing). Ethnio acts as a hub for your various UX tools, including Usabilla, Optimal Workshop and UserTesting.com. It even works with GoToMeeting for screen-sharing. You’ll get detailed reports on the people who respond to your recruitment efforts. Ethnio has a free plan that allows for up to 10,000 page views per month and up to 250 responses. Paid packages start at $49 per month (for up to 100,000 page views and 500 responses) and go up to $299 per month (for over 1 million page views per month and unlimited responses plus other features).

Simple Mouse Tracking
Mouse tracking is a great way to see how visitors are actually interacting with your website. This plugin lets you record mouse activity on your Web pages and then replay that activity in real time. It works in virtually all modern and not-so-modern browsers, it works with static and liquid layouts, and it is customizable by the end user.

xSort
xSort is a card-sorting application for Mac OS X. It gives you full control over the exercise, supports sub-groups, gives statistical results in real time, and lets you create, read, print and export reports easily. The visual environment of the app resembles a table with cards (and you also get an outline view).

KISSinsights
KISSinsights lets you embed surveys directly on your website. The free plan offers an unlimited number of surveys, with up to 30 responses for each one. The premium plan, at $29 per month, allows you to customize the surveys and thank-you messages, removes KISSinsights’ branding, and allows for unlimited responses.

FiveSecondTest
FiveSecondTest helps you better design your landing pages and calls to action by analyzing which elements of your design are most prominent. Just upload a screenshot or mockup, set the questions that you want answered, and then wait for users to complete the test. FiveSecondTest collects the responses for you and analyzes them for common keywords, which it then represents visually. The free community plan lets you earn tests by participating in tests run by others. Paid plans start at $20 per month with more features, including private tests.

AddUse
AddUse enables you to conduct user surveys and user tests. You get one of each for free, and then can purchase additional surveys and tests from there. Signing up is quick and easy and doesn’t require a credit card. AddUse offers real-time results and analysis, and also includes ready-to-use usability questions that you can incorporate in your surveys for faster set-up.

UserEcho
UserEcho is a simple widget for collecting customer responses and ideas. Just copy and paste a few lines of code onto your website and then wait for visitors to respond. The free plan offers one forum and one official representative, as well as simple moderation, admin control, rich-content editing and YouTube embedding. Paid plans start at $15 per month and include more forums, more representatives and more features.

Usabilla
Usabilla lets you run micro-usability tests to get a better picture of how well your website performs with visitors. You can collect feedback, discover usability issues, measure how various tasks perform, and then get visual results. The free plan lets you run one public, active test at a time with up to 10 participants. Paid plans start at $49 per month, allowing you to create private tests with up to 50 participants, and go up to $199 a month (allowing up to 10 active tests at a time and up to 250 participants).

Google Website Optimizer
Google’s free Website Optimizer lets you run A/B and multivariate tests on your website. Just sign up with your Google account and create an experiment. You can specify which page you’d like to test and which sections of the page, and then identify your conversion and success targets. Setting up experiments is a straightforward process.

Userfly
Userfly lets you watch videos of users interacting with your website. Just install a single line of code, and it will record every mouse movement and click that users make. The free plan allows up to 10 captures per month and stores recordings for 30 days, while premium plans (ranging in price from $10 to $200 per month) allow for more captures and downloadable recordings.

Clickdensity
Clickdensity is a heat-map analytics tool that installs in under five minutes. It provides heat maps, click maps and hover maps and gives you real-time results. The trial version can be installed on a single page and stores up to 5,000 clicks. Premium plans start at £2.50 per month, and all include an unlimited number of pages.

Navflow
Navflow is a tool for analyzing the conversion paths for your mockups and wireframes. Just upload the designs that you would like to test, run a private or public test, and then view the results. The free plan allows you to earn public tests by participating in tests run by others. Paid plans start at $20 a month and allow you to run unlimited private and public tests.

User Plus
User Plus offers two tools for testing your website’s usability: Tester and Advisor. Tester lets you test the important tasks on your website with real people. Just create a test, invite users and then measure and see what they do. Advisor evaluates your website’s usability based on ISO standards and gives you a usability score. Tester is currently in private beta, and for a limited time you can try it for free. Advisor offers both free and paid plans.

Chalkmark
Chalkmark is for first-click testing, to see what visitors click on first on your website. It’s a simple concept, but vital to ensuring that your website is converting well. A free plan is available for running short surveys on a trial basis before you buy. The free plan lets you survey 10 people, with 3 tasks each. Paid plans include unlimited studies, unlimited tasks, unlimited questionnaires and unlimited participant responses.

