Paid Website Usability Testers
CIS 375
Dr. Emmanuel Nyeanchi
June 4, 2015

Abstract

The most crucial point made so far about a product’s performance in the real time is largely based on product or consumer testing. It is a crucial stage in the life cycle of a product. And it has been found that testing proves to be a sound approach to study the product’s claims and values and thereby finding probable fault and improvement areas in the product (Neal & Simons, 1984). Numerous platforms are used for product testing such as independent agencies, laboratory and yet another developing platform to test the product is through the Internet.

The internet is growing as a newfangled medium to test the product. Many firms find it the best of their interests and using it at length. Moreover, the internet has given ample opportunities to the people to work online and so finding out the reliable internet users from the several people across the world is a challenging task. And even, anyone can find online testers by paying small amount so called remote testing, but this in turn, could create a disaster for the product if the data received is erroneous and erratic and that may cost company’s image in the market. Truly, the data and feedback received from this online platform’s anonymous members remain in question whether they are sound and trustworthy that firms can rely on them. So, the foremost concern is about the reliability, a quantitative measure of the data, which paid internet users send after testing the given product’s durability, design, features and so on (Koizumi, 2005). And irrespective of the product’s comprehensive testing design, it does only depend upon the tester’s sincere efforts to test the product. Hence, if these internet users are verified through work quality and identity with the passage of the time before assigning them real work, we can rely upon them for product’s testing phase or we can only end up with the poor testing results if we want to test our product randomly from the internet users. Testing companies carry out multidimensional evaluation methods for the testing phase. They largely based upon their evaluation methods to integrate validity for the fault tolerance, efficiency, site navigability, cross-platform compatibility, webpage response and quality, usefulness, and so on (Wright, 1979). So, with these objectives in mind, testing companies execute different evaluation methods such as non-visual and verbal recording of browser activities and tester’s vocal comments and so on. Non-visual browser activities are running behind the code that is back end coding and testing of the non-visual components such as dynamic database binding, Java script, Xml and server side languages that have power to enable the website in an optimal way on the internet. The testing of these technologies’ functionality over the cross-platform is to a certain extent demanding and complex architecture and testing plans are necessary. Apart from it, the verbal recording of browser activities is a standard method for the analyzing, recording, and controlling the behavior of the product. It splits the activities in the four sections that is exact, fault, no reaction, and irrelevant activities for each testing component. Moreover, while testing the product, tester’s comments should carry a greater weighing as he might have not remembered all the cases or forget to jot down any critical matters. Likewise, testing companies take CSS, HTML components into the account for better testing results (Koizumi, 2005). With the advent of technology and new clinical practices, the internet has given abundant power to the companies to reach out to their target markets in no time in contrast to the traditional laboratory testing. Talking about the natural settings of the test environment for Web users, with the help of screen sharing software and other similar vendor services, firms can carry out remote