Fuel Cycle and UserTesting: Best Practices

August 16, 2024 14:11

At a Glance

With the Fuel Cycle integration, capture rich, video-based insights from people you trust who are engaged with your organization. Follow these best practices to get the most out of this integration and your community members.

Fuel Cycle integration is available on the following subscriptions:

Flex plan	Seat-based plan
Essentials ✓	Startup
Advanced✓	Professional ✓
Ultimate✓	Premium✓

How to Set Up a Successful Test

When creating your test plan, remember that your community members may not be familiar with UserTesting or even the idea of giving feedback. This will help you set your community members up for success!

Start with open-ended questions

Start your test plan with a few simple questions to make your members comfortable as they provide feedback.

An easy way to get people talking is to ask a question or two about themselves. You can ask them about their job, family, or hobby—anything related to the test.

The goal isn't to get a certain type of feedback; the goal is to get the community member warmed up and talking. If you're concerned this will take too much time, put a time frame on these tasks.

Example of an open-ended question: Please take 2 minutes to tell us what dinner time is like at your house.

Keep it simple

When writing your test plan, ensure that your tasks and questions are easy to understand. Avoid complex instructions or complicated tasks—the simpler, the better.

Keep task descriptions short. Avoid wordiness, and try to include concisely-written tasks. Also, push the most important details toward the front of the task. This will help community members easily understand the task at hand.
Only include one instruction per task. This will help with the length of each task as well. It's better to have multiple short tasks than one long task.

Example of a simple task: You are planning a trip from Atlanta to Las Vegas. Use this site to find a flight and hotel room for three nights. Stop when you have added the flight and hotel room in your cart.

Example of a complicated task: Create a profile and search for a healthcare provider. Select at least one and save them to your profile. Make sure that they specialize in pediatrics and not internal medicine or other specialties. Then explain why you chose the provider you did.

Provide a scenario

A scenario is 1-3 sentences to help set the scene for your test taker. Adding a scenario to your test plan helps community members get into the right mindset to give you relevant feedback. Here are a few scenario best practices when engaging with your own community members:

Reiterate that this is not a test of their ability. You are interested in hearing their perspective.
Encourage them to share where they get confused or frustrated.
Remind them to speak their thoughts out loud.

Example scenario: Imagine that you want to buy a gift for a friend. Please complete the following tasks and questions with this in mind. Remember, this is not a test of your ability. We want to hear your perspective even if you are confused or don't like something. And please don't forget to speak your thoughts out loud.

Add reminders to keep talking

When writing various tasks and questions in your test plan, add plenty of reminders for your test-takers to keep talking during the test.

These reminders can be as simple as "remember to say your thoughts out loud" to the end of a task. You can also add instructions to the beginning of the task, such as, "Tell us your experience." These reminders ensure you help your contributor stay on task.

Review your test

Before sending the test to community members, preview your test yourself. This ensures that all assets included in the test work properly and that tasks are clear to community members. It also increases the chance that you get relevant feedback from the test.

How to Write Compelling Activity Cards

After you launch your test, you'll create an activity for your Fuel Cycle community. An activity card is a place in Fuel Cycle where a UserTesting test is displayed. You can also add text to the activity so that community members can learn more about the test.

Set expectations

When composing the activity card, consider the following:

Inform members about the nature of the activity with UserTesting—that their screen and voice will be recorded as they complete a series of tasks and questions.
Add context about the product, service, website, etc., and what community members can expect. Community members who are frequent users of your service or product will be more inclined to respond and participate.
Consider adding the amount the member will be compensated. We recommend increasing the incentive to almost 10x the typical amount for a Fuel Cycle activity.
Add some detail about how their feedback will be used. Engage people by letting them know that their feedback is important and that it helps your team make informed decisions. Show them that their opinions are being heard.
Inform members of the approximate amount of time that the activity will take.
Include these step-by-step instructions for community members who want to learn more.

Create a clear call-to-action

Create a single, clear call-to-action, and add your activity card. Keep the text within 40 characters or, ideally, four words for maximum effect.
Lead with an action. Give users a clear, short instruction that they can carry out by clicking the hyperlinked text. For example: "take the test," "start now," or "give feedback."
Try to avoid wordplay or anything that might be confusing. It's always best to err on the side of being overly explicit when writing good call-to-action copy.

