Trymyui – The next generation of mass usability testing?
Trymyui, a new service offering remote usability testing, just hit the scene this spring. TryMyUI is backed by Sani El-Fishawy who started Classifieds2000.com – back in 1997. Classifields2000 was one of the internet startups back in the late 90′s – they powered the classifields section of many major portals of the day – Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, GeoCities and even Hotmail. In 1997 they raised their first round of $2.8M led by Polaris Venture Partners and then sold the company to Excite for $48M in 1998 — Ahah the good old days of the .COM boom!
What is TryMyUI?
Trymyui is a service that allows companies to understand their web users better. Any company that wants to understand not only what a user would do on their website, but also why they would do it should visit Trymyui to set up an account and receive a prompt reply. Trymyui assembles and trains testers who have to go through a rigorous qualification process (less than 10% actually make it). The testers are trained to articulate their thoughts while they browse a company’s website, performing various tasks. Trymyui records the tester’s screen and voice and delivers a video to the company as well as responses to a questionnaire that the company sets up within a matter of hours.
Why is it unique?
The Trymyui website is spiffy, the tone of their content is candid, and their service is incredibly useful. It was easy to find answers to my questions as well as understand those answers once I found them. But what makes me excited about Trymyui is that it encourages companies to go further with their user testing – any user testing firm that encourages deeper interaction with the user understands that traditional market research is no longer enough.
What is the business model – aka is this real?
TryMyUI is currently in beta, so its obviously free. They plan on charging anywhere between $10 to $25 per test. Comparing this to a traditional in-person usability testing model, this is what we call in the business “a disruptive” model. The reason this can be provided at such low a price is that the testers are at their homes – so there are no capital costs involving setup of computers etc. – Anyone with a microphone and a decent ability to verbalize their thoughts as they are clicking through a site can be a tester.
Challenges / Naysayers?
Couple:
- The obvious security and confidentiality issue. If you are developing a super-secret application and you don’t want anyone to run though the app – well – we have a little issue here. I don’t see Microsoft using this to do usability testing on a brand new product line. Maybe a private version of TryMyUI with a controlled group would be an add-on in the future?
- Scale and Pricing – Can you really scale this business to something large at $20/Test – Maybe. I am not sure. Of course time will be the judge. This is very applicable to Web based applications – so thats a fairly large market – but still a finite market size. Furthermore, the mobile application market is growing and in theory taking away from the web-app development market.
About Vivek Bhaskaran - As head of privately held Survey Analytics, Vivek is responsible for all aspects of strategy and direction.
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Thumbspeak – Mobile Panel Platform – Dean Wiltse gets back into the game.
After being in the Market Research business for 10 years and leading Greenfield Online public and then overseeing the merger/buyout of Perseus and Websurveyor into Vovici – Dean Wiltse is back in the game – with ThumbSpeak.
As mentioned in my previous post, we’ll be profiling innovative companies that are attempting to change Market Research and data collection and looking beyond traditional models. This is our first post on this.
What is ThumbSpeak?
A mobile panel. Where users _actually_ take surveys using smartphones (iPhone, Android devices etc.) Users download the app – and the App then “pushes” surveys to consumers. Consumers get points/rewards (like with most other panels) for completing surveys. Thumbspeak sells access to these users to market researchers who want to tap into them.
Why is it unique?
Traditional panel providers like eRewards, Toluna, SSI have mobile panels – as in they have users who have (or have used) a smart phone – but the surveys are still conducted over the traditional web interface. Thumbspeak is solely focused on the mobile platform. All their data-collection efforts are going to be in the smartphone — at least for now. They have an iPhone App out – the Android app will come out soon in the next few months.
Next – they are recruiting via developers. There are over 200,000 apps in the App-Store – and most of them are Free. Which means there are approximately 100,000 – 200,000 developers developing for the Apple eco-system alone. If you add in the Android platform and the Symbian/Palm OS platfrom – there are a LOT of developers trying to make money off smartphones. Not all can make money. They need a better monetization model than simply ads. Ad’s in mobile work to some extent, but because of real-estate restrictions – you cannot make a ton of money just on Ads. Thumbspeak has the ability to make these developers some cash – but being the conduit between users who want to pay, who need access to mobile users and want to conduct market research, and the development community.
What’s the business model – aka – is this real?
So far it seems. The typical going rate for an iPhone completed panel member is ~$6/Completed Survey. This revenue can be distributed between the developer and Thumbspeak – and given the fact that Wiltse has a deep background in the panel business from GreenField – I don’t doubt that he can sell panels! Wiltse was the CEO of GreenField with a 400M market cap. He also has a good background in software development when he led Vovici and oversaw the Perseus/Websurveyor merger.
Challenges/NaySayers?
Couple :
- Critical Mass – Any panel company requires critical mass – its the chicken and the egg problem. Wiltse will have to overcome that both from a sales and recruitment standpoint.
- Competition – Toluna, SSI, GMI and eRewards – have a combined market cap of about a 500-800M – So you are talking about the big boys here. If they smell blood – they’ll come after this – I would not say this is that bad – very likely one of them just buys Thumbspeak?
About Vivek Bhaskaran - As head of privately held Survey Analytics, Vivek is responsible for all aspects of strategy and direction.
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New Column – Innovation in Market Research and Customer Intelligence
We are launching a new column and segment profiling companies and services that are innovating and changing Market Research – ResearchBase. We are specifically looking and targeting companies and services that have the power to rethink and reinvent market research.
We’ll be listing all these services under the tag researchbase :
About Vivek Bhaskaran - As head of privately held Survey Analytics, Vivek is responsible for all aspects of strategy and direction.
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