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12 June 2010

How Usable is Your Website?

I had the pleasure of meeting with a user experience expert yesterday, Carl Heaton from Web Courses Bangkok. Carl showed me a great tool for website owners called UserFly (affiliate link).

Userfly allows you to test the usability of your website as each visitor goes to your site. You start by adding a small JavaScript to the web pages you want to track. It’s that easy.

You can then view your account activity and watch a video of the users experience on your website; what they looked at, what they clicked on, when they left your site. This is a fantastic tool for helping us website owners to understand website usability. It can also point to potential problems that we didn’t realize existed.

For instance, Carl showed me a video of their old site. (They have just launched a fresh new look this week.) On the old site, visitors wandered around aimlessly not sure where to click or what to look at. This resulted in a redesign of the layout which assists users in finding what they are looking for much quicker and in a much more productive manner.

I am trying out the tool on my site now and I am amazed at what I have been neglecting in providing my users with helpful guidance on where to go and what to look for. It looks like I may be examining the layout of my site in more detail in the months to come.

About Web Courses Bangkok

“It is the 1 year anniversary of Web Courses Bangkok. I started the company exactly 1 year ago and we have already helped 12 people become professional web designers AND taught over 200 people.” – Carl Heaton
You can find out more here: http://www.webcoursesbangkok.com

4 Comments on “How Usable is Your Website?

Lasse
17 June 2010 at 03:03

Hi,

thanks for the article. I would strongly recommend that you tried out the tool Mouseflow (http://mouseflow.com). It records videos of visitors just like Userfly, but it also offers a wide range of analysis tools such as heatmaps of clicks/movements, link analysis and live stream.

Lasse

[…] How Usable is Your Website? | Siam Communications Web Services & Tools I had the pleasure of meeting with a user experience expert yesterday, Carl Heaton from Web Courses Bangkok. Carl showed me a great tool for website owners called UserFly. Userfly allows you to test the usability of your website as each visitor goes to your site. You start by adding a small JavaScript to the web pages you want to track. It’s that easy. (tags: usability user experience) […]

admin
12 June 2010 at 14:23

Hi Carl,

I have just installed UserFly today and I am very keen to see the results of how our website stacks up. I really appreciate this new tool.

Thanks again for the heads up.

Carl - Web Courses Bangkok
12 June 2010 at 14:03

Eric, thank you for the post it is very interesting. UX is my passion and it was so surprising to see what happened on my site when I used Userfly. I didn`t realize I went so far off the mark so we re-designed everything.

Thanks again for the post

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