Free Tree Testing Tool

Yes. Click Import in the toolbar to bring a tree from an indented outline, a CSV (Level 1, Level 2... columns or a Path column like Home > Products > Shoes) or a sitemap.xml address. You see a preview first and can undo. Setup only: results from other tools can't be imported.

Tree testing checks whether people can find things in a navigation structure using text alone. No visual design to help. See the definition above for the full explanation.

Card sorting comes before you have a structure: participants see a pile of unsorted content items and group them, which tells you how people would group and name things. Tree testing comes once you have a structure to check: participants see a finished, labelled hierarchy and try to find things in it, which tells you whether people can find things in what you already built.

This page has a runnable one, pre-filled below: an electronics store's navigation (Laptops & Computers, Phones & Tablets, TV & Audio, Customer Service, My Account), with tasks like finding whether a recent order has shipped, buying a case for a new phone, or checking a warranty. Edit it directly to see how the tool records success, directness and where people go wrong.

Classic usability guidance (Nielsen Norman Group) suggests five participants can surface most of the big, obvious problems with a structure, though the numbers here are indicative, not from any study of ours. More participants let you trust smaller differences between tasks and catch less common wrong turns. A handful of responses is enough to spot a badly-placed category; don't treat a five-person tree test as a statistically reliable measurement.

Directness is the share of SUCCESSFUL attempts where the participant went straight to the right place without backtracking up a level first. A task can have a high success rate but low directness. People eventually find the right answer, but only after trying somewhere else first, which is itself a sign the label or grouping isn't quite right even though it "worked".

Yes. Building a tree test, previewing it and reading your results cost nothing, and there is no credit card step. A study takes up to 1,000 responses, with up to 10 tasks and 200 items in the tree, five levels deep. You sign in with an email link only to get the share link. You bring the participants; there is no recruitment panel.

Describe what the person wants to do, not the label you hope they click. Say "find out whether your recent order has shipped", not "find Track My Order". Pick tasks from real top user needs, aim for five to ten, and mark every acceptable answer as correct when more than one location is fair.

For each task: success rate, directness, where people ended up and their first click. A pietree draws the tree with the paths people took, so a wrong turn that many people made is easy to spot. Responses export as CSV.

Paid tools mostly add a participant panel, team workspaces and support. This one doesn't recruit for you, so you send the link to your own users, colleagues or a panel you already pay for. The tree, tasks, success and directness scores, pietree and CSV export are all free. Testing designs rather than navigation? See the free Maze alternative page.

Only you, unless you publish them. Studies created while signed in sit in your account. Every study also has a results link that is a separate, much longer secret from the participant link, and if you lose it and the study isn't in your account, nobody, including us, can get back in to read the responses. You can publish a read-only results page if you want to share them.