The following is a difficult situation for everyone that conducts usability tests: You need to do your job, but usability studies on the field have become practically impossible to do.
Fortunately, there are great remote usability testing tools on the market that connect you with testers.
However, here’s what you want to avoid: Getting stuck with awful testing tools.
Instead of wasting 6 months on the wrong tool, take 3 minutes of your time and read about the ones that work:
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#1 UserZoom
UserZoom offers different versions of finding usability problems: remote or in the lab, moderated or unmoderated.
You can interview users while they use your app, and you can watch interviews and sessions later.
Moreover, if you’ve never done remote usability testing before — or need inspiration — UserZoom offers study templates.
Besides usability tests, UserZoom offers other analytics features such as usability benchmarking, tree testing, card testing, and surveys.
#2 Testbirds
Price: starting at 200€ per month
With Testbirds, it’s easy to find the right target group of participants to let them test your mobile app. You can test websites, wearable technology and smart devices.
Apart from qualitative and quantitative tools, Testbirds offers other mobile analysis techniques like competitor analysis, remote evaluation and remote interviews.
To start, define your target group. Based on this, the usability testing tool finds the right testers for you, which test your app and provide extensive qualitative feedback.
Afterward, Testbirds collects and evaluates the feedback and provides you the data and a final report.
#3 UXCam
Website: UXCam
Price: free version, premium & enterprise plan upon request
Platforms: Android and iOS
UXCam is a qualitative analytics solution that offers a variety of analytics methods for mobile apps only, which means it is not your typical usability testing tool. In fact, it doesn’t even involve testers. Don’t worry though, you can still use it as a user testing tool.
UXCam offers benefits that in-person usability tests do not:
1. Observe real users, no artificial lab environment
2. Save time & money when you plan and execute tests
3. Follow user journeys over weeks, not a day
4. Consult all relevant insights on a dashboard
It offers session recordings, which you can use to see every user interaction, besides other tools like heatmaps and conversion funnel analysis. They all help identify usability issues at a glance.
The detailed filter system helps to find specific user groups or sessions with frustration patterns.
UXCam is running in the background of your app without performance impact. Users use the app in their natural environment, which gives you real-world data, rather than data from an artificial lab experiment.
Something to keep in mind: You will not be able to conduct interviews on UXCam because it gathers and observes real-usage data. Instead of testing the usability, you get to see how good it actually is.
You can integrate UXCam into your mobile app in 5 minutes and with 2 lines of code.
#4 UserTesting
Platforms: Android and iOS, mobile and web
UserTesting helps you to “bring customers into every step of the process”. They offer you video, audio and written feedback from testers within hours.
The difference with UXCam is that the users know that they’re testing an app. You can see and hear what the users think about your app.
#5 Lookback
Price: starting at $49 per month
Platforms: iOS and Android, mobile and web
Lookback is another candidate in our list of tools and offers three different types of usability testing:
- Live and moderated testing: The tests run in real time. You can see the participants and their screens and hear what they think about your app.
- Unmoderated testing: The own participants start the test by clicking on a link. The software guides them through the test while they complete tasks.
- In-person: This type of testing can only be used when participants use your devices in the lab. It allows you to record everything on the devices without the need for complicated equipment or further software.
Conclusion
The listed tools are in no particular order. They offer different functionalities and analysis methods.
On the one hand, there are remote usability testing tools where users know that they are testing an app.
This has the advantage that you can ask them questions and record what they say about your app. But it is still a testing situation where users don’t act as they would in real life.
On the other hand, there are tools like UXCam.
UXCam records the users’ behavior in their natural environment. All the captured data is made anonymous and shown via session replays and heatmaps, among others. Even though you can’t ask the user any questions, they won’t be in a testing situation and will act naturally, which is even more valuable for product managers and UX researchers alike.
There is nothing better to improve the user experience than knowing what your users are actually experiencing when they use your product. This is user research done right.
All in all, you should try different solutions and find out what kind of usability testing tool has the most advantages for you. Test a few of them out by using a free version or a free trial.
P.S. You can start a risk-free trial for UXCam here.
Related Articles
- What is UX Analytics (Part 1)
- Top 10 Analytics Tools for Mobile in 2020 (updated)
- The Complete SDK Map 2020
- Best UX Tools 2021
- Top Analytics SDKs
FAQ
How do you run a usability test on a mobile app?
Your approach should be task based. First, identify the main tasks of your app.
In the next step, you let your test participants perform the task(s). Observe how they behave, how long they need to complete the task and ask for their feedback.
You can also A/B test here and analyze if there is a difference between different versions.
The advantage of session replay software like UXCam is that you don’t need to recruit participants, you can just observe the behavior of real users.
How do you test a website on usability?
If you conduct a usability test, these should be your goals:
1. Uncover issues or
2. Discover unexplored ways to improve the design
You can perform usability tests either in person or remotely.
