Optimal Workshop, a company in New Zealand, offers their suite of user research tools on a subscription basis, including the Treejack information architecture tool, OptimalSort card sorting test, Chalkmark first-click testing, and other tools.
Crazy Egg is great if you have static content and want to be able to easily set up heatmaps and scrollmaps to see how people interact with your webpages across different devices types. Straightforward and reliable. In circumstances when you want fast turnarounds, Crazy Egg isn't the right tool as the visualisations often take the better part of a day to generate. It also doesn't perform well if your site has dynamic content - either AJAX-driven or dynamically expanding.
The tools are great for user researchers who have a solid foundation with IA research methods, or are willing to learn them while using the tools. However they don't magically create valid IA studies; someone with no IA research experience may struggle to use the tools and/or run studies resulting in poor quality data.
Shows us exactly where users click on a page. Literally, the exact spot. This is useful in many different ways. You can see what links/buttons are clicked the most. You can see if a key CTA on the page IS NOT clicked - maybe you need a new design or the placement of that CTA is poor.
You can see if users are clicking a spot on the page that is not actually actionable. Maybe your treatment of some text or an image makes it appear that an item is linked, but it is not actually linked. You can see that people are clicking on that item, and either go ahead and link it, or else change the design to look less 'clickable'.
You can see what percentage of users actually view the different areas within your page. This is very useful when you run into a key stakeholder that demands certain content be above 'the fold'. Trying to explain to a non-technical person that 'the fold' is entirely dependent upon the user's screen size and resolution can be frustrating for both the stakeholder and yourself. Instead, using Crazy Egg's scrollmap feature, you can visually show that stakeholder that, for instance, 80% of users view the content that appears within the top 600 pixels of page height.
The design of both the heatmaps and scrollmaps is fantastic.
The 'page camera' software they offer works very well once you get the hang of it. This allows you to run tests on pages that include dynamic content (like a shopping cart product category page).
The recruitment panelists are not professional, nor do they take the tasks seriously. You are going to get a lot of bad data.
They are HQ'd outside the US and must have a small team because the customer service is the absolute WORST I've experienced in their industry.
They pride themselves on documentation, but when they fail to document something they blame the customer for the mistake.
There are way too many limitations with the tool after you launch, limited integrations, and poor survey questionnaire options. The tool itself is far too basic for most sites, especially B2B.
It's a great tool considering how inexpensive it is. If used correctly and you have a plan for tracking your websites, this tool can make a world of a difference. If you are not going to sit down and take the time to make a plan for how to use this tool, I would say it is not worth your time. Yes, you can look at items on your website that need to be changed, but without a consistent plan, other important items that need changing can be lost in the mix. Make sure you have enough time and energy to invest in this and it will be well worth it
It's not clear what features there are. The navigation icon is not labeled. It's hard to know where to start when you're first logging in as a first-time user. It's hard to know how to set up anything and there aren't many helpful tutorials in-product. I don't want to be kicked out of a help center or read the documentation.
I would rate Optimal Workshop's overall usability 9 out of 10 due to several key factors. Firstly, the platform has a user-friendly interface makes navigation straightforward, even for first-time users. The tools and features are well-organized, ensuring users can quickly find what they need without unnecessary complexity. Secondly, the platform is highly intuitive, meaning users can easily understand how to perform tasks without extensive guidance. This is supported by clear and concise instructions throughout the application, reducing the learning curve significantly.
Additionally, the learnability of Optimal Workshop is exceptional. New users can become proficient in a short amount of time, thanks to its well-thought-out design and helpful onboarding materials. Even more advanced features are presented in a way that feels approachable and manageable. Finally, the platform supports a seamless workflow, allowing users to focus on their research or tasks rather than struggling with the software. These qualities collectively make Optimal Workshop a reliable and efficient tool for many projects, justifying its high usability rating.
I think support is an area where Crazy Egg is lacking. I would love to have a quarterly check-in with a Crazy Egg rep to understand what kinds of changes have been made to the platform and what is on the horizon. I also think a quick consulting sessions with a rep could be extremely beneficial, as I'm sure there are ways to use the tool that we haven't even thought about yet that would be extremely insightful for our team.
We’ve never had to use much of their support services since the platform is very easy to use, we have however needed to transfer ownership between team members due to people leaving or other circumstances. Under those situations, the support offered to us has been been very quick and efficient and we never had to nudge them much to get the job done.
There are a lot of tools with similar feature and closely equal pricing- This factor is the most confusing. As we need something for our website and not every tool has everything and it took time for us to understand this. We choose Crazy Egg for its ease of using and anyone can be trained to use it. The main reason to chose Crazy Egg is the ease of creating snapshots and downloadable features. For me personally -the "confetti" feature helped a lot and its the main feature which is like a ALL IN 1.
Optimal Workshop was the best tool that provided just what we needed and not anything more. The price point was also perfect for us as it provided room to try it out and then jump into a bigger package
Its reliability (not scaleability, as the question asks for, sorry) is pretty good but through our testing we know that some clicks do not get recorded. It doesn't bother us a lot because we look at the aggregate of thousands of visits, but we do know it misses things. As for scaleability, it's about right. You really don't want zillions of clicks per snapshot - the screen just turns to 100% dots and you lose the ability to differentiate different screen areas. We find that 25,000 clicks for a page gives us a really good view.
Positive Impact: Answering questions that analytics cannot. i.e. Are people seeing the PayPal button? We can measure how many people start the PayPal process on our site. However, its hard to know if low numbers are because of low interest or because our customers are missing the option.
Positive Impact: Measuring user engagement for page types to determine what elements on the page are most important to our customers.
Positive Impact: Lower cost than competitors to use helpful engagement tracking software. Currently, we're not consistently using Crazy Egg for user engagement so the $50 a month is perfect for our current needs.
Optimal Workshop has provided a very low-risk, quick testing ground for navigation menus. So while the full impact cannot be determined, we are happy we are using Optimal Workshop, and are gaining benefits from it.
