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Category Archives: How-tos

3 hours, 4 tools, 1 test: +19% conversion rate Demo UX Cases

3 hours, 4 tools, 1 test: +19% conversion rate

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There are many many online tools out there that help you test and improve almost any aspect of your website. It can be very convenient to not only look at these tools separately, but to combine their advantages into one single test. Matthew Niederberger, a specialist when it comes to online optimization, shares his experience with such an ‘hybrid’ test case on his blog actualinsights.com. We are very happy to get some great insights about how Matthew set up a complete usabillity test in only three hours combining Usabilla with Wufoo, Kampyle, and Mailchimp. Aim of the test was to find out about users preferences for different design variations.

 

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Combine a Usabilla test with an external survey How-tos

Combine a Usabilla test with an external survey

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Usabilla offers quick visual feedback, but in some cases you might want to collect additional feedback from your participants or just some demographic data by conducting a traditional survey. There are plenty of wonderful survey tools out there that make your life easier (e.g SurveyGizmo, Wufoo, Polldady), and now we’ve released a new feature that allows you to seamlessly combine a Usabilla test with one of these tools.>

To introduce the feature we’ve created a demo case. Lets assume that a university wants to know what its students think of the faculty’s homepage (universities love surveys!). So, they create a Usabilla test to get specific feedback on the homepage and a SurveyGizmo survey  to get more generic feedback including some demographics of the users.

How to combine the two surveys in one?
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Set up a simple A/B/n test in just a blink Announcements

Set up a simple A/B/n test in just a blink

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The standard Usabilla widget is a useful tool to invite your visitors to participate in one of your tests. Thanks to the kind tip of one of our users you can now also use a new widget to set up a quick A/B/n test in Usabilla! Use this widget to invite your users to participate in a random test out of two or more of your Usabilla tests. You just specify which tests to use and every time the widget pops up, we randomly select one of these tests. With this simple widget you can set up a A/B/n Usabilla test for any webpage, image, or sketch in just a few minutes.

Usabilla widget for A/B/n tests

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API madness: Using Google Docs to filter your Usabilla notes Announcements

API madness: Using Google Docs to filter your Usabilla notes

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Quite a few Usabilla users have asked us in recent weeks, how to select notes in a certain field range within a completed test page. In response we have created a new Google doc spreadsheet template to help facilitate this need, for a more thorough analysis of note comments within a test. Using the XML export option in conjunction with your unique API token, you are able to access the data you have collected with Usabilla in other tools. For more information how to XML export your data, please view our previous blog post on the topic.

Screenshot of the Google doc spreadsheet


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Submitting form data to a Usabilla test How-tos

Submitting form data to a Usabilla test

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Not so long ago we’ve added ‘custom variables’ to our tests. We store every variable you specify in the URL of your test and include these variables and an unique participant id (pid) in your redirect URL. That might sound a bit complicated, but enables you to store additional data for individual participants in Usabilla and to pass through data to other services as well. Let me try to explain with a simple example using a web form to submit data to a Usabilla test:

A simple web form

You can submit a simple web form to a Usabilla test. If you use ‘GET’ as method, the fields in your form are submitted as URL encoded variables. Example:

<form method="get" id="screener" name="screener" action="http://usabilla.com/rate/15927259904cb5afe7f3c00"> 	
	<label for="name">Name:</label> 
	<input id="name" name="name" type="text" /> 
	<label for="group">Group:</label> 
	<select id="group" name="group"> 
		<option value="A">A</option> 
		<option value="B">B</option> 
	</select> 
	<input type="submit" value="Submit" /> 
</form>
<form method=”get” id=”screener” name=”screener” action=”http://usabilla.com/rate/15927259904cb5afe7f3c00″>
<label for=”name”>Name:</label>
<input id=”name” name=”name” type=”text” />
<label for=”group”>Group:</label>
<select id=”group” name=”group”>
<option value=”A”>A</option>
<option value=”B”>B</option>
</select>
<input type=”submit” value=”Submit” />
</form>

This example form submits two variables (name and group) to a Usabilla test. The form input is stored together with the test data of your participant. At the end of the test the variables will also be attached to the redirect URL. This redirect URL could be another survey as well: read about combining Usabilla with a PollDaddy survey.

