Usabilla Blog

We’re very happy to announce that we’ve just launched our first ‘official’ public release. We’ve renewed our homepage, launched paid plans, and offer PDF reports for all your test results. Log in to your account to try the new reports and other new features.
With the help of our beta testers we have been able to build a useful tool to collect feedback on webpages, mockups, sketches, and other images. In the past months Usabilla has proven its use in a large number of different cases. More then 2500 usability experts, web designers, online marketeers and other web professionals are using Usabilla to conduct remote usability tests and collect feedback.

Check out your new PDF reports

You can now export your test results as a PDF report. Create and customize your reports in our analysis tool. You can also use the new ‘Save as PNG’ feature to save parts of your visualizations and use these in your own reports or publish them online. Log in to your account and analyze one of your tests to see these new features.

Upgrade your account

During our beta period we have been offering beta accounts to test our service. We will continue to offer free accounts, which will be limited to 5 pages and 25 participants. You can upgrade your free account to one of the following plans: Small ($49), Standard ($199), and Large ($950).

• Small – 10 pages – $49 / year – 250 participants – Upgrade
• Standard – 50 pages – $199 / year – 250 participants – Upgrade
• Large – 250 pages – $950 / year – 500 participants – Upgrade

We use PayPal to securely proces your payments and we don’t use automatic recurring payments, you simply renew your plan after a year if you want to continue to use our service. Please contact us for more information about upgrading your account or our custom plans.

Create a test in 4 minutes

Take a look at our new screencast to learn more about creating and analyzing a test. In just 4 minutes we’ll explain how to create an Usabilla test and analyze your results. Sit back, relax, and watch the movie:

Usabilla – Hassle free usability testing from Paul Veugen on Vimeo.

Questions or feedback?

Please let us know if you got any questions about our service. Send us a mail (support@usabilla.com) or contact us on Gtalk (support@usabilla.com) for help or if you want to discuss a test.

Press?

Read our press release

Tomorrow morning at around 9:00 (GMT+1) we’re going to upgrade our servers. Unfortunately this will cause a few minutes downtime for all our customers. We’re launching a new Usabilla version, implement our paid plans and will add an extra server. If everything works out as planned we will only be down for a very short time span and our new release will be up and running at 9:00 AM (GMT+1). We will send out a newsletter to our customers after our release tomorrow, with more details on the update and paid plans.

A/B testing is a popular method to optimize conversion on a website. Basically you set up two or more variants, measure the differences in conversion rates between these variants, and select a winner based on your test results. The winning variant is the one with the highest conversion rates. A/B testing is a great way to improve your webpages one step a time. Unfortunately implementing tests is not always as simple as it sounds, even if you use for example the nifty interface of Google Website Optimizer. To set up a test, you need to have access to the source code and someone who’s able to adapt it, a live website with visitors or a working prototype, etc.. We’ll show you an example of how Usabilla’s One-Click-Tasks can be used as an interesting and low-budget alternative for A/B testing.

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You can now easily export all your test results as PDF. Select a page and your tasks, customize your reports and save them as PDF. You can also export your visualizations as PNG to save them locally, include your charts in your own reports, or publish them online. Take look at a sample report.

Analyze your tests and create custom PDF reports

Export your visualizations easily as PNG

Do you have experience with Zend, Symfony, Cake or any other MVC framework and are also able deliver neat XHTML / CSS? Do you dare to develop a product for the World’s leading usability professionals? The Amsterdam based usability startup Usabilla is looking for an ambitious PHP developer to join our team.

Do you have….

• Experience with developing in a MVC framework (preferably Zend).
• The skills to write W3C compliant XHTML / CSS.
• The flexibility to work in an international team on a variety of (complex) tasks.
• At least 20 to 40 hours a week time available.
• The eagerness to work at an international startup.

We’re offering you an exciting job, great customers with very interesting ideas, and very skilled colleagues. Our offices are located in the city center of Amsterdam and we share an awesome office with other interesting and ambitious Dutch startups.

Contact Paul Veugen (paul@usabilla.com) if you’re interested in this position.

The sign up button or link is an important call-to-action on the homepages of most web services. In a recent demo case Usabilla compared the sign up on the homepages of 10 different web services. Users found the sign up button on the Twitter homepage in 1.8 seconds. Animoto was a good runner up with 2.3 seconds. On average it took participants 3.5 seconds to find a way to sign up for these web services.

