Clue Tracks What People Remember About Your Website

Design interaction firm ZURB today launches Clue, a tool which enables publishers to get concrete data on what exactly visitors remember seeing and find interesting about specific websites.

Part of the multi-product (including Bounce and Verify) website analytics ZURB platform, Clue’s objectives are simple. Similar to http://fivesecondtest.com, Clue wants to be a way for small businesses and large companies to spot and rectify immediately if there is something glaringly wrong with their websites (like the web equivalent of when you ask a friend, “Hey is there something obviously wrong about this?” and they point out a typo).

The process is such: Visit Clue, submit your URL and make a “memory test” which gives you a unique URL that you can then share with friends,a target market or control group in order to get feedback about how people initially perceive your site, giving them 5 1/2 seconds to declare their initial perceptions of your website UI via submission of the top five things they remember.

Says ZURB chief marketer Dmitry Dragilev, “[Clue] is great for lowering Bounce Rate for sites that sell something. Are ads getting in the way of content? Do people remember just the ads? Or content as well?”

According to Clue, TechCrunch readers are overly focusing on the MediaTemple ad directly in line of sight in the middle of the homepage. Despite the fact that all the Clue feedback is word related (i.e. you have to articulate what you remember about a website …) I’m sure there is a teachable lesson here, somewhere.

Oh! There totally is one! While Clue is a free service, it does tie in to Verify which ties into ZURB, which is apparently a legit interaction design business judging by how eager they were to get coverage. (We’ve covered them before).

Just how eager? They thoughtfully provided me with an alternate list of headlines for this post, in case I couldn’t come up with one on my own. I’ve included them below:

Get a clue on your website
Do you have a clue what people think of your website?
Clue in, your users are confused
Clueless? Let your users help you.
Exposing Usability Clues
Let your users clue you in
Clues for successful websites
Clue in to problems, then Verify your Ideas

Needless to say, I’ve decided to go with the more informative vs. creative header. Screencaps of Clue’s takes on TechCrunch, below: