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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Usertesting.com has two main kinds of tests: $10 full tests (15-20 minutes) and $3 peek tests (5 minutes).
They always pay you (via PayPal) exactly a week after you've done the test, as long as you completed all of the tasks, answered any written questions at the end, and uploaded the test video. And if anything goes wrong in that process, they're very supportive about helping resolve any technical problems.
It's true that sometimes you don't see any available tests in your dashboard, sometimes for long periods of time. It's also true that often you won't qualify for a test based on your answers to any screening questions. That's just a matter of timing and demographics.
BUT there are other times when there are a lot of tests available.
If you aren't on your computer often, this just might not be a good fit for you. But if you work on your computer regularly anyway, and can fill in gaps between your regular work with user tests, this can work very well. Just leave your Usertesting.com dashboard open and listen for the alert, quickly answer any screening questions, and you're likely to qualify for enough tests to make this worth it.
It's not a scam. But it's not a full time living, either – which Usertesting.com tells you up front. They're very honorable in their practices and they're very supportive of their testers. To do well, you'll need to get good testing ratings – and Usertesting.com has articles about how to do that by performing user tests that are truly useful to the web site designers on the other end of this process.
I uploaded sample test 2 weeks ago, got email confirming upload was successful and ntoified I'd hear within 1 week.
Didn't hear - so on day 8 i emailed. Now has been 2 weeks.getting nervous this isnt a legit site.
(That first test you did needed to be approved by the people at Usertesting. That was a one-time deal; they do that to evaluate your testing style and make sure you're actually doing the job appropriately. From then on, as long as your test uploads properly, each test is completed once you've done all the tasks, answered any written questions, and uploaded the test.)
Any ad popups that you see during testing are almost certainly on the web sites that you're testing. That might be something to mention during your test, since those ARE annoying. Unless you mean that Usertesting.com has pop up ads? That doesn't happen to me, so I'm thinking they're on the sites you're testing...
usertesting.com always pays on the second 7 days after the test.