The differences between the performance of these websites on this important task are big. But what makes Twitter homepage stand out in this test? Why do the sign up buttons at Animoto, Vimeo and MyNameisE catch attention faster than those of Wakoopa, Basecamp, and PayPal? We would love to hear your opinion about these test results.

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We released an update of the analysis page today. This release contains some minor changes and makes it easier to analyze large numbers of notes. We’ve added a list of all your active notes at the bottom of the page and you can easily turn notes on and off. The icons for notes are now smaller and you can select the color of the icon (the same color as points).

We’ve also updated the export options. Our XML exports now contain all your data, including time per task (per participant) and average time per task. You can find the export options at the bottom of the test details.

The international travel site Expedia (Alexa Rank 816) gets defeated by its competitors Hotwire, Priceline, and Travelocity on basic usability tasks. Expedia performed the worst in a usability showdown between the four major international travel sites. A total of 148 people participated in this usability test and tried to perform three basic tasks on one of the four websites.

Alexa rank for Expedia, Hotwire, Travelocity, and Priceline

Book a room in Amsterdam

The 148 participants tried to book a hotel room in Amsterdam in a certain price range on one of the four big travel websites. They had to find a way to search for a hotel room (task 1), limit their search on price (task 2), and book a room in the correct price range (task 3). The task performance was measured by the success rate and the time per task.

Expedia, Hotwire, Travelocity, and Priceline

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Have you ever booked a hotel at Expedia, Hotwire, Priceline, TraveloCity or another big travel site? We’re really curious if you found what you were looking for. Let’s compare the usability of these four travel sites in this usability showdown.
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A few moments ago we released a major update of Usabilla. We know for sure this new release will make usability testing with Usabilla even more easier for both you and your participants. We’ve improved the usability of our test interface and added some interesting new features to extend your testing possibilities.

A short overview of the most important new features in this release:

• Easier feedback with an improved test interface
• Customize your introduction and thank-you page
• Help participants with an introduction per task
• Combine one-click-tasks and standard tasks in one test
• Improved results and task timers

Easier feedback with an improved test interface

We’ve simplified the test interface for your participants. We’re sure the new interface makes it even easier to participate in a test and share feedback. We removed unnecessary clutter from the toolbar and combined points and notes. Users can simply add a point to answer your questions and attach a note to this point if they want to share some additional comments. Usabilla tests currently got an average conversion rate of more than 30 percent. With these new improvements we hope to improve the conversion of your tests even more.

Help participants by providing additional context per task

You can now add a short introduction for each task. This short intro can be used to provide some additional context for your participants.

Some examples:

• You want to book a trip to Amsterdam in October. You’re searching for a hotel in the price range of 80 to 100 dollar. Where would you click to search a hotel?
• We would love to know what you think of our new homepage. Please let us know what your think of this page. Click on the screen to add a note.

Customize your introduction and thank-you page

Your tests need a clear introduction. You can now improve a test by customizing the introduction. You can use basic HTML for markup and some simple tags to automatically include page thumbnails, the number of tasks, etc. The Thank-You page can also be customized. This page is shown after a participant finished a test. You can use the page to thank your participants for their input or to point them to pages or forms.

Combine one-click-tasks and standard tasks in one test

A few weeks ago we launched ‘One-Click-Tests’. A one click tests is very simple test, where users can only use one point to answer a question. You can use this method for example to test first impressions or to measure the time it takes to accomplish a certain task. You can now combine one-click-tasks and standard tasks in one test. You can define for each task if it’s a standard or a one-click-task.

Improved results and task timers

We gave the results page a small facelift. The layout of the page changed a bit and we added some new features to analyze your test results. You can use our selector to select a specific area of your page and check the stats for that area (how many users clicked in a specific area?). We now also track time per task. This helps you to compare different tasks and pages.

Upgrade your plan

We’re going to launch paid plans in the near future. We’ll offer different plans, varying in price between $49 and $950 per year.

You can continue to use Usabilla for free, but your reports will be limited to 25 participants per test.

Share interesting cases

Please let us know if you need any help with a test case or want to share your findings. We would love to learn from your questions and usability challenges.

Contact us by mail (info@usabilla.com), via Twitter (@usabilla) or leave message at our customer support page at GetSatisfaction (http://getsatisfaction.com/usabilla).