3 Visual Feedback Tools You Can't Live Without

Working as a web designer can be one of the most rewarding experiences in the world, especially when you see a client's site go live and achieve amazing things. It can also be an incredibly frustrating chore when you find yourself at the receiving end of countless revision requests in an attempt to find out what the client actually wants. Being able to visually track bugs and glitches in your design helps to dramatically reduce such revision requests.

Fortunately there are a number of excellent bug tracking and online collaboration tools available today which can and will help you work more effectively, both with other designers and your clients.

BugHerd

If you're looking for a collaboration and bug-tracking tool with a simple interface, simple registration, and provides a point-and-click UI for both designers and clients, then we think you're going to like what you find in BugHerd. That plus the fact that you're not asked for payment details when registering - nobody likes those silly attempts at forced continuity.

The first thing we liked is how BugHerd can integrate itself with online project management tools like Basecamp, GitHub, Zendesk and others - this integration is still in its early days though, and more refinement is required. This is another collaboration tool which requires a browser extension to be installed, but once that's done you can get to highlighting bugs directly on web pages by pinning notes on them. This removes the need for screenshots, but these are taken automatically too, so you're covered from all angles in terms of being able to get and provide feedback.

There is a short free trial you can use to evaluate this visual feedback solution, but once the free trial is over you'll need to pay for each user on your account. Pricing for 5 users starts at $29 per month, and goes all the way up to $180 per month for 50 users. If you're working to a budget then you could find BugHerd can get expensive quite quickly.

TrackDuck

If you're looking for a visual collaboration tool with a social element to it then you'll find it easy to love TrackDuck. As with most visual feedback tools you can highlight specific issues on the page in real-time, but it also allows you to chat with other testers or developers via the dashboard, where you can view bug reports in real-time too.

Getting started with TrackDuck is very easy, with the entire registration process taking less than a minute. Once registered you'll be taken through a step-by-step wizard which shows you exactly what you need to do to create your first project. TrackDuck integrates quite nicely with Basecamp and JIRA, but it's limited to just those two.

There's no need to add an extension to your web browser to get TrackDuck to work, although if you want to capture high resolution screen grabs then an extension is required. It's also compatible with a number of different browsers and we also love the fact you can have an unlimited number of team members with your account. The scarcity of third party project management tool integration is a bit of a PITA, but if you have either Basecamp or JIRA then you're good to go.

Getting a TrackDuck account can cost you as little as $7 per month if you're working on just 1 or 2 projects, but even at the upper end it costs just $41 per month for up to 15 projects, unlimited users, unlimited tasks, unlimited images and all kinds of other cool features. Highly recommended!

Notable

This is a web-based feedback tool which allows users to provide feedback by taking screenshots of the interface and then leaving comments on them. Setting up Notable is a relatively straightforward process, and includes a YouTube video explaining how to use it. One feature we particularly liked was the ability to comment on source code, plus you can have unlimited team members and export your results to PDF when you're done. You do need to install a browser extension to make Notable work, which is something not every user is going to be a fan of, but it's a necessary evil with most visual feedback tools.

What we didn't like is that even if you're setting up a 30-day trial account you still have to provide payment details. With plans starting at just $19 per month 'Notable' is extremely affordable though.

Summary

We're pretty sure that at least one of the above tools will fit your requirements perfectly. If you know of any other bug tracking or collaboration tools worth reviewing please let us know by leaving a comment below.