Usability testing is straightforward: you test your product on users.
Not straightforward: Using awful usability testing tools.
Instead of wasting 6 months with the wrong tool, take 3 minutes of your time and read about the ones that work:
#1 Userzoom
UserZoom offers different versions of usability testing: remote or in the lab, moderated or unmoderated.
You can interview the user while he uses your app and you can watch interviews and sessions later.
Moreover, if you’ve never done usability testing before (or need inspiration) UserZoom offers study templates.
Besides usability testing, UserZoom offers different other analytic features like usability benchmarking, tree testing, card testing and surveys. They focus on the three major areas:
- Providing an all-under-one-roof solution for businesses
- Customization of all surveys: how they look like, the questions themselves and post-analysis
- Benchmarking through competitive analysis
#2 Testbirds
Price: starting at 200€ per month
With testbirds it is easy to find the right target group and let them test your mobile app. You can test ebsites, wearables games and smart devices, too.
Apart from qualitative and quantitative usability testing, 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.
Afterwards, Testbirds collects and evaluates the feedback and provides you with the data and a final report.
#3 UXCam
Price: free version, premium & enterprise pricing upon request
Platforms: Android and iOS
UXCam is a qualitative analytics solution that offers a variety of analysis methods for mobile apps.
Besides session recording, with which you can see every interaction of the user, other tools like heatmaps and conversion funnel analysis help to see app 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.
You can integrate UXCam 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 dec process” (Usertesting.com). UserTesting offers you video, audio and written feedback from users within hours.
The difference to UXCam is that users know that they test apps. 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 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 participants start the test by clicking on a link. Lookback guides the participants through the test.
- In-person: This type of testing can be used when participants use your devices in the lab. It allows you to record everything on the devices without the need of complicated equipment or further software.
Conclusion
The listed usability testing tools are in no particular order. They offer different functionalities and analysis methods.
On the one hand, there are tools like UserTesting.com, 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 they don’t act as they would in real life.
On the other hand there are tools like UXCam. UXCam records the user’s behavior in their natural environment. All the captured data is anonymized. Even though you can’t ask the user questions, the user won’t feel like in a testing situation and will act just normal.
All in all you should try the different solutions and find out what kind of usability testing tool has the most advantages for you.
