Usability testing. There’s a growing community of usability testing options available for marketers. These new options utilize teams of testers who provide meaningful feedback to website developers. If you are at all involved with conversion rate optimization, you already know the importance of usability testing. After all, if users cannot effectively use your site then they will have a slim chance of turning into a customer. Not everyone has the time, money or staff expertise to conduct live research in a test environment that requires identifying and screening participants, hiring a moderator facilitator, setting up the technology to record their screen movements and videotaping their thinking out loud as they attempt to complete the given task. Fortunately, there is a burgeoning community of crowd-sourced remote usability testing options that are available for ad-hoc as well as ongoing projects. The pricing is generally affordable and straightforward and you don’t have to worry about finding participants and you can often launch and test and receive results in a matter of hours. Sounds too good to be true? Check out these top tools for remote user testing from simple to extensive. Try my-ui. The try my-ui service offers a pool of screen testers who are trained to articulate their thought process as they attempt to complete an assigned task on your site. You simply create a scenario as well as a list of tasks you wish testers to perform, specify your demographic profile, how many testers you want to use and within hours you’ll receive a fully narrated video of each tester navigating your website. Each video will show the user screen, mouse movements and keystrokes as well as an audio track of everything the user says as he or she attempts to complete the assigned tasks. You also get written answers to a questionnaire that you create for the user which he or she fills out after completing the usability test. Try my-ui puts a lot of effort into quality control. So even though their prices are modest, each test is checked for usefulness before you receive it. They also carefully screen and categorize their testers, allowing you to specify the gender, age annual income, computer expertise, country of residence, education level, family status and employment type of your testers. To refine the audience even further, you can add your own qualification criteria such as must be an avid gamer or take at least one prescription medication. If you don’t want to pay per user test fees or if you prefer to recruit testers yourself, you can buy a license to run a test with an unlimited number of your own participants for $99. Usability hub, if you love the whole process of design and user testing, you probably already know about usability hub. This community of designers and web builders tests each other’s work to earn karma points on their site but you’re welcome to enter the circle. You can invite your own friends to join the testing pool as well and when you publish a test on the site you can even request certain demographics. You won’t find many naive users on this pro site though, you can run three different types of tests on this platform and they give you plenty of help deciding which ones are best for you. Five second test a click test and an outflow test once you publish your test availability on usability hub you can receive as many responses as you feel will be useful. The site says that in general you can expect to receive 50 responses within 20 to 30 hours. This service can be free if you want to provide some test responses yourself. Paid plan options begin at twenty dollars per month for up to a hundred responses. Crowdsource testing. Crowdsource testing emphasizes the professionalism of its testers stating that most of them have more than six years experience in the field of software testing also noteworthy is that it’s testers are spread across a hundred eleven countries making it a good choice for marketers with a multinational focus. Crowdsource testing will test your site or app for the following functionality: spelling mistakes, bugs , broken links, localization, language and culture appropriateness, for target region and usability including ease-of-use, overall website expiry. Unlike some of the other options listed here, you won’t have as much flexibility and specifying a demographic profile for your testers when you sign up with crowdsource testing. You simply provide some basic instructions about your site or app and then your project is assigned to a group of expert testers: a project manager and a lead tester. The team immediately gets to work reporting issues in an easy-to-use bug tracking system. At the end of the testing session, you’ll receive a clean clear and concise list of issues that you can easily consult online, review and share with your developers to be corrected. Userlytics. Userlytics lets you choose between their recruited group of demographically, filtered testers or using a test invitation link to recruit your own. They promise rapid results although they also permit clients to ask testers up to a hundred survey questions following the live testing. The primary feature that distinguishes user linux from other crowdsource testing solutions is that you receive a video of the tester themselves, during the entire duration of the test. Being able to see the testers face allows you to capture subtle cues that could indicate a level of frustration or confusion that isn’t evident on the audio recording. Larger organizations will appreciate the enterprise options including an indexable executive summary of test results and quality assurance on custom and one-off projects. User testing. User testing has staked out an leadership position in the crowd source remote testing filled with a portfolio of notable corporate clients. They claim to have recruited more than a million testers and although you should probably take this number with a grain of salt. They definitely do have a very large testing pool. User testing claims that using this pool seventy-nine percent of clients receive testing results within an hour. You can apply demographic filters to their testers or have your own customers be the testers instead. Since user testing works with major corporations it goes way beyond basic testing add-ons include a broad selection of customized enterprise solutions including one-on-one interviews focus groups, expert user testing, customized test creation and detailed reports are particularly unique feature is that user testing allows clients to interact with testers after the test asking them follow-up questions about their experience. Check their website for specific costs and fees.