9 Usability Testing Tools You Need To Optimize Your UX

Usability testing software, the key to a great user experience

If you run a mobile app or website, it’s crucial that you have a way of finding out how real users interact with it, what’s working perfectly, and which areas require improvement. Luckily, there are many usability testing platforms available to help you with mobile testing of apps and mobile website testing.

In the following article, we’ll discuss the top 9 best usability tools to support enhancing your user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX).

9 Usability Testing Tools For Optimizing Your Product’s UX

In order to optimize the user experience, be it for your website or app, you need to use a combination of tools for A/B or multivariate testing, session recordings, analytics, and reporting. Here are our recommendations:

1. Mixpanel

Used by such global giants as Uber, BMW, and Samsung, Mixpanel is a true gold mine if you’re looking to take your usability testing to the next level. It’s safe to say that it has set a new standard on the market for product analytics. This usability testing tool will be invaluable if you’d like to gain a deep understanding of the way users engage with your products, how and when they convert, and what you can do to retain them for longer.

What makes Mixpanel unique is its so-called ‘innovation loop’. Namely, the tool helps you take a close look at your users by taking four iterative steps:

• collecting accurate data
• noticing emerging user trends
• understanding the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ behind actions
• setting goals, measuring metrics, and verifying user hypotheses

Mixpanel also boasts a messaging and testing solution that lets you conduct A/B tests and send targeted messages to users based on the real-time feedback they provide you via interactions with your products.

You can start on a free plan to get a sense of how Mixpanel works and upgrade as you grow.

Source: Mixpanel

2. Google Analytics

As every marketer’s go-to tool for website analytics, Google Analytics allows you to check your conversion rates, find your best- and under-performing landing pages, discover traffic sources, as well as get insights about your visitors. While it might be slightly complicated at times, this tool provides an ocean of possibilities when it comes to web analysis and reporting.

It integrates with all of Google’s other tools including Google Ads, Search Console, and Data Studio (on top of a comprehensive list of tools such as Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Meet, Google Hangouts, and Google Forms), which makes it a really powerful usability testing software solution. Google Analytics tools provide you with general reports that give you a broad overview of your website’s performance, as well as very in-depth insights. You can decide on the level of data granularity and easily share custom reports with your teammates by saving them as PDFs or sending them via email directly.

It’s free to use including unlimited reports, unlike many other usability testing tools, which plays in Google’s favor.

Source: Google

3. Adobe Analytics

A cloud-based marketing attribution tool that is part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Analytics helps businesses of all sizes explore the behavior of their users, group them into customer segments, and gain detailed insights by observing their product interactions. By tracking user behavior and engagement in Adobe Analytics, you’re able to put your customers into context and drive client-focused product decisions.

The tool lets you build customized user analysis dashboards – you can drag and drop any data that matters to you the most, like tables, components, and visualizations. Adobe Analytics also eliminates the hassle of manually perusing data in spreadsheets, as well as helping you easily predict and model user behavior. Another strong advantage is Adobe Analytics’ Contribution Analysis panel, which helps detect any hidden patterns and explain behavioral anomalies.

If this hasn’t convinced you yet, then perhaps the fact that two top research and advisory companies, Gartner and Forrester, use it to create their analyst reports, might do the trick. Adobe Analytics is available on three plans: Select, Prime, and Ultimate, with monthly plan current pricing available upon asking about demo/free trial availability.

Source: Adobe Analytics

4. LiveSession

A session replay software solution that allows you to check what visitors do on your website, by following their mouse movements, etc., and improve the user experience accordingly. By watching session replays in LiveSession , you can see how users interact with your website and spot any roadblocks that prevent them from converting.

For example, imagine that your email input field doesn’t work and so there is no option for people to register for a demo. Without using session replay software like LiveSession, you might not even realize that this element was broken, further decreasing your conversion rate.

LiveSession is a must-have usability test tool for Marketers, UX Designers, Customer Support, and Dev Team members, meaning that it can benefit all of your staff. It integrates with some of the best marketing tools, such as Google Analytics, Intercom, LiveChat, and Drift.

LiveSession is used and valued by customers worldwide, including kissflow, databox, and RocketLink. The latter managed to boost their signups by 110% thanks to LiveSession.

There is a 14-day free trial available, so you have nothing to lose by giving it a go. As your business grows, you may then decide to upgrade to the paid basic, pro, or enterprise plan.

Source: LiveSession

5. Unbounce

Used by over 15,000 companies to boost on-site user engagement and conversion rates, Unbounce offers a simple, drag-and-drop landing page and pop-up builder that lets you use over 100 proven, high-converting templates without any need for coding. What makes the tool unique from a usability testing standpoint, however, is its AI-powered Smart Traffic and Unbounce Conversion Intelligence™ features. What are they?

Unbounce blends the line between marketing and AI to provide you with the necessary insights to comprehend how users engage with your digital products. As a result, you can shorten your user testing cycles and fully understand the steps you must take to further optimize your UX and conversion rates.

