Comments for Userfly: Get Usability Insights with One Line of Code

Userfly: Get Usability Insights with One Line of Code

2009-01-13T08:00:11Z

When it comes to Web design and development, one thing trumps the latest technology and cool features: usability. Why? Because all of the features and functions in the world are completely worthless if a human user is unable to figure out how to use them. But testing against human factors, creating use cases, and observing focus groups can prove to be a costly endeavor for even the largest of companies.

Now, there's a cost-effective means of seeing how usable your pages are: Userfly, a simple way to test your site's usability for free - with one line of code.

]]> Simply add the Userfly code to your site, and you'll soon be a fly-on-the-wall as users walk through your pages. That one line of code allows Userfly to record a screencast of your users' behavior, providing some very interesting feedback on how they are interacting with your site, from simple mouse tracking to complex interactions with AJAX elements.

userfly.com from Chris Estreich on Vimeo.

The user behavior is recorded for the entire site visit, following the user from page to page. Once the user leaves the site, the capture ends.

Reviewing the walkthroughs is just as easy. Userfly provides information on the user's browser, each page visited, and time spent on each page. Clicking on a particular page plays back the interaction, showing where the user moved his or her mouse and where he or she clicked. Once you're finished watching, you're prompted to rate the usefulness of the capture. Then, you can decide to keep it or discard it.

Even during a short test, I found Userfly incredibly helpful - given that a number of users stopped by as I was testing the app. In fact, the only complaint I had was that the walkthrough fails to automatically pan as the user scrolls. Meaning? Meaning you have to manually scroll to keep up with the mouse movements - which I found to be nearly impossible on lengthy posts.

When the user didn't scroll, however, I found myself replaying the walkthroughs over and over. It was invaluable to see how other users see and use the pages that I find so familiar. Suffice it to say, I immediately noticed areas for improvement.

Userfly will allow you to record 10 users per hour, monitoring basic events for free. Those who are interested in more users per hour and more advanced events can contact Userfly for a quote.

How are people using your site? Wouldn't you like to know? Grab the code at Userfly and take a look at your site through someone else's eyes.

Comment from Jeff on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T08:14:21Z

I smell competition for crazyegg. But coming back to think about it, is this peeking too much into user's privacy?

Comment from Mustafa Dalci on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T08:43:51Z

Congrats!!. Capturing mouse movements of user with one line of code is great.

However, we can only see the mouse actions of user. We can not hear the ideas of users about the interface and get feedback. So it will be very little insights about usability of website.

Comment from Endre Jofoldi on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T09:46:12Z

Very useful application indeed.

Turoczy... your name seems to be hungarian. Do you know about that?

Comment from Rick Turoczy on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T10:10:06Z

@Endre Jofoldi Indeed! But it's been awhile since my great grandparents emigrated to the US. And I'm sure my watered-down American accent is slaughtering the pronunciation of it.

Although, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to hear it pronounced in the mother tongue during a trip to Budapest. ;)

Comment from Eli on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T10:26:23Z

interesting gui commentary

Comment from Dr Karl Blanks on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T11:26:14Z

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the great post.

Do you know how UserFly compares with ClickTale and TeaLeaf? We have been using ClickTale for years, and find it really useful.

ClickTale has some additional reports that we find really useful:

* a heatmap showing how far visitors scroll down long pages

* you can analyze your website's forms, to see at what point people are abandoning them

We reviewed ClickTale, along with 13 other similarly-useful tools, in this post: http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/articles/understanding-your-visitors/

Karl

Comment from Paul on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T12:54:36Z

Could you be clear about whether this is a sponsored piece?
I say this because have tried out ClickTale which appeared well over a year ago, so most these functionalities are hardly revolutionary (The heat maps being the leap for me). So I concur with Dr Karl, I would prefer a comparison.

Comment from Dan Rockwell on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T14:14:51Z

While no doubt its yet another great example of cool code to capture behaviors on a website- I wouldn't go as far as to say that this replaces traditional user testing, usability or focus groups.

