What is automated user testing?

Bringing new answers to the marketplace is exciting. Your teams have been diligently developing, researching, and executing a new product or solution that’s poised to resolve a customer’s pain point. But before you take your big, shiny new solution to market, you need to conduct a few tests. More specifically, you want to facilitate user testing to make sure what you have created will work as you envisioned.

When it comes to product development, knowing what your target users really think matters. Keep reading to explore how automating your user testing, or at least parts of it, can help you see what your customers think, need, and feel before finalizing your launch.

Automation in user testing is a method used to evaluate user interactions by way of software rather than human test oversight. Instead of manually testing each of your new product’s features or customer journeys one at a time, automation allows you to create those test environments virtually.

Automated user testing involves using software tools to evaluate how your users or customers interact with your product (website or app) with physical human testers. Imagine using software to simulate tasks like completing forms, navigating your interface, and clicking buttons—all automatically. And, with lightning-fast precision, automated user testing can follow your prompts to assess functionality, identify user pain points, and spot inefficiencies.

More and more companies are turning to automation for a full suite of research, development, and product testing applications. Automated user testing is just another way for the most successful developers to stay on time and ahead of the curve with new introductions.

Key aspects of automated user testing

• Automated test scenarios: instead of manually guiding users through test cases, automated scripts simulate interactions like clicking buttons, filling out forms, and navigating pages.

• Performance testing: automated tools can run tests for loading speeds, responsiveness across devices, and how well the product performs under stress (for example, it might assess how well it performs with X number of users accessing it simultaneously).

• Repetition and scale: automated testing allows for repeated tests across different environments (browsers, devices, OS versions) on a much larger scale than manual testing. This improves coverage and ensures consistency across user experiences.

• Data-driven insights: automated testing tools often gather data on user behavior patterns (clicks, heatmaps) and measure success metrics, providing quantitative insights into how users engage with the product. However, automated testing typically focuses on functional aspects and can’t fully replicate the qualitative feedback of real users, such as emotional responses or subjective satisfaction.

User testing can usually be executed in one of two ways: manually and by using automated software.

The primary difference between automated user testing and manual user testing is the human element.

With manual testing, a person handles the testing, data collection, and analysis. On the flip side, automated user testing is software that uses scripts to connect with participants, assemble the metrics, and summarize the analytics.

As with any type of testing and sampling environment, each method has pros and cons. You’ll want to recognize the dynamics of what you are testing to apply the best user testing method for your project. For most companies, the sweet spot is a hybrid of both manual and automated user testing.

Automated user testing is perfect for making light work of time-consuming testing tasks. It’s also ideal for testing that requires a lot of repetition, like clicking buttons, filling out forms, and navigating through the interface to detect bugs.

Most companies also suggest using automated user testing for functional datasets, allowing you to easily collect data on the actual performance of your product or offering.

The great thing about manual testing is that there’s no need for advanced programming. Anyone on your team can scoop up the script and test case to follow instructions and get started.

Some of your product testing will have to be done visually, like assessing how a webpage “looks” to a user. Automations won’t be able to help with those types of visual assessments.

You should also keep the manual testing methods around for any small updates you have planned. It’s often quicker and more efficient to have someone manually finalize a small test rather than do all the backend coding and development needed to kick off automated testing.

Once you recognize the many benefits of automating your user testing efforts, you’ll never go back to the manual-only way of testing.

Here are the advantages teams can enjoy when automation takes over the most repetitive and time-consuming tasks:

Enhanced efficiency

Manual testing takes more time and people to facilitate. With automated user testing, you can reduce the workload without forgoing essential tests. Run your tests virtually and unattended, monitoring and assembling data while your teams work on other parts of your project.

Cost savings

Another obvious benefit of automated user testing is the cost savings. Because you’re outsourcing much of the “work” to software, you’re not paying for employee time to facilitate the tests. Plus, the results you can discern from automated testing can help you be more effective in rolling out your product, easing overall project cost projections.

Early bug detection

When you can test your product or solution before officially rolling it out, you can spot bugs and user-experience-related issues ahead of time.

Automated tests can help you simulate hundreds of virtual users simultaneously to paint an accurate picture of how actual customers will experience your product. And, when you can fix glitches or issues preventatively, you can make your official launch and final product that much more effective.

