Looking back at 2019 and ahead to 2020

Where a salesperson measures a year in the deals they’ve closed and revenue earned, and a marketer may quantify their year’s efforts in campaigns executed and leads acquired, a product person inevitably measures the 525,600 minutes that make up a calendar year in the products and features designed and delivered.

Here at UserTesting, 2019 was certainly a year of change and improvement. Aligned with our company values of getting better, driving results, and putting our customers first, our UX, research, product, and engineering teams worked together to better understand from customers the universe of product ideas, and to select and then build out improvements with the greatest impact.

Here are some of the products and features we released in 2019.

Reaching your target audiences

We know how important it is to reach the precise people you are seeking feedback from. So we have been making changes to not only expand the reach of the UserTesting Contributor Network but also provide features to help you identify and connect with the audiences you need.

• We renamed UserMuse (acquired in 2019). Now called the UserTesting Business Panel, it is a feature that we’ll be optimizing in the coming year to help you more easily test with hard-to-reach professionals.
• We announced the beta of Custom Network during our 2019 customer summit. We’ll be releasing this more fully in the coming year, to make it easier to upload, onboard, and test with your own customers.

Testing on mobile

With consumers spending more than 5 hours every day on mobile devices, it’s critical that your digital experience offers convenience, easy access, and near non-stop delight.So we’re pleased to roll out full-screen recording for mobile testing. On January 21, you’ll be able to test any experience, using any method, on any device. From websites to apps and even using the camera on a smartphone, you’ll be able to test anything that your user can see, share, or show on their mobile devices, for recorded tests or Live Conversation.

Scaling research and creating tests with ease

As customer experience (CX) increasingly becomes the domain and responsibility of more employees spread across more teams, companies need ways to ensure customer feedback reaches all corners of an organization—in a timely manner and in a usable state.

We heard this loud and clear from customers and we have been working on reusable test components, including:

• Saved Panel, allowing you to save testers to test with in the future
• Saved Audiences, so that you save demographic filters and screener questions to quickly use when creating a new test
• Saved Test Plans, saving you even more time when creating tests and allowing you to create custom test templates for your team

Uncovering insights

While we know that qualitative insights are a key part of innovation and problem solving—since you hear challenges and wishes right from the mouths of your customers—we also know that time is limited and efficiency is king. So we have been identifying ways to help customers more quickly locate the most helpful of insights.

Towards this goal, we made the following changes:

• Released Enhanced Metrics (to Premium customers), displaying visualizations of behavior data so that you can hone in on challenges or other areas of interest for further investigation
• Made improvements to Transcripts accuracy, so you can scan, search, and create clips based on keywords
• Launched the Mark as Important star icon in Notes & Clips. Mark the icon to filter by these clips when creating a highlight reel. You can also see which colleagues marked clips and they can see the ones you marked because #SharingIsCaring.

Insight Apps

In an effort to scale the collection of qualitative insights, we also launched customized experiences for specific functions.

• We launched Product Insight last year, with pre-formatted tests that Product Managers can use to get feedback throughout the product development process.
• We announced Marketing Insight last year, providing a similar test creation experience for marketers.

Now more than a couple of weeks into 2020, with the proverbial clock resetting and a pivot from nostalgia to “what’s next?,” we are looking ahead to sharing even more helpful products and features, integrating cutting edge technologies like Machine Learning, and fulfilling our commitment to helping brands gather meaningful insights, develop deeper customer empathy, and deliver better customer experiences.

As ever, we welcome your thoughts and ideas. Feel free to chat in, email, or share your thoughts on social media and in the UserTesting CommUnity. And here’s to a productive and prosperous 2020 for all!