Thank you for being a part of the XYZ Community. We're excited to invite you to participate in an exclusive opportunity to provide video feedback on XYZ's new webpage! Your input will help us create a better navigation experience.

The incentive to complete this study is 1,000 points.

Ready to tell us what you think in a video session?

When you click on the link, you'll be shown how to record your screen, face, and voice so we can see and hear your experience. Then you'll be asked to speak your thoughts out loud as you complete a series of tasks and questions. Watch this short video to learn more.

How to prepare?

Find a quiet, distraction-free place to record your session. Make sure you have enough time to complete the recording—sessions usually take around 20 minutes, but you can take as much time as you need.

We will only be taking a limited number of respondents, and it is first come, first serve. Once we've reached the target number of respondents, the activity will close.

CTA: Get started now!

Example Fuel Cycle activity card

How to Write Engaging Emails

You also have the option to email your community members to invite them to take your test.

Pay close attention to the email subject line

Subject lines are the most important component of your emails. After all, the subject line is what recipients see in their inbox, and this determines if they even open your email or not. Consider the following:

Try to keep the subject line to 50-60 characters in length. Shorter subjects are more effective.
Phrasing your subject as a question can further entice audiences to open the email.
Using emojis increases open rates by around 25%. They aren't a quick fix, but they can make a good email subject stand out. But don't overdo it. One emoji tends to work well. Here is a Mailpoet article with some additional tips for crafting a subject line that stands out.

Optimize the email body copy

Set expectations in a similar context you provided in the activity card. In addition, think about the following tips:

Consider writing the email content conversational rather than using a formal or overly professional tone.
Add some style, emphasis, or direction to your email by using bold text, italics, and bulleted lists.
Include these step-by-step instructions for community members who want to learn more.

Create a call-to-action

Create a single, clear call-to-action, and add your test link. Keep the text within 40 characters or, ideally, four words for maximum effect.
Lead with an action. Give users a clear, short instruction that they can carry out by clicking the hyperlinked text. For example: "take the test," "start now," or "give feedback."
Try to avoid wordplay or anything that might be confusing. It's always best to err on the side of being overly explicit when writing good call-to-action copy.

Subject line:

Hi there,

Thank you for being a part of the XYZ Community. We're excited to invite you to participate in an exclusive opportunity to provide video feedback on XYZ's new webpage! Your feedback will help us create a better navigation experience.

The incentive to complete this study is 1,000 points.

Ready to tell us what you think in a video session?

How to prepare?

We will only be taking a limited number of respondents, and it is first come, first serve. Once we've reached the target number of respondents, the activity will close.

Thanks again for being an active member of XYZ Community, and thank you for participating!

[Get Started CTA button]

Things to remember

There are no wrong answers when you're performing tasks and answering questions. Just give us your honest opinion!
Criticism is good feedback. Don't be shy about pointing out things that look strange, don't work, or could be improved.

Example test invitation email

How to Get the Best Results

Determine how many community members you need—then increase by 10x

One major difference between conducting a study with the UserTesting community member Network versus your own networks is that the conversion rate is lower when using a smaller set of community members. Your networks are busy, and it can be difficult to catch them at a time when they're able and willing to provide feedback.

To help, we recommend increasing your pool of potential community members by ten times. For example, if you need at least five community member responses, send your study out to 50 potential community members. Your test will close once five people have completed it, so it's always better to cast a wide net early on.

And consider experimenting by sending out these tests in batches on different days of the week for the best results.

Create compelling incentives

A compelling incentive is important to help your test get to the top of the to-do list of your network. Experiment with different incentive amounts. We recommend increasing the incentive to almost 10x the typical amount for a Fuel Cycle activity.

Time the launch of your test appropriately

As you gather contact information for your audiences, note their time zone. If a community member is on the east coast, they might miss your invitation if it's sent out in the afternoon on the west coast.

Follow-up with community members

This is the last—and important—step in launching a successful test with the Fuel Cycle integration. People are generally willing to help and want to feel heard in providing feedback. Sometimes they just need an extra nudge to bring your email to the top of their inbox.

Keep track of who you've contacted and when. Follow up with individuals who haven't responded but don't overdo it. We recommend no more than two to three follow-ups per community member.

Learn More

Need more information? Read these related articles.

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