Regular user testing is the number one method to greatly enhancing the user experience of your digital product. With proper user experience, you can optimize your interface and make it usable and easy for the consumers or customers that you’re designing for.
User testing remains one of the key methods of analysis in terms of user interaction and response with your product.
The ultimate way to conduct proper user testing is to hire a sample of people to use your product, and have UX researchers evaluate and guide them. This way, you can produce incredibly valid data from the users.
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Furthermore, you can also make real-time observations as they are using your interface and find out where most people are finding difficulties. However, many of these methods can be incredibly time consuming and costly.
Convincing your stakeholders to allocate money and hold back product launch for research purposes is a tough proposal to make.
Take a look at our crash-course resources for demonstrating the value of UX to stakeholders:
- Presenting UX research findings to stakeholders
- Proving the value of user testing
- User testing values cheat sheet (stats and case studies)
Fortunately, you have options that allow you to execute usability tests even if you are on a tight budget.
Do not give up
First, you must not give up the idea of user testing. Ultimately, skipping or ignoring your UX is going to cost you much more in the end. It is like building up a product with your hard-earned money without having anyone use it before you start selling.
The critique and comments of others are critical for the success of your product.
Luckily, many user testing tools can help you acquire important insights regarding your product without having to spend on full-fledged research. Below, we will briefly discuss some of the many tools that can help test your product for usability or perform user research. Many of these tools and software will take a look at the customer experience design generally, but also can inform user testing specifically.
Trymata
Obviously, Trymata is the industry answer for fast, affordable, and actionable user testing services. From qualitative insights to actionable quantitative data, Trymata brings in-house experience to anyone with any budget. Brick & mortar is our bread & butter!
We offer all the resources necessary to understand the principles and practices of the industry, as well as platform-specific how-tos!
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Google analytics
Google Analytics may as well be the best online tool for the evaluation of your website’s overall performance. This resource is of absolutely no cost to you. Furthermore, Google Analytics provides you with incredible statistical graphs and numerical data for your website, audience, and backlinks. Through quantitative data collection, it can provide you with insights and information that can prove to be crucial.
Online surveys
Implementing the use of surveys to your website or interface can ultimately give you free access to valuable comments and opinions of the users. You can add something like a popup survey or a customer-service chat bar to your interface to gain more interaction from the users.
Even though some may suggest that surveys are at times an annoying disturbance, it is hard to deny that they can also be resources for interesting insights.
QuestionPro is a great example of an online survey to supplement your user testing design, research, and usability testing in general.
Screen sharing
With the help of a screen sharing software, you can give product access to users without having to pay for travel or resource cost. Therefore, a screen sharing software is a perfect solution that helps you conduct a as an alternative to the conventional testing method.
Furthermore, remote observations pave the way for a more ecologically valid usability test. Hence, it is best to resort to screen sharing software such as Google Hangouts or GoToMeeting if you are on a tight budget.
To conclude
Always keep in mind that testing is an important part of interface creation and launch. Make sure that you carry out some type of testing before you launch your product. Lastly, you have an abundance of testing-related platforms at your disposal that you can use, so do not lose hope!