4Q
4Q is an online survey tool for evaluating user experience and customer satisfaction. Setting it up takes less than five minutes, and the intuitive suite of online tools gives you valuable insight into how visitors are interacting with your website with only a few mouse clicks. A free plan is available that lets you collect responses from up to 100 participants. Paid plans start at $19 per month and include more features and more responses.

WebSort.net
WebSort.net is a remote card-sorting application. Just create a study, send the link to participants, and wait for the results. You can create a free study with up to 10 participants. Then upgrade whenever you want to include 100 participants or more (starting at $149 per test). You can also buy a three-pack of studies for $299; or buy an enterprise license, with unlimited tests in a 12-month period for $2,499.

Concept Feedback
Concept Feedback lets you get feedback on your website so that you can increase conversion rates. Just post your website, get expert feedback from experienced design, usability and strategy pros, and then share the evaluation with your team or client. You can pay to have experts review your website ($99 per expert), or just get feedback from the community for free.

Premium Tools

Vendors of premium testing tools generally recruit users specifically to offer feedback on your website. Many of the tools come with videos of users interacting with your website, and some offer both remote and local testing.
WhatUsersDo
WhatUsersDo lets you test the user experience of virtually any part of your website. Just set tasks for users to carry out on your website, and then watch and listen to recordings of everything they do and say. Setting up a test takes less than five minutes, and results are available within 48 hours. Pricing is a flat fee of £30 per user, and five users are recommended for each test.

TryMyUI
TryMyUI lets you test your website with real users and watch videos of them using your website. You get to see all of their mouse movements and keystrokes and hear everything they say about your website. Users also provide written answers to your questions. A free trial is available, and the regular price is $35 per test.

Userlytics
Userlytics is a full-featured testing service that guides you through the entire testing process, from designing the study to scheduling tests, managing logistics and incentivizing participation. Pricing starts as low as $59 per participant but goes lower with volume discounts. You’ll also get videos of participants interacting with your website for accurate results.

OpenHallway
With OpenHallway, you create test scenarios, record users either remotely or locally, and then watch video results from your browser. You can share videos with clients or team members, and an unlimited number of projects and test scenarios are allowed within your storage limit. You can try OpenHallway for free, with a test scenario and up to three 10-minute user videos. Regular plans start at $49 per month, which allows for up to 1 GB of storage (3 hours of video), and go up to $199 per month for 9 GB of storage (30 hours of video) and downloadable test results.

GazeHawk
GazeHawk runs eye-tracking studies on any image or website. It offers targeted or general user studies, depending on your needs. The starter plan, which includes a 10-participant study with heat maps and gaze replays, is $495. GazeHawk also offer A/B testing packages ($995 for two 10-participant studies), a professional package with 20 participants for $995, and enterprise solutions for bigger tests.

Silverback
Silverback is downloadable software for your Mac for running user tests. You can capture screen activity, record video of testers’ faces, record their voices, and control recording with the built-in remote. And it’s all exportable to Quicktime. The app is free for the first 30 days, and the full license is $69.95.

Verify
Verify, from Zurb, includes nine different test types: click, memory, mood, preference, annotate, label, multi-page click, and linked. New user tests can be set up in less than three minutes. You can share tests with team members or make them public, and visual reports are included to make decision-making easier. The “Plus” plan is $9 per month and includes unlimited tests, while the “Premium” plan includes demographics reports, linked tests and PDF export. A 30-day free trial is available on all accounts.

Feedback Army
Feedback Army offers cheap and simple usability testing for your website. You can set up a new test in two minutes, submit a question about your website, and get 10 responses from Feedback Army reviewers. And it all costs only $15.

UserTesting.com
For $39, UserTesting.com provides you with video of a visitor as they use your website, speaking their thoughts about their experience. You also get a written summary of the problems they encountered while on the website. Videos are generally about 15 minutes long and can be downloaded for archiving and editing (even embedded on a Web page).

IntuitionHQ
IntuitionHQ lets you sign up and start creating tests for free. Pay only once you start actually running tests (and then it’s only $9 per test). Creating a test simply requires that you upload screenshots and then write tasks for users to complete. Once the test is created and published, you get a URL to share with whoever you want to perform the tests.

Mechanical Turk
While not strictly a usability testing app, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service can be used to gather usability data or feedback from real users. Just set up a “HIT” (human-intelligence task), and then set how much you’re willing to pay people to perform it. You pay only when you’re satisfied with the results.

