If you’re building a website for your business, it’s important to consider the user experience (UX). These seven UX tools will help you during every stage of the design process, from creating a wireframe to ensuring customers receive the support they need.
[Read more: What is UX? How to Improve the User Experience]
Balsamiq
When you’re creating a new website, it’s best to start with a very basic design. From there, you can begin collecting feedback and learning what works and what doesn’t. Balsamiq is a low-fidelity wireframe tool, and it’s a great option for beginners.
Balsamiq helps you focus on the structure of your website without worrying about things like colors or fonts. Once your wireframe is finished, you can export it as a PDF and receive feedback from other people on your ideas. This will help you determine the usability and usefulness of your design.
Optimizely
Optimizely focuses on A/B testing, and it’s used by top companies like Microsoft, eBay and IBM. It won’t help you design your site, but it can help you find ways to make it more effective.
For instance, you can use Optimizely to test out two different calls to action (CTAs) to determine which is more effective. It can also help you experiment with different options and use data to decide which one your audience prefers.
[Read more: Website Design: What Makes a Great User Experience?]
UserTesting
UserTesting is another tool that can help you during the prototyping stage. It’s an excellent resource to help you gain customer feedback without delaying your progress.
The company recruits your target audience and sends them pre-formatted tests they can fill out remotely. You can also schedule live interviews with your target customers, share your screen and record the feedback you receive.
Direct feedback is the best way to eliminate the guesswork and ensure you’re meeting the needs of your audience.
Hotjar Heatmaps
Have you ever wondered what visitors actually do when they come to your website? Hotjar Heatmaps will help you figure it out. The tool goes beyond just analytics and shows you how people move through your site.
Hotjar Heatmaps will show you a range of different colors across your website, with red being the most engaged and blue being the least engaged. You can use the tool to see how visitors scroll through your site, whether they notice your CTAs and what pages they click on.
The information you learn can help you determine what pages are performing well and where there are opportunities to improve.
Feedier
Direct feedback is the best way to eliminate the guesswork and ensure you’re meeting the needs of your audience. Feedier allows you to create interactive surveys and quizzes for your audience. And the company’s automation technology ensures that the feedback you receive ties directly to your business’s goals and objectives.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free traffic analytics tool, and it can be a great resource to help you learn more about your audience. After your site has launched, you can use Google Analytics to see how visitors interact with your site.
Over time, you’ll begin collecting data about your visitors, like their location, demographics and interests. The information you learn will help you create user personas for your audience.
[Read more: A Guide to Driving Traffic to Your Website]
Drift
Drift makes it easy to connect to your customers and website visitors with personalized messaging. The company’s AI chatbots allow visitors to ask questions, schedule meetings and even request video chats.
When a potential customer visits your site to learn more about your company, you want to engage with them at their highest point of interest. Drift allows you to do just that with personalized conversations so you can continue to move them through the sales cycle.
And Drift gives you detailed analytics about your website visitors, so you can continue to improve your sales and marketing process.
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