The past few years have seen an explosion of usability and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tools hit the market. There have been many good roundup posts about these tools, but I want to focus today on a more in-depth approach to putting just 3 of these tools to work: (1) Five Second Test, (2) Crazy Egg, and (3) UserTesting.com. Total cost to do one round of testing: $224.

(1) Five Second Test ($20)

The premise behind Five Second Test is incredibly simple – show a visitor your site for 5 seconds and see what they remember (or, alternatively, where they click). This is a great starting point for getting some starter observations about your visitors.

How It Works
Setup is easy – just submit a screenshot of your web page or prototype (great for design comparisons) and the replies start coming in. You can view them individually or grouped by concepts. Five Second Test is actually free, but the $20/month package means you'll get a larger response rate. It's worth the extra cash, IMO. You can also earn credits ("karma") by taking other people's tests – it's kind of fun and can be informative.

What to Test
Think about the kind of things you want your visitors to know about in 5 seconds: The big questions: Who, What, Why. Here are a few uses I recommend:

• Do visitors recognize your brand?
• Do people get what you do?
• Is your tagline descriptive and effective?
• Is your page too visually noisy?
• Is Concept B better than Concept A?
• Can people find your call to action?

If people are remembering things like "blue", "blonde girl", and "ugly site", you know you've got some work to do (those aren't far from real examples of what I've seen).

(2) Crazy Egg ($9)

Heat-mapping tools like Crazy Egg take user activity and translate it into visual maps, helping you to easily visualize how people interact with your site. Crazy Egg was founded by SEO wonder kid Neil Patel, and is an amazing bargain at $9/month. If you can't bother to spend $9 on improving your website, feel free to stop reading this post. I'm serious – go buy a Venti Iced Mocha and a cookie instead of spending money on your business.

How It Works
This one's a little bit trickier – you'll have to install a JavaScript snippet similar to Google Analytics and other tools. Then, Crazy Egg starts tracking clicks on your specified page (try to stick to one page, as jumping pages can produce odd results).

What to Test
Crazy Egg not only allows you create to visual heat maps, but also has a "confetti" mode that lets you visualize clicks by segments, such as referring sources and new vs. returning visitors. Here are a few questions a heat-mapping tool can help you answer:

• Are people clicking where you want them to click?
• Is your navigation effective?
• Do you have too many choices?
• Do search visitors behave differently?
• Is your call to action getting clicks?

Although some heat-mapping tools can get bogged down in the visuals, I think that Crazy Egg has a very simple, elegant reporting approach that can give you solid insights quickly. Once you've gathered some initial impressions from Five Second Test and Crazy Egg, it's time to do some real user testing...

(3) UserTesting.com ($195)

It used to be that user testing required a lab, expensive equipment, and a difficult recruiting process. Now, you can use remote testing services like UserTesting.com to get quick, inexpensive user feedback. While I won't say it compares apples-to-apples to laboratory testing, I often find that the insights from even a handful of remote testing subjects can be incredibly useful.

How It Works
Setup is pretty straightforward, but doing it right can take a little bit of time. Technically, you just need to submit your URL and a few instructions to visitors. You pay $39 per visitor and receive both written feedback and an online video of the user walking through your site (with voice-over). Although this is a topic of some debate in the usability community, 5 users is a good number for uncovering core insights and getting solid bang for your buck.

What to Test
Take some time setting up your questions. Traditional usability tests are task-oriented – you tell someone to try to complete a task in a fairly open-ended fashion and watch them go to work. Be specific about the task and ask follow-up questions, like "Would you trust this site enough to make a purchase?" (I generally ask 3-4 follow-ups). A few questions this kind of qualitative testing can help you answer:

• Can people complete the task?
• How long does task completion take?
• Do users experience common stumbling blocks?
• What are visitors thinking out loud about?
• Does your search/navigation work as expected?
• Are you missing features people might be looking for?
• Do visitors get frustrated using your site?

Qualitative testing can be a great precursor to quantitative (A/B and multivariate) testing. Don't throw design changes at the wall and see what sticks – put user testing to work to uncover hidden issues on your site. We all need a fresh pair (or 5 pairs) of eyes from time to time.

Here's to $224 Well Spent

I'm an entrepreneur and a Bohemian – I understand that parting with money isn't easy. The insights you'll gain from just over $200, though, will, in my experience, easily yield 10X or even 100X back in online sales improvement. Solid qualitative data collection will also prevent you from making costly mistakes and will better inform how you look at your analytics and quantitative testing. There are plenty of good tools out there – choose a couple of them, and really put the effort into understanding how they work. You'll be well rewarded.

Update: We just published a YOUmoz post about Crazy Egg that should be an interesting read for anyone who enjoyed this article. David gives some nice examples and a case study of how heat-mapping got one of his clients an 87% conversion boost.