The problem all these tools have is getting to the why around behaviors on your website. If you combined this tool with traditional testing, that is you talking to a human, and having a conversation as why your site design does x over y then yeah ok, cool, but without that why all you have are recorded movements and then assumptions in your head as to why the user didn't get what they wanted.

Does it work for low fly bootstrap testing? Sure but you still lack the conversation you really need to have. You could easily combine it with say Mechanical Turk testing and have those folks fill out a survey later as to where they got stuck and why etc.. that could work, not optimal but could work.

Userfly alone is a java screen capture bit of code.

Comment from Ken on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T14:46:25Z

There is a Drupal module available now which integrates UserFly in Drupal 6: http://drupal.org/project/vitzo_userfly

Comment from Drew Holland on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T14:52:27Z

Dan,

What's up with all the weird terms, "low fly bootstrap testing" and "Mechanical Turk testing"? What about the Smith Brothers Double Dog Dare testing?

-Drew

Comment from Rick Turoczy on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T15:06:33Z

@Dan Rockwell: I was not intending to imply that this replaced traditional usability testing. If I did, I apologize.

Rather, I was hoping to highlight for the thousands of application developers who do little to no usability testing - due to perceived costs or assumed difficulty - that this might be an option to get them started down that path.

Comment from Dan Rockwell on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T15:27:49Z

Drew, as you know my patented Smith Bros Double Dog Dare testing has gone into phase 3 and yes.. life comes at you fast! Speaking of which, where's my RFP dude, give me cake!!

And Rick, well no need to apologize really. I think again its on the mark with recording behavior. And ya, there are countless startups that do little to no testing and this app is perfect to get your feet wet. Grab the popcorn, pull up a chair and go "what the hell.. are they.... doing..."

Comment from roupen n. on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T15:36:36Z

Site appears to be down :(

Comment from E. David Zotter on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T16:58:14Z

This is a cool little app. I could see a lot of uses for it.

However, I still prefer tools like RelevantView - http://www.relevantview.com
The primary reason is because this app requires modification to the actual website to work. This eliminates it as an option for testing competitor sites against your own.
Another problem is that you're unable to target specific actions and ask follow-up questions....

Comment from Samantha on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T18:38:05Z

I think this is a great idea for developers who never get a chance to observe a live usability test session or who do not have user experience staff to provide researched recommendations. While it's not a replacement for user experience research, it definitely gives a feel for the actual navigation path, rather than the path that was created by the developer - which is often what trips users up the most on a website. As a user experience analyst, I'm often hesitant to see these site tracking products because of privacy concerns and because it is not a replacement for research, however, it makes a fantastic supplement that is developer-driven rather than researcher-driven.

One note however - usability research does not have to be expensive or time consuming. There are a number of methods that serve well, particularly for an iterative development method, and are both inexpensive and quick to produce results.

Comment from Rob on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T18:41:31Z

I use Clicktale, and with a little link at the bottom of your site they give you extra recordings everyday. Do they have a heatmap?

Comment from John Krien on 2009-01-13

2009-01-13T22:13:34Z

@Mustafa you are absolutely right. This is a great feature but there is also a need to ask for users' feedback in order to really understand WHY did they do what ever - on the website. I recently came across Kampyle (www.kampyle.com) which provides a very cool feedback form - and it's free!

Comment from Mary Deaton on 2009-01-14

2009-01-14T18:42:02Z

How do you inform the user that their behavior is being tracked? Do they have the option to opt out?

Comment from Rakesh Agrawal on 2009-01-15

2009-01-16T06:31:39Z

We tried adding this to some pages on our site but it really slowed things down. Pageloads took way longer than before. Is this expected behavior? Is there particular kind of content or javascript on a page that might trigger this kind of slowdown?

I'd love to have data like this, but not at the cost of the user experience for visitors.

Comment from DoToBi on 2009-01-18

2009-01-18T23:20:13Z

Dan Rockwell is right on the money. This is a great tool for observing visitors using your website, but unless you know what each visitor's goal is it is impossible to draw any conclusions as to whether they had a successful visit, whether they had difficulty using your site, whether they got lost, frustrated, etc...

So while it might be fun to watch people using your website, Userfly can't be used as any kind of analytical tool to help improve your website.