Survey Tools, Recruitment Panels & User Testing

I’m sure many of you have encountered the scenario where you want to run user testing on you prototype or website, you’ve set up your user test (using a tool like Loop¹¹) and you’re all ready to recruit your participants. However, you arrive at a problem…

Some of you may want to start your test using a survey tool like SurveyMonkey or QuestionPro, and others will be using a recruitment panel like Cint, SSI or Pure Profile. Either way, a common problem presents itself;

1. You wish to start your user testing using one tool, then,
2. Pass participants off to the user test, using a tool like Loop¹¹, and then,
3. At the end of the user test, pass the participant back to the initial tool.

The good news is, with Loop¹¹ it is a breeze to start participants at a survey tool or panel screener, pass them to Loop¹¹, then after the Loop¹¹ test is complete have the participant passed back to you complete with the data of who they are and what they did prior to entering Loop¹¹.

Every survey or screener tool we’ve come across does this handoff to Loop¹¹ by supplying some unique parameters in the URL. Loop¹¹ then remember these parameters and sends them back to you once the user test has finished. This ensures a seamless flow which allows you to track which participants completed the Loop¹¹ tests and marry them up with the demographics of your survey or panel tool.

To give a literal example:

1. Pretend the start URL for your Loop¹¹ project was
   https://www.my-website.com?l11_uid=999999, then,
2. Pretend the parameters you were wanting to pass to Loop¹¹ were ‘userId’ and ‘testId’
3. When you send participants from your survey or panel tool to Loop¹¹ the URL would look like this:
   https://www.my-website.com?l11_uid=999999&userId=XXX&testId=XXX

The first, and most important thing to note is; the two parameters in the above example are not requirements from Loop¹¹. You can have as many parameters as you like, and they can have any name(s) you choose.

Now, I can hear you saying “but each URL will be different because it is unique to each participant and test”. Relax, this is fine. We expect that you, or rather your survey/panel tool,  will dynamically insert the values for each parameter. Loop¹¹ handles this like a boss. Best yet, your survey/panel tool should handle this automatically for you too.

So with all the above said, the only thing you, the UX ninja, actually needs to do in your Loop¹¹ project is to tick this box (pictured below) which is a part of ‘step 3’ when creating your Loop¹¹ project.

That’s all there is to it. If you have any questions, shoot a message to our support team.

Happy testing!

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Ben Newton

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