Online User Testing

What is it?
Usability testing is the process of uncovering inefficiencies within your site, application, or tool. It involves measuring the ease with which users can complete the tasks they set out to accomplish on your website.  Want to know how efficient a new website redesign is?  Are there new features you would like to integrate into your current application but are unsure how users will react to the feature?  Remote usability testing provides you real data from your end users to make changes focused around their needs.

What is the difference between remote and in-lab usability testing?
Compared with testing in the usability lab, remote usability testing can gather usability data from a wider range of users and is more comfortable for most users, who may get nervous in a usability lab with its cameras, microphones, and less-than-cozy feeling.  It allows us to gather real-time feedback from users in their most natural setting.

Questions Usability Testing Strives to Answer

• Are there usability issues around our key paths?
• What are their needs, behaviors, and impressions?
• What are their most common tasks?
• What is their level of satisfaction with those tasks?
• How effective is the site in conveying Client’s new brand?
• Are there ways to optimize the site as a sales and branding channel through usability improvements or the addition of new functionality?
• Is the site supporting and reinforcing other sales channels (e.g., device, store)?

The Benefits of Remote Usability Testing

• Gain direct user feedback - Identifies and isolates unanticipated interface and communication problems based on actual behavior.
• Realistic Test Environment - Observe users in their natural environment (not an artificial lab environment).
• Global geographic reach - Achieve a more representative sample of respondents that mirror the targeted population.   Participants are not constrained to a few metropolitan areas as typically found when conducting focus groups or traditional usability tests. 
• Statistically significant results - Test more users (up to 800) than traditional usability labs (10-20 participants).
• Flexible invitation delivery methods - Email invitation, site entry or exit pop-up.
• Flexible recruiting methods -Target audience can be found in a client list or custom-recruited online/offline customers and or site visitors.
• Independence of responses -  Individual participants are not influenced by each other, as they are in a typical focus group.
• No moderator bias -  Participant responses are not influenced by a moderator, as typically found with traditional usability testing and focus groups.
• Multi-method approach.  Confidence in findings are increased by using a multi-method approach to triangulate on the customer’s point of view—including spontaneous and elicited feedback, qualitative and quantitative question types, and behavioral, attitudinal, and cognitive measures.