Every year millions of products and services hit the market with sky-high aspirations, and every year millions of those same products and services fail. The reason? Consumer expectations are rising, which means their tolerance for a bad experience, has all but disappeared.

“We tend to remember the good experiences that we have, and that creates expectations across all other similar or comparable experiences,” Van De Loo said. “This was something we saw a lot of — the first experience with a new platform determines whether they’re going to work with them in the future or not. The bar keeps rising. It keeps getting higher and higher. Especially with these newer experiences.”

 Kaj Van De Loo is the CTO of UserTesting, a human insight platform that provides companies with the opportunity to gather real-time feedback, from real customers, regardless of where an item stands within the development process. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Kaj joins me for a conversation centered on how UserTesting is creating real-time feedback loops based on the emotions and interactions real people experience with a product. Plus, Kaj goes under the hood and explains how UserTesting is using these insights to create actionable insights for their clients.

Main Takeaways

• So Simple Even I Can Use It: Consumers are now evaluating a product or service on everything from design, to pick-up and drop-off location, but the number one thing that is making or breaking a consumer’s experience is overall ease of use. Products or services that have more steps to reach the same conclusion as a product that had a similar, more streamlined approach, always received negative feedback.
• Jury by Your Peers: One of the biggest influences in how new platforms are being evaluated now is based upon the experience shoppers have on a similar website. If a user has a tremendous shopping experience on a website such as Amazon, they are now more likely to evaluate a new platform based with the good experience setting a new bar. This means that first impressions, especially for new websites, are now more important than ever before.
• Can I Get Your Feedback?: By deploying an online community of verified users and testers, UserTesting has been able to create more accurate feedback loops that can be iterated and retested in real-time. By using humans instead of various testing services, clients can gauge how an individual interacts and connects with a site, while detailing what they like and don’t like about each product.

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