Recruitment Overview

Whether you bring your own participants, use Optimal’s recruitment services, or leverage external panel providers, Optimal gives you the flexibility to recruit the right user testers consistently and efficiently so you can launch studies faster, run them more frequently, and quickly scale research across multiple projects.

Recruitment options 

Here’s a breakdown of your recruitment options with Optimal:

  1. Invite your own participants
  2. Use Optimal’s Managed Recruitment Services 
  3. Use Optimal’s On Demand Panel
  4. Use any panel provider you prefer

1. Invite your own participants

Optimal lets you invite your own participants with a study link, QR code, or intercept snippet at no extra cost, giving you full control over who takes part in your studies.

2. Use Optimal’s Managed Recruitment Services

For teams that want expert support, Optimal’s Managed Recruitment services tap into multiple panels to access over 20 million participants across 150 countries. Multiple panels allows Optimal to fulfill quotas more quickly and easily.

Whether you're looking for a broad audience or something highly specific, we can help you find the right people to take part in your study.

Optimal handles:

  • Panel selection and recruitment
  • Incentive management
  • Criteria refinement.
  • Smart screener design (review and optimization)

3. Use Optimal’s On Demand Panel

You can order user testers instantly inside the Optimal platform. This is ideal for B2C research and studies with basic demographic requirements, and Optimal takes care of incentives for you.

4. Use any panel provider you prefer

Optimal works seamlessly with any panel provider, such as User Interviews, Respondent, PureSpectrum, Prolific, Dynata, Askable, and Cint.

How it works:

  1. Create and publish an unmoderated study in Optimal, such as a live site test, prototype test, survey, first-click test, card sort or tree test.
  2. Specify your audience criteria in the panel platform.
  3. Add screener questions in your panel provider and/or Optimal.
  4. Add your Optimal study link into the panel provider platform.
  5. Panel provider recruits participants and manages incentives.
  6. See a participant list in Optimal and review participant metrics like completion rate, time taken, and location breakdown.
  7. Optional: Create segments in Optimal for more targeted insights.
  8. Review insights, results, and analytics in Optimal to make informed research decisions.

Certain panel providers, like User Interviews, offer additional benefits through direct integration with Optimal. You can automate participant tracking and see participant status in real time in your panel provider platform as user testers complete your studies.

To get started with recruitment, visit the Recruit tab in your Optimal studies or submit a request to the Optimal Managed Recruitment team.