Have you ever landed on a website, read the headline, went "huh?" and smashed the back button?
Maybe the headline was a string of buzzwords pretending to be a real sentence. Maybe the site design looked like it was straight from the 90's. Or maybe the imagery was so bad, they forgot to remove the stock image watermark. Eek.
While your site probably doesn't fall victim to all those mishaps, it can always benefit from the tiniest bit of user testing. At a minimum you should know if random website visitors understand what you're offering.
The best way to start user testing? 5-second tests.
5-second tests are a super low effort way to test if your website visitors "get" your offering.
To create a test, you upload a screenshot of your landing page (or headline, or whatever you want to show them).
It is then shown on the tester's screen for 5 seconds. They're then asked:
- Based on what you saw, what do you think this company does?
- Based on what you saw, who is this page for?
That's it!
How users respond will tell you if your landing page is clear. Or if it needs some work.
They're actually a lot of fun to take as well. You just may find some great landing page inspiration on the site.
Current status
A working version is up on IsThisClear. You can post tests. You can take tests. All for free.
Right now I'm thinking of offering a paid plan as well. Figuring out a pricing model has been a challenge though. Would a credit based system work? Or should it be a subscription where there are better features? A combo of both?
Of course I have a ton of features I'd like to add. Leaderboards (to encourage folks to take tests). Custom questions. Branding removal. Pay to skip taking tests. And lots more.
Tech stack
I built this using Ruby on Rails, Stimulus, TailwindCSS, & Postgres. It is lovingly hosted on Hatchbox & DO.
Why this idea?
I was going through a course on copywriting called 10x Web Copy. After writing your first version of your hero section, they recommend doing a 5-second test. Since everything in that course had been gold so far, I figured I'd try out their recommendation.
So I took my 60 bucks over to a user testing provider. As a bootstrapper, I was hesitant to hand over $60, but once the results came in, I understood the value.
My copy sucked.
I went back and rewrote it, now knowing what people really saw.
I saw the value of 5-second tests, but I got sick of shelling out money every time I needed to test a change.
So I built IsThisClear.com.
Recruited results are free instead of $1 each like on most sites (although you'll have to take a few of other people's tests). They also run continuously so you'll always be getting new feedback.
If you check it out, I hope you like it. And if you have any feedback - good or bad, hit me up on twitter.
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