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Best features available to you for easy user testing

With Loop11 there are a variety of tests and studies you can run. Here are a few of them.

Online Usability Testing

Benchmarking

Prototype Testing

A/B Usability Testing

Mobile & Tablet Testing

Information Architecture Testing

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Frequently Asked Questions

I’m new to user testing. How does this work?

Loop¹¹ is an application that lets you run your own usability studies without the need for a usability lab, specialized equipment and a moderator. Simply determine the tasks you want to test on your website, recruit some participants and launch your study. Loop¹¹ does all the rest and provides you with real time data giving you an understanding of the usability of your website and where you need to improve or make changes.

What is usability testing?

Usability testing is a technique used to ensure that the users of a website (or interface) can carry out the intended tasks efficiently, effectively and satisfactorily.

Why is usability testing important?

On the web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website’s information is hard to read or doesn’t answer users’ key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There’s no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defence when users encounter a difficulty

How many participants should be used for online, quantitative usability testing?

Qualitative usability testing has traditionally been based around small sample sizes of 5-20 participants. However, the growth of online testing tools and quantitative usability research is changing the game. Whist many experts agreed that for qualitative, lab-based testing small samples sizes of 5-20 participants is sufficient. Online user testing has created a new wave of analysis such as benchmarking, A/B testing, competitor comparison, validating and much more. These kinds of quantitative analyses require larger numbers of participants to validate the data.

For example: Let’s say your company is testing two different versions of wireframes so management can decide and approve one to implement and allocate resources to. It would not be very good practice to use 10 participants and get a 60%-40% success rate. It would be very hard to validate a study and implement a strategy based on 10 participants. However, if 500-1000 participants were used, that data would be a lot more accurate, and management would have valid data to approve of the findings.

The maximum number of participants you can have in a Loop¹¹ project is 1,000.

What are the basic steps to running a Loop11 study?

Determine what you want to test: What parts of the application and what functions.
Why are you testing?
- Do you want a benchmark of usability and performance?
- Are you trying to find and fix as many usability problems as possible?
- Are you comparing an application with a competing product?
Write a minimum of 5-10 task scenarios that have users attempting realistic tasks in which they interact with the parts of the application you want to test.
Recruit a set of users to test. At a minimum aim for between 50 and 100 in total. For goal 2b, test a subset of your users as part of an iterative testing approach.
Launch your project.
Analyze the results.

How do I analyze the data?

The moment a participant completes an evaluation, the responses can be viewed and reports are generated. Our reports make it easy for you to see how well each task is performed by your participants.

Understand what percentage of participants have difficulty navigating your website
See where participants are failing your most important tasks
Dive into individual responses to view details of a particular participant or to read the comments of open-ended questions.
View heatmaps showing you where participants click on an individual page
Generate clickstream data to see how participants really navigate your website.

Why should I choose Loop11?

Loop¹¹ provides the fastest and easiest way for you to set up and run a usability project. You could have results back within 24 hours! There’s no code to insert and no IT or usability knowledge required. Our step-by-step approach will guide you through the process, but we’ve got awesome support available if you need it

What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative usability testing?

The difference between quantitative and qualitative research is often explained using contrasting terminology, like “hard vs. soft”, “numeric vs. non-numeric”, “statistics vs. insights”, “measure vs. explore”, “what vs. why”.

Broadly speaking, quantitative research can provide path and performance analyses by capturing the “what” of user behavior. It enables you to study your users’ experience by the numbers (e.g. how many people were able to buy a product successfully on my website?). In contrast, a goal of qualitative research is to gain valuable insight into the thought processes – the “why” – behind user’s actions.

What does remote user testing mean?

Remote user testing means that you can test the usability of any website from any computer, with users anywhere in the world. Traditional lab-based testing requires a moderator, users and the website to be in the same room at the same time.

Can I do a trial before I pay for a user test?

Yes! We offer a 14-day free trial to give you a feel for the Loop¹¹ experience. During those 14 days you can launch up to three full scale projects with all the features of our Enterprise subscription, but with a few small restrictions. Once you’re ready to upgrade, these restrictions go away. You can start your free trial here.

Why do user testing instead of A/B testing?

Generally, A/B testing is for testing a single page of a website or even a single element on a single page of a website. In contrast, user testing is designed to test entire website and the whole journey that a user takes to complete the goal they had when they first visited the website.

When should I do user testing in the development process?

Usability testing can play a role in each stage of the development process. The resulting need for multiple studies is one reason for making individual studies fast and cheap. Here are the main stages where you could conduct testing:

Before starting the new design, test the old design to identify the good parts that you should keep or emphasize, and the bad parts that give users trouble.
Test your competitors’ designs to get cheap data on a range of alternative interfaces that have similar features to your own.
Conduct a True Intent study to see how users behave in their natural habitat.
Conduct information architecture testing to give you the insights you need to design or refine a great information architecture.
Make wireframe prototypes of one or more new design ideas and test them. The less time you invest in these design ideas the better, because you’ll need to change them all based on the test results.
Refine the design ideas that test best through multiple iterations, gradually moving from low-fidelity prototyping to high-fidelity representations. Test each iteration.
Conduct accessibility testing to ensure your website can be used by users with a range of assistive technologies, such as screen readers or speech recognition software.
Once you decide on and implement the final design, test it. Subtle usability problems always creep in during implementation.

Can I test competitors’ websites?

You sure can! Because we do not require you to insert code into your website you can run user tests on any website, including your competitors. It’s the perfect way to run benchmarking studies!

How do I get participants for my user test?

There are many places you can find participants for your user testing. The easiest – and cheapest – place to find them is via social media. If you have a Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media account you can simply send your Loop¹¹ project URL out to all your followers and fans asking for their feedback. Similarly, if you have a database of members you can email them directly.

Alternatively, you can create a pop-up invitation in Loop¹¹ to intercept your current website users and ask them to participate in your study.

Finally, if your project requires having participants that meet certain demographic criteria then there are many market research panels that will source participants to meet your exact requirements. Usually these panels charge a small fee for locating your participants. The following companies can provide participants for your projects:

How do I select the tasks for testing?

Usability testing is about watching users do tasks which should simulate actual usage of your website. An initial usability test should focus on core functionality – areas that will see the most usage. If you are tasked with testing a specific piece of functionality, then naturally your test would need to focus on that area.

For example, if you were testing a rental car website, the core tasks could be: renting a car, renting a car with additional options, finding the address of a rental location and finding the opening hours of a rental location on a Tuesday morning.

Sometimes you have to test more than the core tasks, even if it is the initial usability test. As a balance you can have some core tasks tested first and if there is still time during a test session, test a set of peripheral tasks that include the fringe functionality.

How do I set up month-by-month benchmarking?

Conducting monthly benchmarking of your own website is a great way to ensure the usability of your website remains in good standing. Running regular benchmarking studies is an easy as setting up the key tasks you want to observe and copying the entire project each month.

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