Even with all the application availability and performance enhancements you build into your Web infrastructure, you still need to build something that visitors actually like to use. Unfortunately, testing the usability of a Web-based application can be difficult and requires expertise or lab space not always afforded to everyone.

TechSmith's recently upgraded Morae software might provide the combination of features and affordability to bring collaborative user experience testing to a much wider audience.

In our testing, we found that this Web page usability testing platform can help collect some valuable data concerning how easily users can - or can't - navigate your site. TechSmith's approach to usability testing heavily leverages its experience with the screen recording and capture methods found in its popular SnagIt and Camtasia products. On the downside, Morae could do more to help analyze the data once it is captured.

Morae comprises three components: Morae Recorder, which collects test data; Morae Remote Viewer, which observes and annotates test data real-time over a network; and, Morae Manager, which analyzes captured data and assembles relevant pieces into a presentation.

The recorder software is installed on each Windows testing station, which should be equipped with audio and video capture capabilities. The recorder software will automatically synchronize any screen activity captured with recorded video and audio input, allowing you to easily correlate any furled brows, sighs, or colorful language associated with a tedious portion of an application. (See related story on user anxiety .)

The Morae Recorder automatically annotates collected data indicating Web page changes, mouse clicks, keystrokes, text data appearing on screen, and window events such as opening and closing applications. However, fans of emerging browsers like Firefox or Opera should be aware that Morae is only able to automatically sense page change events when Internet Explorer is being used.

Be aware that when using Morae Recorder, captured data can get quite large (in the gigabyte range) if the test is more than a few minutes in duration. To address this, you can save the data stream directly to network-attached storage, add an inexpensive external USB drive to save data capture, or burn CDs from the resulting files. Morae Recorder will conveniently spilt recorded data into 600M byte chunks for easy transport and reassembly.