Beta testing, also known as user testing, is an essential step to take as part of your application development process. Beta testers may look at your website and determine what site improvements need to be made if any changes are needed for improvement for the end-user. This is a very important stage of the process and may not be something that you aren’t even thinking about. Here we will discuss how we can perform usability testing using free tools you might already have available.
Usability testing can help you to understand the problems and desires of your users. With this knowledge, you can continuously improve your product. The goal is to offer a great user experience which automatically will lead to happy customers.
Due to the importance of usability testing, there are many tools on the market that are offering free services for conducting user tests. In this blog post we’ll present them to you, speak about the pros and cons to help you make your decision. Fast and affordable user testing
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1 Userbrain | userbrain.net
Userbrain is a remote usability testing service with focus on continuous testing. You can order and watch videos of real people interacting with your website. You will hear what users think and see what they do, to build better products for happier customers. You can test an array of live websites, those under development, prototypes, or even competitor’s sites on either smartphones, desktops, or tablets.
What Userbrain offers for free:
- first test for free
- testing with your own participants for free
Pros:
- No long term contracts
- Fast results (only a few hours)
- Unlimited testing with own participants
Cons:
- No native app testing
- No phone support
Pricing: Pay as you go $29 per test, Subscription $19/mo
2 Lookback | lookback.io
Lookback offers a rich set of features that offers everything you need for running user tests with your own participants in one place. Lookback allows you to directly talk with participants – live and face-to-face in moderated user tests. You can use the “Live” feature to broadcast your research to your team and invite them to watch and gain insights.
What Lookback offers for free:
- 14-day free trial
- 10 free observer accounts are included on Starter and Pro Plan
Pros:
- Remote moderated testing
- Broadcast your research using the “Live” feature
Cons:
- No account sharing
- No tester pool, you’ll have to recruit testers on your own
Pricing: $59/mo and collaborator, Pro Plan: $119/mo and collaborator, For enterprise contact support
3 Usability Hub | usabilityhub.com
UsabilityHub allows you to run summative studies like first-click and five-second tests, design surveys or preference tests of multiple design solutions. You will receive written answers and can either recruit your own participants or use UsabilityHub’s integrated participant panel.
What Usabilityhub offers for free:
- All Tests under 2 minutes are for free
Pros:
- Starting at $1 per answer when running summative studies
- Full CSV export
Cons:
- No screen and audio recording
- No prototype testing
Pricing: Longer tests than 2 minutes and advanced features require a test upgrade. Flexible upgrade $50, Annual $100, Enterprise contact, Paying per response starts at $2
4 Userlytics | userlytics.com
What Userlytics offers for free:
- Free Trial
- First participant test session at quick & easy plan
- At annual enterprise plan one free session with your participant for each purchased session with a Userlytics participant and bring your own participants for free
Userlytics is the first UX research service to offer picture-in-picture (webcam view + screen and audio recording), skipping logic for qualitative unmoderated usability testing. Additionally, Userlytics offers advanced quantitative tools such as card sorting & tree testing fully integrated with your qualitative usability tests.
Pros:
- Automated and multilingual transcriptions
- Quantitative metrics like time on task, SUS, NPS or SUPR-Q.
Cons:
- Outdated user interface
- Complex pricing plans, offering 5 different pricing tiers with different options
Pricing: quick & easy $49 per participant (limited feature set), annual enterprise $69, custom project $99 per participant, annual subscription (special recruitment services)
5 TryMyUI | trymyui.com
TryMyUI is noted by Forrester Research as an affordable, effective SAAS usability testing tool for user research and design insights. TryMyUI delivers videos of real users navigating any website.
What TryMyUI offers for free:
- Free Trial
- Unlimited testing with own participants with Enterprise and Unlimited plan
Pros:
- Audience targeting
- Conducting surveys
Cons:
- Setting up a test a bit complex
- No option to save your test scenario as a draft
- No option for automated user testing
Pricing: Personal $99/mo, Team $399/mo, Enterprise $2.000/mo, Unlimited $8.000/mo
7 TRYMYUI
This is a great tool for usability testing in real-time. It takes no more than 2 seconds to set the most complicated test.
Also, it is possible to analyze tasks, divide issues into blocks for a different group of connected users. During software testing, the client gets feedback all the time.
In particular, this refers to comprehensive analytic data about users’ opinions on the web product and the ways of improving the given functionality.
Other features of the product are:
- Screenshot testing;
- Demographic results;
- Capability to conduct a written survey of some group of people;
- Video screen captures.
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#8 OPTIMALWORKSHOP
This platform has 3 main tools with a free tariff plan.
Its key peculiarities are:
- Optimal grouping of the test results according to users’ preferences;
- Heatmap of user clicks;
- Test record.
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#9 INTUITIONHQ
This tool shows the way how potential visitors will use the functionality of the web page. Tests allow analyzing the functionality, finding the ways for its improving, and changing future software developments.
Free tariff plan offers the following:
- Up to 10 hours of testing performed by 350 respondents;
- Capability to make personalized questions;
- Monitoring the heatmap of the user actions on the site.
UserPlus logo
#10 USERPLUS
UserPlus is a free product that is available in the alpha version. The platform has great tips and methods to perform usability testing.
Its features are:
- Taking a screenshot;
- Making tags for quick navigation on the website pages;
- Making tasks and getting their evaluation after users complete them.
Besides, with UserPlus Advisor it is possible to find the most significant obstacles that can harm the increased popularity of the site.
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#11 FIVE SECOND TEST
With this platform, you can evaluate the usability of some sites, as well as integrate your own tests for other respondents.
First of all, the portal is aimed to let the user evaluate the relevance of software functionality.
There are several ways to execute testing:
- Memory test. Here, users have 5 seconds to look at the construction, and then they have to give feedback about some components of this structure.
- Preference. Here, users have to click on a particular element that attracts attention the most.
Feng-GUI logo
#12 FENG-GUI
This platform for usability testing has a free demo version that allows you to test one image at regular intervals.
The peculiarities include:
- Imitation of users’ actions;
- A map that shows what areas of the pages attract much user attention.
GTMetrix logo
#13 GTMETRIX
The platform allows performing a comprehensive analysis of the speed of website performance and seeing which parts are the most attractive. Also, one can have a detailed analysis of the methods of improving the functionality and user conversion.
Its other features are:
- Page loading speed;
- Total page weight;
- A total number of site sessions.
Google Analytics logo
#14 GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Nowadays, every site should use the functionality of the Google corporation in order to make a website simple and user-friendly.
A huge platform by Goggle developers allows exploring a website heatmap and finding ways to increase the number of website visitors (who will give feedback about consumer satisfaction from the website performance).
Other peculiarities of this tool are:
- Analysis of conversion;
- Suggestions for the development of an effective wireframe with further content filling.
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#15 MOUSEFLOW
This tool is available with a free version. With its functionality, you may watch detailed heatmaps and statistics of the scrolling.
Heatmaps are overlays on the top of the site where you can see which parts of the page attract much attention.
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Conclusion
You’ve heard of usability testing. You’ve even done some usability testing in the past. It’s one of the most important things you can do when looking to improve your website. But it can be costly, right? Well maybe not all the time. There are some great tools out there that allow you to run a simple usability test for free…or at least with little cost!