The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has a variety of online tools for conducting user experience (UX) research. The following tools are free for use by staff and contractors who work on the EERE website. Please contact the Web Governance Team Facilitator for more information on using these tools.
| Tool | Purpose | Research Questions This Tool Can Address |
|---|---|---|
| Alchemer (formerly Survey Gizmo) | Online surveys |
|
| Survey Monkey | ||
| Crazy Egg | Click analytics |
|
| Treejack | Site structure (information architecture) testing |
|
Alchemer and Survey Monkey
Want to see at a glance what Alchemer (formerly called Survey Gizmo) looks like and how it works? Check out this short video on Alchemer (WMV 3.9 MB). (Text Version.)
What these tools do
Alchemer and Survey Monkey are online survey tools that can help you gain a better understanding of your audience, their information needs, and their satisfaction with your product.
These tools collect and aggregate the data for you automatically. They also offer a series of advanced features for analyzing the data, including the ability to run custom reports, cross reference questions, create charts, and combine data sets.
How to access the tools
Contact the Web Governance Team Facilitator, who will walk you through the pros and cons of each tool and provide access to the tool you choose.
More information
See our page on creating and running surveys to learn more about how to plan and conduct an effective survey.
Crazy Egg
Want to see at a glance what Crazy Egg looks like and how it works? Check out this short video on Crazy Egg (WMV 3.2 MB). (Text Version.)
What Crazy Egg does
Crazy Egg is an online tool that helps answer questions about how users interact with your Web pages through click analysis. It does this by collecting information on where users click when they come to your page, and creates heat maps and other reports of usage patterns.
Crazy Egg can help answer questions such as:
- What items on this page are most popular?
- What percentage of our customers return to this page?
- Do people search from this page?
- Do they interact with the top navigation and how?
- Do people scroll down to the bottom of the page?
- What elements do they interact with on a page?
Remember that click analysis is done on an individual page basis and may run into issues with dynamic elements and pages, so it is more effective to pair it with other methods of collecting feedback such as usability testing to better understand how users are interacting with pages.
How to access the tool
Contact the Web Governance Team Facilitator.
More information
See the process for setting up Crazy Egg to learn more about how to plan and conduct an effective click analysis using Crazy Egg and to find the code that needs to be added to your page prior to the test.
Treejack
Want to see at a glance what Treejack looks like and how it works? Check out this short video on Treejack (WMV 3.2 MB). (Text Version.)
What Treejack does
Treejack is an online tool for validating your site's information architecture including navigation labels. It is generally used when you've created an outline of your new site structure and want to be sure your customers will be able to find what they need. Specifically, Treejack helps answer questions about which labels work best, whether a structure is too deep, and where to put certain types of content.
As with the other tools, this software gathers data remotely and generates reports that can be used to make decisions about your site structure before going to the time and expense of adding content to your site.
How to access the tool
Contact the Web Governance Team Facilitator.
More information
See the tree testing guide and best practices page to learn more about how to plan and conduct an effective tree test.