Expert Tips for Better User Tests

You may already be doing user testing. It’s highly effective for finding your website or app user’s main issues and needs, and many businesses are benefiting from doing it.

Unfortunately though you probably aren’t getting the most from it, and are getting limited feedback.

Why? Many businesses rush into creating user tests without understanding some of the more important features and tips to ensure higher-impact feedback. This often results in getting limited feedback, or worse still, getting feedback from an audience that doesn’t exactly match theirs - leading them to make changes that actually lowers conversion rates and revenue!

To help you create much higher impact user tests, we have got an expert to reveal their techniques and tips. Rich Page has been doing user testing and CRO for 15 years and has learned the best ways to create them.

Use many demographics

To ensure your user testers match your target audience, you need to get more exact with the demographics you chose for your user tests. Don’t just select male or female, you also need to select your target audience’s age range and location. And to get even better feedback, choose user testers who have good experience with websites as this often results in better feedback - something that Userfeel lets you do by selecting their level of web experience.

Always use pre-screener questions

Don’t just use demographics though. You also need to create several pre-screener questions to make sure your user testers match your target audience. Using good ones will filter out any potential users who aren’t really your target audience, as you do not want feedback from them as it won’t be as relevant or useful.

Here are some examples of highly targeted pre-screener questions to get your exact target audience:

  • Have you previously purchased luxury clothing online?
  • Have you booked tickets online before?
  • Have you used online marketing tools before?
  • How much would you consider spending on an engagement ring?

You can use simple yes or no answers, but be creative. For example you can show price bracket answer options if you only want feedback from people who can afford what you sell.

Userfeel understands the importance of setting these pre-screener questions and offers unlimited questions to get very specific. Some other user testing tools don’t offer these, so if you are already using a user testing tool make sure they offer these.

Get 5 user tests on mobile and 5 on desktop

Research has shown that getting 5 user tests done on your website or app will reveal 80% of the most common issues and bugs. So that is a great first step.

But don’t just do 5 user tests on your desktop website. It’s important you get feedback from both mobile and desktop users, as not only do their needs vary, but both have their own unique problems and issues that you need to discover and improve. Therefore get 5 user tests done on desktop and also 5 done on mobile.

Use better questions and tasks

Don’t just use questions and tasks from the templates or bank of preset ones that many user testing tools offer. Some of them are good, but many of them are quite basic and will give you limited feedback. You need to ensure you use better ones that maximize the feedback and insights you get from.

An example of a higher-impact question is "What are your biggest doubts or hesitations about this website?". To discover more you should read our list of top 10 user testing questions and tasks for improving any website.

Make sure your user testers give honest feedback

I have seen hundreds of user tests and it’s really frustrating when I see user testers being too eager to please just to ensure they get a 5 star rating and given more tests in the future. This results in them giving very little useful feedback, and often saying that everything is great and that they would purchase. Which is of no use to you! You want honest feedback with ideas for improvement.

To encourage good feedback and reduce the chances of user testers being too positive or eager to please, write a good user tester introduction (scenario) that asks for suggestions and honest feedback. This type of message works very well:

"Please be honest with your feedback and give suggestions for improvement. And please specifically tell us what you don’t like or if you are confused about anything".

Wrapping up

Hopefully you have found these expert techniques useful - the next time you create user tests, make sure you follow them. You will get much more insightful answers and feedback than you would normally get, and this will give you much higher impact improvement ideas. And if you need specific help with creating user tests, we are happy to help you. Simply contact us with your needs.

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