9 user testing tools for powerful insights and better user experiences

User testing is an important part of any customer-centric business. The insights you get from running user tests help you improve customer satisfaction, increase conversion and retention rates, and build trust in your brand. 

Sounds pretty great, right? Even better news: there are loads of excellent tools on the market to help you conduct experiments, analyze test results, and connect with your users like never before.

This article digs into some of the most popular user testing tools that give you the data you need to delight your users. Read on for our top picks, plus the questions you need to ask before adding them to your tech stack.

9 user testing tools for building better products

Every product team needs user testing tools to:

• Discover, analyze, and empathize with user behavior at every stage of the funnel

• Run experiments and uncover valuable insights to create more customer-centric experiences

• Continuously improve the user experience (UX) and spot opportunities for optimization

The 9 tools below help you achieve these goals and grow your business—with your customer top of mind every step of the way.

🤔 Before we get started…what’s the difference between user testing tools and usability testing tools?

Great question! Usability testing is a subset of user testing. That is, all usability testing is user testing, but not all user testing is usability testing.

You’ll see both terms used below because many user testing tools also incorporate elements of usability testing. 

Ultimately, our stance is that no matter what you call it, the most important thing is to pick a tool that has the functionality you need for the job you’re trying to do. 

1. Contentsquare

Contentsquare (hello! 👋) an all-in-one experience intelligence platform that provides detailed insights into user behavior and engagement. It gives you powerful information about how users interact with—and feel about—your site or product.

Key tools and features: Digital Experience Analytics, Product Analytics, Digital Experience Monitoring, Voice of Customer (VoC)

How it helps: Contentsquare provides multiple ways to get insights and run different types of user tests. It provides both quantitative and qualitative research options for a truly comprehensive picture of your customers’ wants and needs.

• User tests in Voice of Customer lets you capture genuine insights as users interact with your site or product without the guidance of a moderator, on their own time. 

• Session Replay reveals exactly how your users navigate your site so you can identify usability issues, spot frustrating elements, and understand why users get blocked or exit pages instead of taking the next step

• Heatmaps visualize user behavior to represent which parts of your site or mobile app users engage with—and which parts get ignored. Heatmaps surface issues that may have slipped through QA, like broken call-to-action (CTA) buttons, unoptimized information hierarchy, or elements not working as expected.

• VoC tools—like Surveys, Feedback Collection, and concept testing—let you ask users directly about their experience and gather responses to specific questions. Ask questions like, “On a scale of 1-10, how easy is it to use this site?” or “What features would you like to see in the future?” (Surveys are also another great way to recruit participants for user testing.)

• Customer Journey Analysis tracks user paths across your site, pinpointing where they drop off or encounter friction, helping to optimize the overall experience

• Frustration Scoring quantifies user frustration by analyzing behaviors like repeated clicks and page exits, allowing you to prioritize areas in need of improvement

With User interviews via Voice of Customer, you can automate the entire user research process and conduct remote user interviews that reveal actionable insights

🧪  Make user testing easier 

Engage enables you to quickly and effortlessly recruit test participants from Contentsquare’s pool of over 200,000 people. It also takes care of time-consuming admin (like scheduling, hosting, and transcribing your sessions) so you can focus on uncovering the right information.

These user testing features are powerful alone but even more impactful when combined, empowering you to run in-depth remote user tests and interviews that help you make significant improvements. 

Integrations: ✅ Contentsquare integrates with thousands of other tools you know and love, including other user testing software such as Optimizely and Omniconvert (more on those below). It also integrates with your favorite analytics platforms, like Google Analytics.

2. Optimizely

Optimizely is an experimentation platform that helps businesses run user tests so they can see what works (and what doesn’t).

Key tools and features: AI-powered personalization and experimentation, A/B testing, multivariate testing

How it helps: with advanced behavioral targeting and segmentation, Optimizely enables you to run A/B and version tests with specific audiences so you can see what resonates and with which demographic. Safely run multiple experiments on the same page, and get granular with your user testing.

Integrations: ✅ Contentsquare’s partnership with Optimizely helps you get even more out of your A/B and multivariate tests by letting you visualize and observe how users engage with different versions.

💡 Pro tip: use Contentsquare + Optimizely to:

• Create, test, and optimize digital experiences at scale

• Get feedback from users about new features

• Find the testing strategy that is most likely to create an uplift for your KPIs

• Run more efficient experiments and see how they’re performing in real-time 

3. Unbounce

Unbounce is an AI-powered landing page builder that helps you create and optimize landing pages.

Key tools and features: landing page builder, A/B testing, automatic traffic optimization

How it helps: landing pages can be the moment of truth for your campaign: will all the work you’ve done to direct users to this point pay off with a sign-up? 

To ensure users convert, Unbounce helps you optimize your landing pages using either A/B testing or its proprietary AI-powered traffic optimization tool, Smart Traffic. 

Unbounce’s A/B testing lets you run classic user tests, while Smart Traffic removes the need for experimentation and uses visitor attributes to automatically route visitors to the ideal landing page variant for them.

4. Omniconvert

Omniconvert is a conversion rate optimization (CRO) platform aimed at ecommerce businesses.

Key tools and features: A/B testing, personalization, advanced segmentation, reporting, surveys

How it helps: Omniconvert has a powerful segmentation engine that allows you to run A/B tests based on over 40 segmentation parameters, including traffic source, location, user behavior, and survey response. It also provides an experiment debugger functionality to ensure your user tests run as they should.

