Live website testing

In this demo video, Scott from our design team shows you how to set up and run Live Website Testing in Lyssna. Watch as he demonstrates how to capture real users interacting with any live website – yours or your competitors' – through screen recordings, audio, and video. Learn how to create tasks, use our unique floating modal for instructions, and gather valuable user feedback that can help boost your conversions and improve usability. 

Whether you're trying to understand why users abandon their shopping carts or how they navigate your competitor's site, this step-by-step guide will help you get started with no technical setup required.

Transcript

00:00 Introduction to Live Website Testing
Have you ever wondered what users really think when they land on your website? I'm Scott, a Senior Product Designer at Lyssna, and in this video, I'll demonstrate our live website testing feature. It lets you record real users interacting with any website, even competitor sites. It does this while capturing their screen, voice, and camera.
You'll learn how to set up a study, recruit participants, and analyze the results, helping you understand exactly how users experience your site.

00:28 Setting Up Your Account for Recording
Let's get started. The first thing I'd do is check that I have the recordings feature enabled in my account. I need this enabled so that I can record my participants' screens, microphones, and cameras when using the live website testing feature.

00:38 Creating Your First Study
Once we're good to go, let's head to the create study menu and select test or survey. Now that we're in the test builder, I'll give my study a name and specify any additional requirements.

01:03 Configuring Live Website Test Options
For this demo, I'll skip adding a screen or customizing the welcome screen and jump straight into adding a live website test section. The options available for live website testing are ScreenShare and ThinkAloud. ScreenShare will always be turned on for every live website test and will capture the participant's mouse movements and interactions with the screen. ThinkAloud is optional and will capture audio only or both audio and camera.
I want to record my participants' audio and camera as well as their screen, so I'll toggle those options on in this modal.

01:33 Adding Instructions and Follow-Up Questions
Next, I'll add the URL of the website I want to test. Now I'll add clear instructions to help my participants complete the task effectively.
I think it'll take around 3–5 minutes for participants to complete this particular task, and that includes the time they'll take to think aloud, so I'll go ahead and choose 3–5 minutes as my estimated task length. I'm going to add some follow-up questions to this task to get some more qualitative feedback from my participants.

02:01 Saving and Previewing Your Test
I've finished setting up my first task now, so I can save and preview how this will look to my participants.

02:13 Recruiting Participants
Next, we'll save our test and move on to recruiting. One of the standout features of live website testing is its flexibility for participant recruitment. You can either recruit from your own network or tap into Lyssna’s research panel. With over 690,000 global participants ready to give feedback, the Lyssna panel gives you access to a diverse pool of voices.
This flexibility allows you to choose the recruitment method that best fits your needs and budget.

02:32 Placing an Order with Lyssna Panel
Now, let's go ahead and place an order with the panel. I'm going to zoom through and choose my number of participants, as well as select some target demographics.

I can see in the order summary that recordings have been enabled for this test. I can also see that the recordings fee has been included in the cost per response.

Let's submit this order and check out what the test-taking experience looks like for your participants.

02:59 Participant Experience and Setup
When participants receive an invite, they'll see the recording requirements. From here, they can decide whether or not they want to proceed. Live website testing can only be used on Chromium browsers such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Participants will be prompted to switch if their browser isn't supported.

Participants will go through a setup guide to make sure their screen share, camera, and microphone are ready to go. Before each recorded test section, participants will receive a quick reminder of what's expected, whether it's for think aloud or screen sharing. They will also get a reminder to not share any personal or sensitive information during the test.

Let's get started. A task modal will appear with instructions. Users can resize this modal or move it around if needed throughout the test.
From here, they are ready to open the instructions and begin their first task. Participants can choose when to start the task and recording. During the activity, their thoughts, reactions, and mouse movements will be captured. This, of course, depends on which recording settings are enabled. Once a participant completes a task, they will then automatically be taken to the follow-up questions.

04:28 Analyzing Results and Final Thoughts
Once the test section is complete and they've submitted their response, the recording will be available to you shortly once processing and upload is complete. Let's jump to the results page to see.

Here, you'll be able to watch the recordings and share them with your team or download them for further analysis.

As you can see, with Live Website Testing, you're not just collecting data—you're capturing real experience in real time. This feature empowers you to identify real-world issues, improve your UX, understand your users' experiences with competitors, collect real-time feedback, and improve efficiency.

To get started, I encourage you to explore the feature for yourself or check out the templates on Lyssna.com. They are designed to help you hit the ground running.