Tina Banerjee of Userpeek tells us about their advanced remote usability testing solution.
Tell us about you, your career, and how you founded Userpeek.
Tina Banerjee: My career began in the startup scene in Berlin, where I built and led various teams in the areas of user experience, design, research, and marketing and played a key role in determining the strategic direction. Like many of the startups at the time, we were digital pioneers who knew how to use new technologies to turn data into actionable insights and use them to develop products and marketing that disrupted the relevant industries.
The only problem was that no one understood what customers really thought or how they made decisions. Unlike salespeople in local shops who talk to their customers – see and understand them and react immediately when something is wrong – online businesses don’t see their customers. They don’t see what they are doing, how they are finding something, and what is bothering them – the customer is sitting at home in front of a desktop computer or using a mobile phone while on the move – far away from those who are developing and optimizing the digital offers.
In times of COVID-19, this problem becomes critical when people aged 70 and over are obliged to register for a vaccination appointment in order to be vaccinated. They have great difficulty accomplishing the task and often fail because processes are cumbersome or do not work at all. A user test in advance would probably have saved a lot of trouble.
Even today, it is difficult for digital companies to really know their customers. This is where user testing comes in. User testing allows teams to really see and hear what customers are thinking in order to develop products that actually work. The teams I worked with used various tools to do this remotely rather than inviting customers into the office, but it was difficult to get things going. Also, it took quite a long time to run such tests, with all the stages like preparation, testing, review, and evaluation, so I thought about a tool that would combine everything to test users remotely. That’s how I ended up co-founding Userpeek in 2019. To build a tool that makes user testing as easy and affordable as possible for businesses of all shapes and sizes. I know how a single user test changes everything – from total uncertainty to “now we know what to do.” It’s as simple as that. If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine what a video can say. Or, in the words of Avinash Kaushik: “You watch the videos and read the comments, you cry, you fix things, you become rich.”
Do you have small habits that made a meaningful impact on your life and business?
Tina Banerjee: Read. Sleep. Exercise. Relax. Set clear goals. Network constantly. Focus on the tasks with the highest value.
How does Userpeek market its product/services online?
Tina Banerjee: Our primary goal is to engage with potential customers to ensure that our tool meets their needs and solves their problems. We do this with interviews and user tests. Through our pre-registered pool, we have gathered a significant number of interested customers waiting for Userpeek.com to launch.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to manage your online marketing?
Tina Banerjee: We focus on pre-launch marketing activities such as increasing organic traffic and conducting customer interviews to increase our lead and tester pool.
What is your hiring policy/process, and how do you retain your employees?
Tina Banerjee: We work 100% remotely. We focus on results and quality. We work with exceptionally talented people around the globe who share our own motivation: to deliver the best product and services for our clients and to stay ahead of the crowd through insights.
How are you funding your growth?
Tina Banerjee: We are entirely bootstrapped, which gives us the most valuable asset: independence.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
Tina Banerjee: The idea for Userpeek came from my own need for a user testing tool that is easy to use, allows automated testing, and is affordable. Especially in my position as co-founder of Brainpath.de – a digital growth agency based in Berlin – we use user testing to get feedback for our clients. None of the tools we were using had what we needed. That was the moment Userpeek.com was founded.
Tell us a customer success story of yours.
Tina Banerjee: We have an amazing pool of pre-registered clients even though we are not live yet. This gives us the best feedback you can have. Stay tuned because the first success story will come.
Your final thoughts.
Tina Banerjee: COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, and climate change are having a profound impact on ecosystems worldwide and changing people’s behavior. Online shopping, home office, home and living, energy, resources – everything. Businesses need to monitor the changing behaviors of their customers and understand why they are changing. The best way to do this is through user research and user testing.
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