Integrations: ✅ By integrating Contentsquare with Omniconvert, you can see how different users interact with different page variations, allowing you to optimize and deliver an even better ecommerce experience.

💡 Pro tip: use Contentsquare + Omniconvert to:

• Identify the elements of a high-converting ecommerce page

• See how different user cohorts engage with different variants and use the results to create more targeted sales and marketing campaigns for your ecommerce store

• Segment sessions based on A/B test variations and jump into Zone-based Heatmaps and Session Replay to spot key behavior changes or friction points

• Explore customer behavior across all digital channels and devices in order to build and test ever-better customer experiences

5. UserTesting

The UserTesting Human Insight Platform enables businesses to conduct usability testing, user interviews, and surveys.

Key tools and features: audience recruitment, live interviews, video capture, usability testing, sentiment analysis, card sorting, tree testing, clickstream tracking

How it helps: UserTesting provides a video-first platform that lets you run usability tests and see users’ experiences in real-time. See people’s facial expressions, hear their tone of voice, and witness first reactions as they interact with just about anything: your site, app, product, marketing materials, or even real-world experiences.

6. UserZoom

UserZoom is a user experience (UX) research and usability testing platform.

Key tools and features: live interviews, moderated and unmoderated usability testing, tree testing, card sorting, click testing, surveys

How it helps: UserZoom offers remote usability testing, which can be either moderated or unmoderated

• During moderated usability tests, a moderator watches the users interact with the product in real-time on a shared screen, listens to them discuss their experience, and may ask further questions as issues arise

• Unmoderated usability tests leave users to navigate the product alone based on predefined tasks and questions

7. Userlytics

Userlytics is a UX research platform that allows businesses to run remote usability testing and other UX tests.

Key tools and features: moderated and unmoderated usability testing, website usability testing, prototype testing, accessibility testing, virtual reality (VR) testing, hybrid online and offline testing

How it helps: Userlytics provides remote usability tests and user research across various methodologies. In addition to ‘think aloud’ testing like user interviews, the platform offers A/B testing, preference testing, five-second tests, first-click testing, and information architecture testing (such as card sorting and tree testing).

8. Optimal Workshop

Optimal Workshop is a user research platform specializing in information architecture testing methods.

Key tools and features: card sorting, tree testing, first-click testing, surveys, qualitative analysis, user recruitment

How it helps: Optimal Workshop’s tools focus on core information architecture tests. This type of testing enables you to understand how users group and understand information, so you can create more intuitive user journeys that align with user expectations.

9. Maze

Maze is a user testing platform that helps designers and product managers test prototypes.

Key tools and features: prototype testing, live website testing, concept testing, wireframe testing, feedback surveys, card sorting, tree testing

How it helps: by enabling product and design teams to get user feedback on initial concepts, wireframes, and early prototypes, Maze helps product teams to validate their ideas before they even start coding. This allows them to save time, build with users in mind, and work with confidence. 

Bonus: project management tools

While project management tools—such as Jira, Asana, and Trello—aren’t user testing tools per se, it can be useful to integrate them with your user testing tech stack to consolidate your findings and plan next steps.

For example, Contentsquare integrates with Jira, so you can automate your workflows and create more connected user testing processes no matter how you like to work.

Automatically create a new ticket directly inside Contentsquare's Error Analysis feature so you can:

• Identify issues from session replays and errors, then create tickets with full context

• Share key errors with developers and your team

• Link errors directly to related Jira tickets

Avoid duplicate tickets and streamline your workflow

How to pick the right user testing tools for your business

To choose the right user testing tool, you need to consider a few factors. Here’s our advice on picking the right one for your needs.

🧰 What is the job to be done (JTBD)?

What is the goal of your user testing: do you have a specific question you’re trying to answer, such as, “Does moving the CTA improve conversion rates?” or “How easy is it to navigate my website?” Or are you looking to get broader insights?

Clarifying the job to be done and setting a clear objective for your user tests will help you to structure your approach and identify which user testing methodology and features you should use.

⚒️ Which tools and features do you need?

As you’ll have noticed from the list above, there are loads of tools and features common to user testing tools, including

• Session replays

• Heatmaps

• Surveys and feedback

• A/B testing

• User interviews and recruitment

• Information architecture testing, such as card sorting and tree testing

Remember, in order to get the full picture of your users, you should combine quantitative and qualitative research. Look for opportunities to use features together to unlock even deeper understanding, such as complementing your A/B tests with session replays or direct user feedback.

🤝 Does it integrate with the other tools you use?

To get the most from your user testing software, look for one that integrates seamlessly with the other tools in your tech stack. 

Enrich your user tests with additional data—perhaps from your customer relationship management (CRM) or analytics software—and use automations to make your entire user testing workflow more efficient. 

💆 How easy is it to use?

A great user testing platform makes it simple to set up and run user tests, even if you don’t have a UX testing or analytics background. 

In fact, many of the tools on this list (like Contentsquare 👋) are user-friendly and low-code, meaning you don’t need a developer to get set up.

💰 How much does it cost?

Of course, pricing will be a factor too. Look for a tool that fits within your budget and can scale with you as you grow. 

Create better experiences with user testing tools

With the right user testing tools in your tech stack, you can get data-driven user feedback from your target audience that will help you to test, improve, and continuously optimize the user experience—leading to happier, more successful users.

FAQs about user testing tools