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Feeding the hunger of data junkies with Google Docs How-tos

Feeding the hunger of data junkies with Google Docs

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Last week we silently released the first version of our API. Sido explained our new XML export options and the new API key in his last blogpost. In short: we’ve implemented two new XML export options. You can use these exports to create XML files with the content of your test and the results of your test. We built this feature as a first step in opening up Usabilla and to make the data you collect in Usabilla accessible in any other tool. To demonstrate some of the possibilities with these new feeds, I’ve created a Google Spreadsheet that imports test results. In this post I will explain step by step how this Spreadsheet works and how you can build your own.

xml-export-gdocs

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Our export options just got way easier and much more advanced! Announcements

Our export options just got way easier and much more advanced!

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If you look at the test detail view (http://usabilla.com/tests/view/name+of+your+test) and scroll all the way down, you will notice the export options have changed. We basically used two approaches in this update. The first approach is to offer a simple straight forward export that is usable in every experience level. The second approach is to give more experienced user full access to their data in a very flexible way.

Simple exports with CSV (Comma-Seperated Values)

CSV is a simple text format for database table data and is readable by most common spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel, Open Office Calc and Google Docs. Simply click on the data you want to get out of Usabilla and a spreadsheet with the data is generated.

All the CSV export options follow the same format and settings. They all start with the fields “page”, “task”, “participant”, followed by the requested data. We use a unicode (UTF-8) character set, fields are separated by a comma (,) and strings are enclosed in double quotation marks (“…”).

Advanced exports with structured XML

The XML export includes all the data of a test in a structured format. We have two options, one for the content and one for the results. By combining these two exports your are able to generate any report you want.

All data is contained in a root element called usabilla. To make debugging a bit easier, we included a version attribute (current version) and a success attribute to tell you if the request was successfully executed.

Content export

The first child element indicates the type of response, in this case content and then shows you the unique id of the test you requested the content for and the language of the content. Here is an example of what it looks like: <content for="7719893004c6e" language="en">. The data follows the structure of a test, so a test has pages, and page has tasks. Here is a simplified example response:

Exporting results

In this case the first child element looks something like this <results for="7719893004c6e" language="en"> to indicate you are receiving the results of a test. The results a split up in to two sections average, which includes task completion times (calculated with geometric mean), followed by a section participants with the data per participant. Here is a simplified example of what a response might look like:

Accessing your data from other applications

Getting your data in other applications, like Google Docs for example is made pretty easy. Go to your account page and click on “Generate a new token”, you can now use any of the addresses below to get your data:

  • XML content:
    http://usabilla.com/tests/export/UNIQUE_ID/content/xml/?token=API_TOKEN
  • XML results:
    http://usabilla.com/tests/export/UNIQUE_ID/results/xml/?token=API_TOKEN
  • CSV results points:
    http://usabilla.com/tests/export/UNIQUE_ID/results/csv/points/?token=API_TOKEN
  • CSV results notes:
    http://usabilla.com/tests/export/UNIQUE_ID/results/csv/notes/?token=API_TOKEN
  • CSV results context:
    http://usabilla.com/tests/export/UNIQUE_ID/results/csv/context/?token=API_TOKEN

The easiest way to find out the UNIQUE_ID of a test, is to click on “Invite participants” on the test detail page. It is the last past of the address shown under “Your test is available at the following URL:”, and looks like: http://usabilla.com/rate/UNIQUE_ID

To disable API access to your data, just click “Clear API token” on account page and access is revoked.

Enjoy!

Hope you enjoy these new featured and find them useful in your projects. As always we appreciate any and all feedback so feel free to leave comment below or tweet us any suggestion or questions at @usabilla.

New: Store additional data for participants & more Announcements

New: Store additional data for participants & more

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It has been a while since we sent out an update about Usabilla. In the past months 4500 users ran hundreds of interesting tests with an incredible number of participants, we fixed many small bugs and tweaks, released new features, made big steps in scalability, and expanded our team with a very skilled developer (Say hi to Sido). In this update we want to share some interesting updates

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Add a survey to your test How-tos

Add a survey to your test

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In some cases it can be useful to add a survey to your test. Using a survey allows you to collect quantitative information from your participants. This information can be an interesting addition for the analysis of your test results. For example, you might want to know the average age or the ratio of male and female participating in your test.

Embed a form or use the Redirect URL

You can embed surveys in your test with an iframe in the ‘Thank You’ page or simply redirect your users to the URL of your survey. If you redirect your users to an external form, we’ll add a variable ‘?ub_pid=#######’ to the redirect URL. This variable is the id of your participant, which can also be found in our data exports (‘subject’ in the XML, CSV, TXT files).

You can use any external survey tool you like. In this post you’ll find an example of how to embed a Wufoo form and use an external PollDaddy form in combination with your Usabilla test.

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