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May 3 2010

Usability testing

Why UserTesting.com?
  1. $29 introductory price
  2. Instantly tap into our 24x7 panel of users
  3. Users match your target demographics
  4. Observe users in their natural environment
  5. Watch screen activity
  6. Listen to the users' voices
  7. Ask users follow-up questions
  8. Annotate and share results
  9. Export to QuickTime and .wmv
  10. 1-year money-back guarantee

Well, after being recently featured in the TC, UserTesting.com is coming up with a panel of users, who'd be willing to user-test your site, record the video and talk-talk-talk about it. And this is all for a silly introductory price of... $29 per head.

Let me paraphrase it. You are ask some weird guy (or gal - you can choose the gender), within some age bracket (you can choose two or three age brackets), from some country (it can be as wide as "United States"), with some household income (definitely, there is some income - he needs to pay for his Internet connection, unless he's stealing his neighbor's wireless) to open your site, do *something* (if you're good enough in delivering your thoughts to the person in writing, you have fair chances to have it right) and than tell you about it. And this is all for... $29. Oh, don't forget that the guy will have "roughly 15 minutes" to complete the task (don't be silly to say "tasks"). It's... like... $116/hour. *I'm not paid that much.* Even close.

And the normal price is $39 per head. They do have some ideas or plans about revenue sharing (or they probably do this already), and it looks like $10 goes to a user, $29 stays in the pocket. It's sorta $30/hour for a user (decent paycheck for somebody sitting at home and just browsing sites, don't ya think?), and the company keeps the cream.

I mean, I don't want to rant or trash the idea. It's good, there is a need for it and it's probably useful. But come on. That's a decent cost. For such a premium I can bring a perspective client to the office, ask him to do the same shit, run a show for him, do the freaking sales pitch and he will still be smiling!

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4 Comments
May 04, 2010
Chris Neumann said...
$39/person is a lot, but what's your time worth? I generally don't want to show my real customers my buggy site, it's so much easier to set up a test and quickly watch the results. Plus, you can send the videos of the problems to other team members to watch the customer actually having problems. When an engineer sees a customer struggling with their code, they usually fix it.
May 04, 2010
It's not about time.  This is easy to find a person who'll do the same shit for you for $116/hour.  I mean, he'll be looking for those of your potential auditory to test your site. The software to record screen is Skype or something similar via screen-sharing. And this is actually, how it works now.  You can find a plenty of ads on craigslist for usability testing that pays under $30/hour.

I would agree with you if we're talking about up something that needs less than 2 hours (8 visitors feedback), but to my mind, anything on the top of that is sorta unreasonable high for a startup, especially bootstrapping one.  But I do see a business model for the company though.  It's clear that some deep-pocket companies would like to take the short-cut and use UserTesting as an outsourcer.

May 04, 2010
Chris Neumann said...
I did use it a lot more when it was $19 per test.  Now that it's $39, I'm much less inclined to use it.

May 04, 2010
Well, $19 sounds way more interesting.  I'd definitely consider it for this price, cause I can get 5 independent feedbacks for under a $100.  However, two hundred bucks (now) is expensive.

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About Olexandr Prokhorenko

My name is Olexandr Prokhorenko. I am passionate about building products that users *love*.

My LinkedIn profile is www.linkedin.com/in/white.


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