Accelerate Study Creation with the New Study Flow

We’re excited to launch our video recording functionality for prototype testing, enabling you to dive deeper into the “why” behind user actions and empowering you to make data-informed decisions faster and with greater confidence.

See User Actions Come to Life

Capture the nuance of user interactions with screen, audio, and/or video recording. With Optimal’s video recording feature, you can:
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• Understand Intent: Watch users in action to reveal their decision-making process.
• Spot Friction Points: Identify moments of hesitation, confusion, or frustration.
• Test Your Ideas: Leverage user insights to make informed decisions before moving forward.‍
• Track Task Success: Combine video insights with quantitative data to understand what works and what needs refinement.
• Share Compelling Insights: Use recordings to drive alignment across your team and key stakeholders.
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Drive Value with Video Recordings and Prototype Testing

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‍By combining video recordings with prototype testing, you can unlock actionable insights that make a real impact. 
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Here’s how they drive value for your initiatives:
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• Higher Conversion Rates: Optimized designs based on real user feedback lead to increased engagement.
• Greater User Satisfaction: Tested prototypes help to better align your experiences with user needs and expectations.
• Reduced Development Costs: Catch issues early to avoid costly fixes later in the development process.
• Faster Time-to-Market: Resolve design flaws early to accelerate project timelines.
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Recruit the Right Participants for Richer Results‍

Optimal combines the power of video recording, participant recruitment, and a comprehensive UX insights and research platform to elevate your product and research process.
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Use Optimal’s recruitment service to quickly connect you with millions of people in 150+ countries ready to take part in your study. Our in-house team handles feasibility assessments, sends reminders and confirmations, reviews personalized study setups, and conducts human checks to ensure high quality participants to maximize the value of your video recordings.
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Thank you, Beta Testers‍

We’re grateful to our early adopters and beta testers for shaping the future of video recording and prototype testing. Based on your valuable feedback, we’ve made the following updates:
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Video recording updates

• Additional recording controls: You can now control whether to reject participants or forward a participant to a non-recording study link if they do not meet your recording criteria. 
• Translations: Set your study language and translate the recording instructions into 180+ languages.
• No video expirations: We’ve removed video expirations, ensuring your recordings remain accessible as long as you have an active Optimal subscription.
• Improved participant experience: We’ve improved the technology to reduce technical errors, creating a more reliable and user-friendly experience.
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Prototype testing updates

• Collapse/expand and move tasks: Increase prototype visibility by hiding or moving tasks, making it easier for participants to view and interact with more of your design, especially for mobile prototypes.
• Option to end tasks automatically: When enabled, tasks will automatically end 0.5 seconds after a participant reaches a correct destination, removing the need for participants to confirm that they've completed the task. This can improve the overall participant experience, removing steps and making tests faster to complete.
  
• Increased Figma frame limit:  We’ve increased the Figma frame limit from 30 to 100 frames to support larger, more complex prototypes.
• Expanded task results: Task path results now indicated completed and skipped tasks for better analysis.
• Time-saving improvements: Auto-select the starting screen after importing a Figma prototype, and enjoy task selection persistence across tabs in the analysis view.
• Enhanced security: We’ve updated Figma authorization for expanded security for your prototypes.
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Ready to unlock the power of video recording?
Get started with a prototype test in Optimal or visit our help documentation to learn more.

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Investing in prototype testing and user-focused design isn't just about creating better products—it's a proven strategy to save costs, accelerate timelines, and drive customer loyalty. According to Forrester Research, companies that incorporate prototype testing in their design process can reduce development costs by 33% and cut collaboration time by 25%. UX-focused companies also see products hit the market 50% faster and loyalty rise by 240% (Forrester Research, Nielsen Norman Group)!

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Whether you're refining user flows, testing new concepts, or optimizing your onboarding experience or conversion flows, prototype testing helps ensure your designs hit the mark—before you invest too heavily in the build.

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With those benefits in mind, let's dive into how prototype testing can help you deliver user-centered designs efficiently and effectively. 

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Common Use Cases for Prototype Testing
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1. Test Onboarding and Sign-Up Flows
   How intuitive is your onboarding process? Prototype testing can help identify friction points, ensuring users can navigate and complete sign-ups seamlessly. For example, you can simulate different scenarios to determine whether users can easily register, set up accounts, or retrieve forgotten passwords.
   
   
2. A/B Test Email Designs
   Test different layouts, calls-to-action (CTAs), or visual elements in your email prototypes to discover what resonates best with your audience. Measure metrics like click-through rates or time spent engaging with content to refine your design.
   
   
3. Evaluate User Flows and Wireframes
   Whether you're testing a new feature, redesigning a user journey, or validating a wireframe, prototype testing gives you real-world insights. Observe how users interact with your design and identify areas for improvement before you move to development.
   
   
4. Test Concepts
   Before launching a new idea, validate it through prototype testing. Let users interact with your concept to gauge feasibility and potential impact. This can save time and resources by helping you focus on ideas that resonate.
   
