User Experience Testing in the Cloud

Every web entrepreneur knows that usability of the site has a huge impact on the viability and growth rate of your company. But making sure your web site is a pleasurable and effective experience for your users is complicated, involving design, functionality, and usability.

Historically achieving good user experience was done by:

• Using user experience best-practices to design the site
• Let "Mom" try it; let beta testers try it
• Fixing reported bugs
• Examining high-level web site statistics or maybe clickstream data
• Guess about improvements
• Try again

Some companies with more time might have done more extensive testing, but without a big budget it was difficult to get good results or even see first-hand the results of testing.

Most of us knew there should be a better way, there just wasn't.

Fortunately, technology has now advanced to the point where real usability data can be gathered quickly and cheaply. Nearly all computers now come with built-in video cameras, making it easy to record tester's expressions and thoughts during the test. Specialized software has been written specifically for recording screencasts of users testing your app with video of their face included. Combine this type of software with teams of usability experts available online or even services like Mechanical Turk and you can leverage the internet to recruit testers.

There are different kinds of testing that you can do, and which you should choose depends on your goal. The questions you need to ask yourself are:

1. Who do I want to give me feedback? Usability experts, random people, or existing customers?
2. What kind of feedback do I want? Simple text responses or video of the tester performing the usability test?

The following services will let you accomplish any combination of testing audience and feedback type:

• Silverback App - a $50 Mac app that records a screencast + video of a user testing your site. Perfect for conducting your own usability tests with users you gather yourself in-person (maybe buy free coffee for people at the local coffee shop if they'll agree to a 5-10 minute testing session). Ideal results, but time-consuming.
• Feeback Army - You post a URL and a list of usability questions, pay $10, and they get people on Mechanical Turk to try your site and provide text replies. Fast results, cheap.
• UserTesting.com - Screencast with audio and a written summary performed by a random (but vetted) internet user for $29.
• UsabilityTest.com - Screencast with audio of a self-proclaimed usability guru providing feedback on your site for $20+.

I haven't tried any of these yet myself, but I wanted to share my thoughts about the options available and easiest ways to get started.

I will probably end up using all of the above services for different needs.

Enjoy,

Alan