5 Fantastic Remote Usability Testing Tools You Can Use Now
Usability testing tools that will put your mind at ease.
August 11, 2022 by Jonas Kurzweg
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.
Best Remote Usability Testing Tools and Software
Instead of wasting six months on the wrong remote user testing tools, take 3 minutes of your time and read about the ones that work:
Contents
UserZoom
UserZoom offers different versions of finding usability problems: remote or in the lab, moderated or unmoderated usability testing.
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.
UXCam
Website: UXCam
Price: free version, premium & enterprise plan upon request. Try it for free.
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 one of your typical mobile usability testing tools. In fact, it doesn’t even involve testers. Don’t worry though, you can still use it as a remote 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. Want to know more about UXCam's features? Explore our website.
“UXCam helps us to identify friction points.”
“Wish I found UXCam sooner!”
Testbirds
Price: starting at 200€ per month
With Testbirds, it’s easy to find the right target group of participants for usability testing of 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 with the data and a final report. If you're looking for UX tools as well, these are the best ones.
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.
Lookback
Price: starting at $49 per month
Platforms: iOS and Android, mobile and web
Lookback is another candidate in our list of remote user testing platforms and offers three different types of usability testing:
Live and moderated user testing: The tests run in real-time. You can see the participants and their screens and hear what they think about your app.
Unmoderated user testing: The participants start the test by clicking on a link. The user testing software guides them through the test while they complete tasks.
In-person user testing: 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 software and 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. Want to speak to someone about it and have all your questions answered? Request a free demo.
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
Need to up your user journey mapping game? Enjoy our complete guide with examples and free templates.
FAQ
How to do usability testing for mobile application?
Your approach to mobile user testing 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. By the way, these are the best tools to run mobile app A/B tests on.
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 to conduct usability testing for a website?
If you conduct a usability test, these should be your goals:
- Uncover issues or
- Discover unexplored ways to improve the design
You can perform usability tests either in person or remotely.
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AUTHOR
Jonas Kurzweg
UX, marketing & product nerd. Coffee enthusiast. Working at UXCam. Leave me comments if you have any!