UserFeel.com
UserFeel.com performs remote usability tests for you, providing videos of users testing your website. Just specify the website that you want to test, set the scenario and tasks, and then watch the videos. Pricing is $39 or less per test, with a 90-day money-back guarantee.

Loop11
Loop11 offers user testing for up to 1000 participants at a time, with an unlimited number of tasks and questions. There’s no time limit and no limit on the number of websites or wireframes you can test. Try Loop11 for free (with a maximum of five tasks and two questions, with data stored for only seven days); after that, tests are $350 each. Tests don’t require any code to be added to the website being tested, which means you can even test competitors’ websites.

ClickTale
ClickTale offers a number of usability testing services, including visitor recordings, click heat maps, mouse movement heat maps, and conversion funnel visualizations. Premium plans start at $99 per month, with full playback and a choice of three out of the four heat maps offered, while other plans (at $290 and $990 per month) include more features. A limited free plan is available to try out the service, as well as enterprise options.

CrazyEgg
CrazyEgg offers heat maps so that you can see exactly how users interact with your website and so increase your sales or leads. In addition to standard heat maps, CrazyEgg also offers scroll maps, confetti (which allows you to distinguish between all of the clicks your website gets, broken down by referral source, search term and other variables), and overlay reports. The basic plan is only $9 a month and includes 10,000 visits per month, up to 10 active pages, and daily reporting. Starting with the “Plus” plan, which is $49 a month, you get hourly reporting.

Webnographer
Webnographer provides remote usability testing services. You can test websites, Web apps, prototypes and intranets with a large number of users anywhere in the world. The tests are unmoderated, so you get honest feedback. And no downloads or website modifications are required to run tests. Pricing is available on request.

Regardless of which tool you choose, the important thing is to recognize the value of user testing. Getting real feedback is an invaluable way to determine which parts of your design work and which don’t. With that information, creating a more user-friendly website that converts better is possible. Usability and user experience testing should be a part of any website redesign project, to ensure that the changes being made will actually have a positive effect.
To streamline the selection process, below is a chart with the key features of each tool, as well as pricing information.

Service	Cost	Tests existing or new users?	Type of testing	Visual reporting?
Ethnio	$0 – $299 per month	Existing	Surveys (a hub for other testing services)	Detailed reports
Simple Mouse Tracking	Free	Existing	Mouse tracking	Yes
xSort	Free	Both	Card-sorting	Yes
KISSinsights	$0 – $29 per month	Existing	Surveys	No
FiveSecondTest	$0 – $200 per month	New	Visual questionnaires	No
AddUse	$0 – $99, depending on number of tests	Existing	Surveys and user tests	Somewhat
UserEcho	$0 – $256 per month	Existing	Surveys	Somewhat
Usabilla	$0 – $199 per month	Existing	Micro-usability	Yes
Google Website Optimizer	Free	Existing	A/B and multivariate tests	No
Userfly	$0 – $200 per month	Existing	Mouse clicks and movement recording	Yes (video)
Clickdensity	$0 – $400 per month	Existing	Heat maps	Yes
Navflow	$0 – $200 per month	New	User paths	Yes
User Plus	$0 – $35+ per month	Both	User testing and usability scoring	Yes
Chalkmark	$0 – $109 per month	Existing	First clicks	Yes
4Q	$0 – $399 per month	Existing	Surveys	Yes
WebSort.net	$0 – $2,499 per year	Both	Card-sorting	Yes
Concept Feedback	Free for community feedback, $99 per expert	New	Expert and community feedback	Yes
WhatUsersDo	£30 per user	New	General usability	Yes
TryMyUI	$35 per test	New	General usability	Yes
Userlytics	$59 per participant	New	General usability	Yes
OpenHallway	$49 – $199 per month	Both	General usability	Yes
GazeHawk	$495 – $995+ per test	New	General usability, including heat maps	Yes
Silverback	$69.95	Both	General usability	Yes
Verify	$9 – $29 per month	Existing	Nine types of usability tests	Yes
Feedback Army	$20 per test	New	Surveys	No
UserTesting.com	$39 per user	New	General usability	Yes
IntuitionHQ	$9 per test	Both	Screenshot surveys, including A/B tests	Yes
Mechanical Turk	Varies	New	Surveys	No
UserFeel.com	$39 per test	New	General usability	Yes
Loop11	$350 per project	Both	General usability	Yes
ClickTale	$99 – $990 per month	Existing	Heat maps	Yes
Crazy Egg	$9 – $99 per month	Existing	Heat maps	Yes
Webnographer	Unknown	New	General usability	Unknown

(al)

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© Cameron Chapman for Smashing Magazine, 2011.