ThinkAloud by Activero

What do people actually see on your page?

ThinkAloud sends a synthetic audience through your page in a real browser. An attention model trained on eye-tracking data predicts where the eye lands first, and the personas react to that before they read on. You get one report: what they see, what they understand, and where they drop off. It is a prediction, not a measurement.

The order is the whole difference

Most synthetic users ask a language model to read the page. But a page read in source order corresponds to no human experience at all. There, a 60px headline and a link at the foot of the page are typographically the same thing.

A human does it the other way round. The eye lands somewhere before anything is read, and the explanation follows. ThinkAloud runs in that order.

FirstThe eye lands An attention model trained on real eye-tracking data predicts where the eye goes in the first few seconds — before anything is understood.
ThenThe explanation follows The persona is asked to react to exactly that: what do I notice, what do I think the page is about. Only then does it read on and navigate.

We do not recreate what happens inside a human head. We tell the persona where the eye landed — a human is never told.

The mechanism is not the same. The order is.

How a run works

  1. You point it at a pageA public address, an HTML prototype or an image. You choose the purpose — conversion, communication or reference — and the test judges accordingly. A missing call to action is not friction on a page meant to inform.
  2. The audience goes through itThe attention model predicts the first glance. The personas then read, navigate and think aloud in a real browser. If you have search queries from Search Console, the personas are built from those rather than from guesswork.
  3. You read the reportHeatmap on top, then coverage, what works, and the problems in priority order — each with quotes, severity and the page it happened on. A PDF is included.

The four fields the report covers

They are the same four the rest of the method rests on. The report shows which fields work, which have problems, and what none of the personas mentioned at all — that last one is often the most expensive.

SafetyDare I do this?
MeaningCan I see why I would?
CapabilityDo I know how it is done?
EffortHow much is in my way?

The framework is published research, not a house model — it is open at frictiontheory.org, and Research explains what it rests on.

The personas were satisfied with the page. Four per cent of the first glance landed on something you can click.

See a report before you decide. The one below is not a mockup. It is output from a real run on a public page — our own LMS product page — with personas built from actual search queries.

The think-aloud half found no convergent problems: both personas praised the pricing for being clear and specific. The first glance said something else. And effort — one of the four fields — neither of them mentioned at all.

That is what the two instruments are for together. A language model that merely reads the page would have signed off on it.

Open the report (conversion test) →

What it costs

From DKK 99 / mo.

Three plans, stepped by how much you run. They contain the same thing — every analysis, every model, the report as a PDF. Prices exclude VAT.

A run draws on a balance, so you pay for how much you actually test — not for how many people have access.

You get started by writing to us. We create the account and set up the first run with you, so you can see a report on your own page before you decide.

Which page should be tested first?

Send us the address. We will tell you what a run on that page would show — and what it would not.