There are some best practices to consider when implementing automated user testing:

Develop a test script

Create and develop a test script to capture the experience data needed to improve your product. Make sure that it represents actual user interactions. Be flexible and prepared to make changes based on initial results to refine your script and get the best results.

Choose the right framework

When it’s time to choose the framework for your automated user testing, start by finding the best-fit option for your unique goals and product architecture. It’s also a good idea to make sure the framework integrates with your existing tech stack and easily automates the test case functions you need it to execute.

Maintain tests over time

Automation in user testing is never a one-and-done scenario. Keep those tests and scripts updated regularly, ensuring the test you run still represents the right features and elements of your product or solution.

Automated user testing won’t be a great fit for every project or testing model. It’s important to recognize what challenges come with automating your testing so you can better manage expectations and bring in human testers to bridge gaps.

Tool limitations

Humans are better at spotting nuances and picking up certain behavioral aspects of users that automations may miss. These tool limitations won’t report back on high-level interactions or more personality-driven behaviors, for example.

Complexity in test design

Automated user testing is great for the mass-repetitious—not the outliers. You can’t gauge dynamic scenarios or random anomalies without scripting for them ahead of time. This makes it less effective for exploratory testing.

Continuous integration

Keep in mind that your product or offering will evolve. This means you’ll want to keep your automated user testing scripts constantly updated.

It can be extra work to make sure automations are integrating with your changing processes, testing based on recent changes, and adapting to include tests for new features. Without continuous integration efforts, you run the risk of collecting false positives and inaccurate test findings.

When you’re ready to take the leap into automated user testing, consider using some of today’s most popular and easy-to-use tools to help you.

• Dovetail: we specialize in streamlining user research and making it accessible across your organization with automated tools that organize and analyze qualitative feedback for actionable insights.

• Crazy Egg: this tool offers heatmaps, scroll maps, and user recordings to track user behavior, helping you optimize site design and improve engagement.

• FullStory: FullStory captures session recordings and user interactions, providing insights to troubleshoot UX issues and enhance the customer’s overall experience.

• UserTesting: this tool offers AI-powered surveys and testing options to assist in developing your automated user testing method.

• Maze: Maze not only provides automated testing support but also offers automated solutions at scale for rapid prototype feedback.

• Loop11: Loop11 specializes in automated, unmoderated usability testing, allowing teams like yours to make better data-driven design decisions.

• Hotjar: this all-in-one analytics tool automates user behavior tracking using custom heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys.

• SmartBea: SmartBear’s “TestComplete” brand offers enterprise applications and integrations for automating your user testing.

• BrowserStack: this tool specializes in app and browser testing. It’s capable of running experience measurement across more than 20,000 devices.

• Lookback: Lookback is another qualitative observation tool. Its live sessions and recorded feedback features are unique. It also has usability testing with automation options, although it’s not fully automated.

• Optimal Workshop: Optimal Workshop offers a suite of UX research tools, which, with some human analysis, are great for structured testing, intuitive navigation testing, and design validation testing.

• Testim: this tool uses AI to accelerate test creation and better evaluate stability and maintainability.

• Ghost Inspector: this end-to-end testing tool automates and monitors for changes in UI over time, helping your teams spot issues early.

• Selenium: this is a website UI testing tool that enables you to automatically assess how your website performs on different browsers and platforms.

Yes, UX testing can absolutely be automated. And, for those companies doing so, the benefits include the following:

• Quicker release cycles

• Increased test coverage

• Improved consistency in testing outcomes

• Reduced human error

• Faster feedback on user interactions

• The ability to run tests at scale

• More efficient use of resources, allowing teams to focus on higher-level design and strategy tasks

Some testing should be left to the human eye. The complexities of human motivation, emotion, and context often require a skilled moderator to uncover rich, actionable insights that drive meaningful design improvements.

Here are some examples of certain tests that shouldn’t be automated:

• API testing

• Usability testing

• Exploratory testing

• Contextual inquiry

• Interviews

• Focus groups

Quality assurance (QA) testing focuses on technical correctness and ensuring your product meets specified requirements. It aims to identify and fix bugs and performance issues and ensure the product works as intended across different environments.

The ultimate goals are functionality and reliability. It differs from automated user testing, which focuses on the user experience, aiming to improve usability, efficiency, and overall satisfaction.