An innovative site usability testing tool called Usabilla popped on my radar a couple of days ago. It looks like a really interesting way to collect user feedback. One of the advantages is that you can test your designs before they are even finished. Getting early feedback on mock ups can cut back losses drastically. A lot of time and money is wasted on design that on completion doesn’t perform and needs to be redesigned. This service looks to have a good future.

There are some things to keep in mind though with tools like these, they do not replace actual live testing. The type of feedback you get from people who are deliberately looking at a design for the purpose of giving feedback is very different from natural user behavior. This is a very important distinction. The pitfalls are that you can get into a never ending feedback loop with your design never getting finished. And then there is the danger of basing your design on user feedback, rather than actual performance. It is far more important to measure performance and improve based on those numbers than solely rely on feedback obtained from tools like these (combining the two can be extremely powerful!).

Having said that, this tool looks to save designers and companies a lot of money. I love the way how it streamlines visual feedback. I’m going to try it out myself for a project I have going.

To get a good look at what it does, have a look at the video on their homepage: http://usabilla.com