   
5. Evaluate Conversion Flows
   Are users completing purchases or achieving desired outcomes? Use prototype testing to analyze conversion flows and pinpoint where users drop off. From landing pages to payment processes, you can optimize every step for success.
   
   
6. Test User Interfaces (UI)
   Ensure your UI elements—buttons, navigation menus, or forms—are intuitive and accessible. Prototype testing can help you identify design inconsistencies or usability challenges early in the process.
   
   
7. Conduct Usability Tests
   Have a new feature in development? Prototype testing lets you see how users interact with it, revealing insights that can guide refinements and improve overall satisfaction.

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Real-Life Prototype Testing Scenarios

Airline
Imagine your flight has been canceled. Ask how your customers self-service on the airline website to find new flight options. 

Bank
Have a prospect or customer interact with a prototype to open a business account online. Uncover usability issues and streamline the process.

Insurance
Imagine you’re interested in switching car insurance. Explore how intuitive it is for customers to view coverage details in an app, helping insurers improve navigation and accessibility.

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Prototype Testing Analysis & Insights

Optimal’s prototype testing gives you a variety of analysis options to help you to evaluate the effectiveness and usability of your prototypes. Use these to see exactly how users navigate, where they face challenges, and what areas are proving to be successful.
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• Task-based scenarios: Observe how users complete tasks like purchasing a product or updating account settings and set correction paths and destinations.
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• Clickmaps: See how users navigate and locate information. See hits and misses on designated clickable areas, average task completion times, and heatmaps showing where users believed the next steps to be.
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• Task results: Gather insights into how long it took to take a task (time taken), misclicks, directness score (considering backtracks or incorrect pathways), and success score.
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• Participant paths: The Paths tab provides a powerful visualization, including thumbnails, to understand and identify common navigation patterns and potential obstacles participants encounter while completing tasks.
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• Video, audio, and/or screen recording: See how your users interact with and respond to your prototype. Listen to their thought process and pick up on nonverbal cues, like hesitation, frustration, or confusion to pinpoint areas for improvement or exploration.  

Ready to use prototype testing to help your team reduce development costs and get a faster time to market? Get started in your account by creating a new prototype test.

Not yet a user of Optimal? Sign up for a free 7-day trial.

Creating successful products is tough. Whether you're gathering competitive intelligence before entering a market, discovering user needs for a brand new product, redesigning a website, optimizing a sign-up flow, or improving internal tools, the stakes are high.

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Poor user experiences cost businesses up to 35% of potential sales, while organizations that deliver superior experiences drive 5-6x more revenue. Optimal helps you turn user insights into better business decisions so you can deliver products your users love.

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From Discovery to Continuous Optimization

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Great products don’t just happen. They’re guided by real user feedback at every stage.

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Start with discovery.
Use live site testing to watch real users navigate competitor experiences or test early concepts in staging environments. Combine this with surveys and interview insights to understand what users actually need. Validate navigation and information architecture with card sorting and tree testing.

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Validate before you build.
With prototype testing, you can connect to Figma or create clickable prototypes in minutes or use live site testing to test a website or web app in a staging environment. Identify pain points early and fix them before development.

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Continuously optimize.
Even after launch, the best experiences evolve with their users. Ongoing testing, surveys, and interviews can reveal opportunities to refine and grow, keeping your product relevant and effective.

But nothing beats seeing users interact with your actual site. With Optimal’s newest tool - live site testing - you can see how users engage with your actual websites or web apps or even a competitor's. No guesswork, no assumptions.

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Introducing Live Site Testing

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We’re excited to announce live site testing has officially joined Optimal’s platform! Here’s what makes it powerful:

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• Test any live site. Yes, any.
  ‍Understand exactly how users interact with your website or web app in a production or staging environment or gain valuable insights by testing a competitor’s site.
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• ‍No code. No friction.
  Unlike many other live site testing tools, with Optimal, setup takes minutes. There's no plugins or technical hurdles for you or your testers. Just paste a URL to set up your test and start testing.
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• ‍Validate at every stage.
  Catch issues before they cost you conversions. Identify blockers pre-launch on staging sites or improve existing user flows on live sites.
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• ‍Video recordings with real insights
  Watch exactly where users hesitate, struggle, or abandon their journey. Back every decision with user feedback and evidence and confidently prioritize your next decisions.‍‍
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Why This Matters

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With live site testing, you get real insights from real user interactions beyond quantitative data.

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The result?

• Better competitive insights and analysis
• Fewer surprises post-launch
• Improved usability
• Higher conversion or adoption rates
• Increased user or customer satisfaction
• Faster, data-backed decisions
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Live site testing is now available for all plans, except for our legacy Individual plan. 

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Already an Optimal user? Log in now to start testing your websites and web apps. 

Not yet using Optimal? Get started with a free trial to try it for yourself.