Websites are like our babies. We conceive the idea in our heads, we labor for hours and months birthing it, sometimes spend a ton of money too and to us, it’s awesome! But is it for your visitors?

I’m not saying a site has to be perfect before releasing it to the public, no matter how old your site it, the work is never done and we should always be tweaking it. A website doesn’t even have to be pretty to be effective. More important than eye candy, it has to make sense and not annoy the hell out of people. How do you find out?

You could order an expensive usability test. Actually, up until recently, usability test have always been expensive but now there are far more interesting and affordable options available to you such as…

UserTesting.com – for $25, you tell them the demographics of your target market and what you want to test. They contact testers who match that demographic, the user records and provides feedback as they work through your site.

IntuitionHQ – this site uses the power of social networks to help you with the testing. So the testers are actually people who already follow and hopefully like you. This could be a good thing because you know you would be asking the right people but they could also have seen your site or are familiar getting around it. The cost is $5 for a test.

UsabilityTest.com – this site is based on quite a unique method where testers consist of web designers and people passionate about web site usability. I’m not sure about this because I tend to prefer real customer or prospect’s feedback but there is value to having your site evaluated by those in the design and usability industry. The service is free and I believe you can offer people a prize for the best feedback. Not sure about that as it wasn’t clear to me which is a little ironic considering it is a usability site.

FiveSecondTest – this site is kinda cute. The idea is you give people five seconds to perform one action like find your subscribe button/form or show people the page once and see if they remember where something you want to be recalled is. In other words, it tests very specific things which may be all you want. It starts free, but if you want more results they have 3 pricing levels from $4 up to $12.

Another method is perhaps to simply send an email to your list and tell them you’d like to have some feedback. Ask them to record their thoughts and actions using Jing – a free software. To sweeten the pot you could also offer a special coupon code or free access to one of your products. I’m not sure how scientifically relevant the results would be that way, but think it is a free and easy way to get feedback directly from people who matter most – it also shows your prospects and followers that you really care what they think.