Unbounce offers a 14-day free trial for you to take the tool for a user test drive.

Source: Unbounce (G2.com)

6. Optimizely

Another usability testing tool that we recommend using is Optimizely . It’s a platform that offers A/B testing and web personalization. It allows you to quickly test different variants of your website, without requiring any coding skills, to see which version performs better. You can test both versions live prior to your visitors seeing them, minimizing the chances of error.

Optimizely lets you experiment with your content and product key features, which not only has a positive impact on conversion but also reduces development process costs. How? By ensuring all business decisions are data-driven rather than based on gut feelings. Suitable for marketing, product, engineering, data science, and sales team members, as well as product managers. That’s why Optimizely is used by the world’s best tech companies such as Slack, Atlassian, and IBM.

Their rollout plan is free to use and is abundant with limited features, which gives you a great opportunity to check if Optimizely is the right tool for your needs. You can also try a 30-day free trial of the paid Manage plan.

Source: Optimizely

7. Survicate

As a survey tool and NPS software solution, Survicate lets you collect customer feedback to boost your users’ satisfaction levels, raise product engagement, and create better experiences. You can collect users’ opinions through feedback widgets on your website, exit surveys, via communication tools, using feedback forms, with channels such as email, as well as in your mobile app.

Survicate offers hundreds of ready-to-use survey templates and integrates with the top marketing, communication, and product software including Intercom, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, and Segment. By using a survey tool to gather feedback from your audience, you can fill in any informational gaps left unanswered by other usability test tools to truly understand your users’ motivations, goals, and challenges.

Survicate offers a complimentary basic plan with up to 100 free responses per month. All paid plans offer unlimited questions, users, and surveys but if you want to remove the branding on surveys then you will need to subscribe to an Enterprise or Pro plan. However, neither offer unlimited survey responses per month - for that you can ask about a custom plan.

Source: Survicate

8. UsabilityHub

This is a user testing and usability research platform that enables you to get feedback from real people to improve the UX of your website and app. If you’re unsure about your design process decisions, UsabilityHub can help verify them. It offers you a wide range of basic features like:

• first click tests – to check the effectiveness of links and your content hierarchy in encouraging mouse clicks
• design surveys – to validate your assumptions by asking your users direct questions
• preference tests – to check user’s opinions on your visuals and copy by measuring their sentiment and affinity
• and many others

It’s used by leading global companies including Philips, Walmart, and Amazon across many different sectors. Their cheapest plan starts at $50 per user per month and is perfect for occasional testing, as it doesn’t require making a long-term commitment.

Source: UsabilityTesting

9. TryMyUI

If you’d like to conduct usability testing on your website or app but don’t have the means to organize a group or testing session yourself, TryMyUI is perfect for you. This tool will connect you with a group of users who reflect your ideal target audience. There will be a screen recording of each user testing session so that you can analyze how users engage with your website and perform their assigned tasks in real time. By using TryMyUI’s Collaborative Analysis Suite, you’ll also be able to easily create and share a list of the most important usability findings with your design team.

You can start on a free 14 day trial and upgrade as your usability testing needs grow.

Source: TryMyUI

Different types of usability testing tools

There are a variety of different types of user testing tools available for various purposes. Below are the main types and what they are used for:

• mobile usability testing tools - for testing the usability of apps and websites on mobile devices
• web-based usability testing tools - for testing the usability of applications that run in internet browsers by carrying out e.g. form analytics for tracking and understanding how visitors interact with web forms
• remote usability testing tools - for conducting remote tests on usability with participants in different locations

As well as the type of usability testing tool, the tests themselves can be conducted in several different ways:

• unmoderated testing - as it sounds, this is when usability studies are conducted without the participants being supervised i.e. they are unmoderated usability tests
• moderated testing - in contrast to unmoderated tests, this type are conducted with the participant pool being supervised so that the moderator can give instructions, answer questions, and offer guidance if needed (unlike unmoderated studies)
• formal usability testing - this is usually a more expensive and time-consuming field study as it requires recruiting from a participant database and scheduling, with the testing often conducted in a lab
• remote tests - for when participants are not located close to the tester, so testing is carried out with a remote user

What’s more, there are several types of usability tests for different purposes:

• cross-browser testing - for testing web applications in different internet browsers
• native app testing - for testing applications developed for a specific operating system
• prototype testing - for gaining insights about the usability of beta product versions
• tree testing - used to assess the findability, labeling, and information architecture of a website or app

Combine various usability testing tools for the best results

Building a website or app requires a lot of decision making, which can be overwhelming. It’s practically impossible to provide a great user experience without usability testing software. These solutions allow you to base your decisions on hard data instead of guesswork, which not only helps improve your conversion rate but also reduces your development costs.

While you might have different preferences for usability test tools, it’s crucial to select some that will complement each other. That is, together they should cover at least A/B testing, session video recording, analytics, and reporting. Only then will you be able to achieve the best possible results.

Chapter 5

The benefits of website user testing and how to do it right