UserTesting Secures $45.5 Million Series C Round Led by Accel Partners

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Jan. 28, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- UserTesting, the world's largest user experience platform, announced today that it secured $45.5 Million in Series C financing led by Accel Partners with participation from OpenView Venture Partners. The new funding enables UserTesting to continue its triple-digit annual growth rate and expand its capabilities beyond app and website testing to cover virtually any user experience, anywhere, on demand.

With more than 30,000 customers—including Google, Facebook, The Home Depot, Verizon Wireless and Amazon—UserTesting provides companies with the fastest way to test user experiences across all channels and devices. Customers receive videos of real people interacting with their products and services while speaking their thoughts out loud—and the results come in hours, not days.

"Poor user experiences aren't just frustrating for customers; they're costing companies millions of dollars per year," said Kobie Fuller of Accel Partners, who will be joining the company's board of directors. "Understanding why users make decisions and what they are thinking is a necessity in creating great customer experiences. UserTesting is transforming the way in which companies are able to understand their end user, resulting in anything from higher Net Promoter Scores to increased conversion rates. Companies simply can't afford not to conduct user testing."

"With UserTesting, we receive invaluable feedback, on demand, and across multiple browsers, operating systems and devices," said VP of Product at Evernote, Philip Constantinou. "With UserTesting, I know we're making a great product."

"This financing is a milestone in the battle to get companies to start paying attention to the actual experiences of real people," said Darrell Benatar, CEO of UserTesting. "Most companies rely solely on analytics and only know what their customers are doing. They don't know why they're doing it. This financing is going to help user experience testing become ubiquitous, so that all design will be user-centered design. UserTesting is trying to change the world, so that's why we partnered with a world-class investor like Accel Partners and an investor with deep expertise in scaling B2B software businesses like OpenView Venture Partners."

UserTesting Also Announces New Technology to Revolutionize In-The-Wild Testing

A key part of UserTesting's expanded capabilities is its new smartphone and tablet recording technology, which launches today in public beta, that allows companies to test user experiences anywhere, at any time. This technology makes in-the-wild testing faster, easier, and more realistic than ever before, as it gives companies access to users who are using their own mobile devices in brick-and-mortar stores, at live events, on public transportation, and in other real-world locations. This makes it easy for a company to test an omnichannel customer journey that includes the desktop web, mobile devices, and in-store experiences.

"UserTesting's new mobile recorder technology gives us much more insight into our users," said Gerry Chu, User Researcher at Zillow who piloted the new technology. "We can learn how people use our apps in distracting real-world settings, such as an open house, or while talking to a real estate agent. One of the surprises we already came across was how many users are multitasking by searching home listings while sitting on the couch and watching television."

According to Forrester Research, 60% of customers will look elsewhere if they can't find what they need on a mobile website right away, and 35% say that they will switch to a competitor's app after a bad app experience. "Instead of causing churn, mobile interactions are an opportunity to build loyalty and business value," wrote Forrester Analyst Deanna Laufer in the August 2014 report entitled The Right Mobile Usability Testing Tool. "That's why CX Professionals should embrace tools and services available for testing the quality of their mobile user experiences … [These solutions] are faster, less costly, and more realistic than traditional usability lab testing."

"By productizing what has traditionally been an expensive and time-intensive manual process, UserTesting gives anyone designing a digital experience access to feedback from real users on demand," said Mackey Craven of OpenView Venture Partners. "Extending this to the physical world is a revolutionary idea, and UserTesting has established itself as a leading provider of user research to the world's largest and most sophisticated organizations by turning these ideas into reality."

UserTesting Milestones:

• Doubled its revenue year-over-year for the past 4 years
• Over 30,000 customers, including all of the top 10 web properties
• Provides access to over 1 million participants
• Ran over 500,000 user tests

UserTesting is Hiring!
UserTesting is looking for people to join their team of smart, hard-working, fun people as they help companies improve their websites and apps. Many positions are open across a wide variety of departments. Visit the UserTesting jobs page for more information.

About Accel Partners
Accel Partners is a leading early and growth-stage venture capital firm, powering a global community of entrepreneurs. Accel backs entrepreneurs who have what it takes to build a world-class, category-defining business. Founded in 1983, Accel brings more than three decades of experience building and supporting hundreds of companies. Accel's vision for entrepreneurship and business enables it to identify and invest in the companies that will be responsible for the growth of next-generation industries. Accel-backed companies include Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, Dropbox, Dropcam, Facebook, Flipkart, Lookout Security, MoPub, Qualtrics, Slack,  Spotify, Vox Media and others.

About OpenView Venture Partners
OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion-stage venture capital firm based in Boston that invests exclusively in software companies. In addition to its investment team, OpenView also has a dedicated team of 15 consultants who work with its portfolio companies to help the teams scale faster and more efficiently than competitors (www.openviewlabs.com). Founded in 2006, the firm invests globally and has nearly $700 million in total capital under management.

About UserTesting
UserTesting is the fastest and most advanced user experience testing platform on the market. The company gives marketers, product managers, and UX designers on-demand access to people in their target audience who deliver audio, video, and written feedback on websites, mobile apps, prototypes, and even physical products and locations.

Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, UserTesting helps over 30,000 clients (including the top 10 web properties in the U.S.) get the user feedback they need to create an excellent customer experience. User panels are currently available in the U.S., Canada, and the UK. For more information, visit www.usertesting.com.

Media Contact:
Jennifer Moebius
+1-617-922-8004
[email protected] 

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150127/171782  

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150127/171783LOGO

SOURCE UserTesting

Related Links

http://www.usertesting.com