UserTesting.com is a website dedicated to finding your website’s biggest problems in one hour, and then providing you with the information and feedback you need to improve your site’s usability.
UserTesting.com gives you the ability to create a test for your website and then have real people take the test and give you feedback via video recording, while they are using the site. You can also ask them follow up questions for further information.
For each participant you would like to test, you must pay $39, with a current coupon of $30 off orders over $100 for new clients. Also, if you are looking for extra income from home, UserTesting.com allows people to sign up as website testers.
Testing Your Users
You can choose to create your own test, or use a test template based on the area of your website you would like to examine. You can also test competitor websites, prototype sites, Facebook games, or mobile sites and applications.
Once your test is created, you can choose a market to test, either from picking participants from the UserTesting.com site, which will allow to pick the demographics of the market you would like tested, or from a pool of your website users, or you can arrange to have new users to your site prompted live to see if they will participate.
Finally, after you have received and compiled all your data from your test participants, you can edit, make notes, create clips of the videos, combine the clips into a highlights reel, and then share the reel and the notes with the coworkers who will help you improve your site based on your new information.
The Work at Home Opportunity
You can also choose to work as an at home User Tester for the website if you are looking for a way to make some extra money. UserTesting.com will pay you $10 for every website you test, and each test averages around 20 minutes.
You must be at least 18 years old with your own PC or Mac that has the ability to record your voice via microphone. In addition you must have a high speed internet connection and be able to successfully complete a test run with your equipment for UserTesting.com.
If you meet all these qualifications, you then must fill out a one page questionnaire with all of your demographic information – such as age, race, ethnicity, region of the country you live, education level, and sometimes more. This information is important as it is what is used to see if you qualify for certain website testing, depending on what market the client is targeting.
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No one here has mentioned the amount of time consumed by taking the screener tests. Very rarely a test will pop up that doesn't require answering a series of qualifying questions, but for 98% of the tests, you will be screened. Most of the time you will not qualify. Sometimes you can game the system by answering the questions according to what you think they may be looking for, but that doesn't always work. In short, many tests are offered, but you'll spend a lot of time being screened, and mostly will fail to get further. Each screening may take only 2-3 minutes, but you'll have to plow through lots of them, and it will be time-consuming.
A related time-waster is the frequent surveys that pop up at the top of the dashboard screen. The surveys are ostensibly to qualify you for further tests. The surveys nearly always require you to type in your UserTesting name, e-mail, etc., then lead you through a series of screens of questions. Only at the end does it get to the meat of what they're looking for, and again, most of the time you will not qualify. These surveys could be designed in such a way so as to get to the point on the first screen, but you always have to fill out the same generic information at the beginning. This poor design (or is it that way on purpose?) can waste a great deal of your time.
Should point out as well that many tests take rather more than 10 or 20 minutes. Sometimes there's a promise of extra payment for the extra time, and rarely it may come through. Also completed tests can take quite a while to upload if you don't have a fast connection, and you are blocked from taking any more tests until the upload finishes.
Aside from the payments (and let's be honest, considering the above, it's not really all that much for the time you'll put in), the real satisfaction of this work comes from helping good websites (and there are quite a few of these) get better, or letting bad ones know how bad they really are. Occasionally a website that you test is downright deceptive, even sleazy, and it can be a pleasure to let them know just what you think! Surprisingly, some of my most scathing reviews have received a 5 star rating...go figure.
just a heads up to anyone who uses it.
Hardly ever get one and if I do, I never qualify. Really disappointed in
this as I really need to earn some extra money. I guess being a Retired
Software tester isn't what they are looking for.
this is such a scam, i found it on Reddit, so it must be legit, right?
i havent qualified for a single test at all and just handed all of my info to them in hopes if getting some beer money, stay away, this is a scam.