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Modern Techniques A decade later, things have changed since those early days of guerilla user testing. Now there are a few different ways to highlight usability issues and some of them are even easier, quicker, and cheaper to implement that the in-person tests that Nielsen popularized. Here are 4 test types that I’ve used: In person, moderated and lightly scripted: This is the traditional format of a usability test and of the in-person techniques, it’s the easiest one to get started with. A quick definition of terms: in person means that you’re sitting down with the user, moderated means that there’s someone talking to the user and acting as a sort of referee to keep things on track, and scripted means that there’s a fixed set of tasks written down in advance and that the moderator wants the user to accomplish. In person, moderated and unscripted: This is the Listening Lab technique popularized by Mark Hurst. It requires a bit more experience and finesse to pull off in order to gather valid usability insights without turning into a completely unstructured focus group. In it, the moderator asks the user what tasks he or she wants to accomplish before diving into the app, based on their demographic, a loose conversation about their interests, or their impressions of external marketing pages. Remote and moderated (scripted or unscripted): This can be roughly the same as the two techniques above, except the moderator and user aren’t physically present in the same room and use a video app like Skype to connect instead. This is especially a help to early stage projects, when initial early users can come from any part of the world. Remote, asynchronous and heavily scripted: This is the absolute easiest and most newbie-friendly way to try user testing. It’s enabled by relatively new tools like Usertesting.com, where the moderator and user don’t chat in real time and instead, the user is left on their own to follow step-by-step instructions on how to use the site or app in question, while their mouse movement and audio feedback is recorded.

The basic framework of an in-person tests is: Think about what goals you’d like the user to accomplish (yes, even for the unscripted tests because you still want to see if they can complete certain tasks, although in a looser, unguided format). Record everything – at least the audio and screen, if not also their face and body, so you can review later as well as share with the team. It’s a newbie mistake to try to moderate a test at the same time that you’re analyzing it for lessons, and even newbier to ask stakeholders to just listen to a summary when audio/visual feedback can have such a punch. Use about 5 or 6 people – any less has too much noise while any more has diminishing returns. Note that a qualitative research method like this is different from a quantitative one like A/B testing, where the cutoff is much higher and more users is always better. Let people explore and make mistakes on their own while also keeping them on task. Don’t talk so much that you’re explaining everything on the screen like a car salesman, but also don’t morosely sit back and let them feel judged. Try to strike a balance between friendly and observant.

1. 80/20 rule from Noah Kagan Appsumo’s founder, Noah Kagan, notes that one rule of thumb that they follow is to use 80% of their marketing budget for things that are working and 20% on newer marketing initiatives. One more thing: they go all in when they find marketing channels that work. You can watch one of his presentations where he shares his experiences of growing Mint, Facebook, and AppSumo here.

2. Communicate, communicate, communicate At Treehouse, we work remotely and as you might imagine. There are some that think there is no replacement to working in person while others support it. For us, we’re half and half – we have an office in Orlando and we also have a team up in Portland. The rest of us are distributed. But hey, it works because we communicate a lot. If you don’t feel like you are running enough A/B tests, speak up about it. If you feel like the team needs more developers, speak up. If you feel like an executive decision is going to cost the company money in the long run, talk. People might not always agree with you but it’s your job to communicate. You’re doing the company a disservice if you aren’t being honest. To get you started, here are some tools we use to communicate: Campfire Skype Google Chat Google Hangout GoToMeeting – we use GoToMeeting for our leadership meetings. It’s very simple to use and the video quality is pretty good.

3. Be a voracious reader Although there’s a lot of crappy content circulating the internet, there’s always going to be someone you can learn from. The key is being able to discern signal from noise. For example, if I’m looking to learn more on conversion rate optimization, there are great blogs such as Unbounce, ConversionXL, KISSmetrics, SEOmoz, and more. Just look at the detailed blog posts that they write: 10 Useful Findings About How People Use Websites – ConversionXL 5 Landing Page Conversion Killers – Unbounce The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization – SEOmoz If your goal is to squeeze every penny out of your website, you should be reading conversion rate optimization articles like the ones above. They cost no money to read and stand to help create original ideas that will eventually create more profit for you. This applies to any topic you’re interested in. Using the right tools can go a long way in helping you save time. If you’re on the go and don’t have time to read, you can use Pocket. To help you find relevant topics/articles via Twitter, you can grab curated lists using Listorious. Finally, I like picking off interesting topics from Inbound.org or Hacker News. Key takeaway: don’t read every single blog out there. Find the ones that actually add value and follow them.

“Growth teams are constantly iterating and developing new concepts,” said Dan Martell, founder of Clarity.

This process can be an unnecessary distraction to core product development. This is why it is best for an autonomous team to test and focus on growth.” Growth teams and growth hackers are in a perpetual state of “work-in-progress,” which can slow core product momentum with its mindset of iteration and testing.

