What We Can Learn with UserTesting During COVID-19
This article is based on a recent podcast. Listen to it here.
How can you see the signs of a changing business climate and shift strategy before you actually have to feel the effects of it?
Michael Mace, VP of Strategy from Usertesting has a couple of ideas. In fact, in order to understand how your market is changing, you must first understand how to listen to it. Whether it’s through industry analytics or associated trends, one thing is certain; if you’re not listening to your market, you’re not going to be successful.
Usertesting was traditionally created as a tool for web developers to get fast feedback, in real-time to make well-informed decisions without slowing down their process. In recent times, however, Usertesting has blossomed into a place for immediate feedback on every kind of quant/qual research imaginable, allowing researchers to make well-informed decisions almost instantaneously.
Now, with the spread of the global pandemic COVID-19, Usertesting is being utilized more than ever as sample sizes are desperate for interaction and researchers are frantic to understand the affected buying patterns of their customers.
So how can we use this data to understand not only how people are reacting, but why? Sure it’s by measuring things like metrics, URLs, and click paths, but Usertesting also cites the importance of what they call “thinking out loud”. This technique encourages their users to walk through the reasoning behind their choices. This then allows a researcher to gain the useful information behind human thought-patterns that most survey and data companies are often lacking.
However we acquire the research, one thing is certain, gaining these useful data insights allows companies to pivot their strategy and rethink tactics in real-time before they’re forced to feel the wrath of a drowning market. Usertesting remains a powerhouse of a tool because it helps researchers not only understand the “what” but also the “why” behind the way people utilize products.
In the end, not only is this model of research critical to listening to your market but in times of uncertainty, it can very well mean the difference of making it out unscathed or crashing and burning to the product ground.
