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Last week our friends over at Usabilla launched their new research tool… Usabilla Live. As you would have gathered from reading this blog, I am a nut for SaaS research tools and I am excited about Usabilla Live.
Usabilla Live is a form of design feedback collection but… well, you guessed, live from your website. No longer will you have to invite participants for design feedback surveys, visitors to your website can share their thoughts with you at anytime.
What’s the difference between Usabilla Live and other feedback collection tools? Well, when we look at tools like Kampyle and KISSinsights (now Qualaroo), both of which are great tools, you will notice that the granularity of the feedback doesn’t go deeper than page level.
Now, with Usabilla Live on the scene it is possible to drill down to individual page elements and get feedback on that. Check out the following video:
I might seem overly positive of the tools that I mention on this blog, but I’ll be honest with the that not every tool will get a job done, because the tool you decide to use is very dependent on what you want to achieve. With that in mind, I can think of several ways to put Usabilla Live to good use. The few concerns that I have are as followed:
Explanation of Usabilla Live
How intuitive is Usabilla Live as a feedback tool? Will your Joe Average website visitor know how to properly use the tool? The tool is activated by the feedback button (in this case, the one on the right hand side of your browser window). The tool is currently only available in English, but I have been told by people at Usabilla that multi language settings are being worked on as we speak.
Go ahead and test it out… leave me your thoughts on the tool in the comments 
Multiple Feedback Per User
Are you really getting value for your money? The pricing seems a bit steep and there is no indication to why this is. To be able to collect 75 responses from visitors, you will have to fork over $49/month.[Updated] That’s a $1.50 per response What was I thinking, mucking up a simple calculation like that… You pay $0.65 per response. And with thanks to Sabina’s comment, we now know that this is ‘per button‘. So in the Large plan, where you get 5 buttons to deploy, this means that the costs per response can drop to as low as $0.11. Great stuff!
[Updated] With no quality filter it would be easy to collect 75 junk responses in a matter of hours. After the initial feedback, you are asked if you would like to continue giving feedback. A possible pitfall. There are ways to save money with 1 and 2 year contracts. This can save you up to 15% and 30% respectively. I stand corrected… but a form of quality control on the feedback would be nice.
I don’t b%*&$ and moan all the time. You need to give credit where credit is due. Usabilla Live will let conduct online and real-time design feedback research. Depending on the type of visitors that submit feedback, the value of it can be priceless, as I have pointed out in many other blog posts about voice of the customer research.
Tracking the effects of certain elements and the emotional effect they can have on people is the way forward. From exit surveys that focus on an entire visit, to design feedback tools that focus only on page level feedback, Usabilla Live has a lot of potential to help user experience professionals to learn more about the sentiment and experiences with element level feedback.
Let me make it short and sweet… nobody has ever lost money or sleep from a 30-day free trial. The fact that you will have to enter your credit card details might keep quite a bit of potential customers from trying Usabilla Live, but if you get the chance, definitely try it out.
Grab your 30-day FREE trial of Usabilla Live
More languages on the way
After some feedback on our behalf, Usabilla has quickly added language features into Usabilla Live. A great update that should help promote usage of the tool. The settings are adjustable per button. The tool now supports Dutch, English (American), German and Italian. Usabilla has told Actual Insights that more languages are on the way.
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Matthew,
Thanks for the review! We are always happy to get feedback upon which we can further improve our products.
There is one thing, though, I’d like to add about the pricing. Luckily your calculation was no exactly correct as it comes down to about $ 0.6 per response and the small plan now includes two feedback button, for which you can both gather 75 responses. So that brings down the price even further to as little as $ 0.3 per response.
We now also offer a Starter plan for only $ 19 per month.
If you notice anything else or if you have further suggestions, we are eager to hear from you!
Regards,
Sabina
Haha, alright alright… I am sticking my head in the sand right now. What a mathematical error… my apologies for that, I have corrected it in the article.
The other things we have run into are languages, but I have heard that you guys are working on it, and then the QA on the feedback. I noticed on several other tools that the response inbox can get filled with clutter if not properly managed.
One small tip for languages, on the input form, allow the administrator to add some (2 or 3) languages that can be chosen by the visitor, maybe in the form of a flag-button or text link. Many websites (especially ours) are dual language and there is no built in way to have a tool like Usabilla Live to be displayed in the user’s preferred language (no URL variable to indicate which language is being displayed). Using quick language buttons like (Dutch/French/English) can offer the tool some more flexibility.
No problem, thanks for correcting it.
And thanks for the suggestions. I really like the idea of letting the user choose which language he prefers. We’ll definitely discuss that and different languages are indeed released soon. 
Thanks again!
Sabina
In looks good and we might give it a try to see what useful feedback it creates.
One thing though: it doesn’t work with an iPad. You can’t ignore that nowadays.
Good point Leon. I noticed the same thing with my iPhone. There must be a way to filter out usage, ie. don’t display the tool, based on a certain platform or device… right? *in other words, I am not that tech savvy*