“Ideally, a growth hacker can single-handedly put in a bunch of changes, such as A/B tests for copy and buttons,” said Mike Greenfield, 500 Startups Growth Hacker-In-Residence and co-founder of Circle of Moms. “One person with both technical and marketing skills can reduce friction and facilitate rapid iteration. Growth success comes from a lot of this background work.”

Ramit:  I want to emphasize a couple of things you mentioned. One, if you’re charging 5, 10, 20 bucks an hour, it’s very, very difficult to go from that to charging 200, 300 an hour or 10,000 a week.  It’s very difficult to make that transition. If you do it when you come in, that can happen. But going from one level to another is extremely difficult.

Thumbnail sketch: You can get from $20 to $100 by getting serious as a professional, and you get from $100 to $200 by getting really good as a professional (or working in a high-demand speciality), and then somewhere between say $150 and a weekly rate in the tens of thousands you probably repositioned your offering such that it is no longer directly comparable to what you were doing before.

Can you sell Rails at $50k a week?  I'm going to go with "almost certainly yes."  I think there are probably people who do that, and if you listened to them pitch clients, they would speak a language that holds very little in common with what you hear from a $100 an hour Rails developer.  Want to speak that language?  Keep reading for some thoughts.  (It will also help to get pretty darn good at Rails... though I think most people in my audience probably overestimate how skilled you have to be to move up that ladder.)]

Behind the term 'growth hacking'The concept for growth hacking grew out of the fact that most startups fail, and needing to not fail. When you think about games, the market is filled with large companies with lots of money to throw into marketing. Sean summed this need up well, with: When you're competing against Sony, you can't go dollar for dollar

2. A Must-Have Experience Sean focused on the importance of a Must-Have Experience (MHX) - you must have a hook that clearly identifies what this is.

3. Uncovering your MHXTo get a clear understanding of what your MHX is, Sean suggested reaching out to your Must Have Users (MHUs)… but what is a MHU?

Create case studies If you really want to show the value in what you offer, you have to create case studies. The simple ones won’t cut it, you have to give detailed ones… ideally with the exact things you provided and the results. To legitimize the case studies, make sure you put in testimonials from customers. This can be done in the form of video or text and if you happen to go the text route, make sure you include: Their full name Company name Their picture Title at the company If you want to see an example of a good case study, check this one out from Conversion Rate Experts.

Offer a free trial One of the easiest ways to handle price objections is to offer a free trial. Remember, just because you are offering a free trial doesn’t mean you can’t take a credit card up front. With Crazy Egg, one of our biggest objections from people is that our prices are too high. We created a “free trial” offering in which people had to put in their credit card up front. That offer converted at 59% higher than our 30 day money back guarantee offer. Keep in mind that you will get a lot of people who will cancel your service before their free trial is up, so when you a/b test this you have to also include cancelations into your calculations.

Explain the value The easiest way to demand a high price point is to explain how much money you are going to either make a company, or how much money you will save them. If you can explain this in an easy to understand fashion and provide case studies to back it up, it shouldn’t be hard to demand a premium price. A great way to do this is through sales copy. And don’t worry, your copy doesn’t have to be sleazy. I do this with Crazy Egg, NeilPatel.com and I also used to do it for my Quick Sprout Traffic System. You could even spice up your sales copy by including a video incase people don’t want to read your copy.

1. Blowing the headline Landing pages live or die by the quality of the headline. It’s your two-second chance to overcome the swift and brutal attention filters we’ve developed due to information overload and poorly-matched promises. Often, a better headline alone will boost the effectiveness of your landing page, and even overcome some of the other mistakes below. Split-testing different headlines is relatively painless, and can bring you much higher conversions compared with multiple other tweaks.

But first, you need a great product Let me note that if people aren’t using your product, then you’re wasting your time spending too much time optimizing growth. You need a base of users who are happy and then your job is to scale it.

Planning and model building The planning/modeling side of things is really about understanding, “Why does growth happen?” Every product is different. You might find that people find you via SEO and then turn into users that are retained via emails You might find that people come to your site via web and then cross-pollinate to mobile, and that’s the key to your growth. You might find you need to get them to follow a certain # of people. You might realize they need to clip a certain # of links to get started.

Summary To summarize the above: Have a solid product where your users are happy Coming up with a model for how your site grows Trying out ideas and deploying them as A/B tests If the site grows, then try out more ideas. If it doesn’t, rethink the model in step 1 because it might be broken

1. Customers Care More about Service Quality and Attitude than about Service Speed

A recent Gallup study reveals that when it comes to memorable service people tell their friends about, it’s more important that the service provided feels “thorough” and friendly, rather than quick. This was especially true for service in premium or prestigious markets, such as customer support at a bank.

Not only that, in a Customer Experience Report by RightNow, researchers found that the #1 reason customers would abandon a brand was due to poor quality and rude customer service, which were cited 18% more often than “slow or untimely service.”