Research is always easier when you have the right tools at hand. And product research is no exception. Let’s take a look at how you can streamline your product research activities using dedicated tools and their awesome features!
What are product research tools?
Product research tools are tools used by product and design teams to conduct product research with the help of various product research methods. These are usually online tools that can help to save tons of time and money in the research phase.
Their ultimate goal of product research tools is to help you gather, organize and analyze insights about the target market, its current state, your competition and the future users of your product.
Why do you need product research tools?
Product analytics tools can help to streamline your design and development process and increase the efficiency of your research activities.
Here are some of the biggest benefits of product research tools:
Efficiency: online tools help to make the whole product research process much more productive by allowing you to quickly conduct and analyze research studies.
Advanced features: the biggest benefit of product research tools is that they offer advanced features to enhance the product research methods used for your study. These include various integrations, add-ons, and the benefit of having more all the tools you need in one place.
Deep analytics: product research tools complete a big part of the data analysis for you, organizing data into easy to understand visualizations and stats. This gives you an opportunity to save some time and focus on understanding your users instead of trying to sort out big piles of data.
As we can see from the points made above, product analytics tools are a great asset in a toolkit of any product team. Let’s take a look at some of the best tools out there to help you choose the one for your next project.
Best product research tools:
- UXtweak
- Hubspot make my persona
- Typeform
- Productboard
- Google Trends
- Miro
- Figma
- User Interviews
- Qualtrics
- AB Tasty
We’ll take a look at each of the tools features and pricing below.
1. UXtweak
UXtweak is your go-to product research tool for concept tests, usability testing and surveys. This platform offers all the features you might need in one place, making it cheap and easy to conduct product research.
UXtweak has a free plan and can also help with recruiting participants for your study. This is a great tool to conduct all kinds of user research activities or get to know your competitors with competitor usability testing.
Features:
- Mobile and website usability testing
- Prototype testing
- Competitor usability testing
- Preference tests
- 5-second tests
- Surveys
- Session recording
- First click tests
- Card sorting & tree testing
Pros:
- Offers help with recruiting: 155M+ User Panel and Onsite Recruiting
- Advanced analytics
- All-in-one feature set
- Intuitive UI that is easy to learn and navigate
- Free plan
Cons:
- Only 10 languages available
Pricing: UXtweak offers a free plan for small projects. Plus Plan starts at 80€/month, when billed annually.
2. Make my Persona by Hubspot
The next product research tool we recommend is a free persona creation software by Hubspot. It allows you to create a detailed portrait of your user persona, including all the information about their demographics, needs, wants and preferences.
It is a great free asset that you can use to organize your research findings and make sense of all the data obtained from the user testing sessions.
Features:
- A user persona template for your projects
Pros:
- The template is free
- Detailed
- Shareable
- Visually appealing and easy to understand
Pricing: free.
3. Typeform
Typeform is a survey tool that allows you to create visually appealing questionnaires and share them with your audience to gather their feedback and opinions on a specific topic. The platform offers tons of survey templates you can use in your product research and integrates with many popular apps.
Features:
- Quiz maker
- Survey maker
- Form builder
- Interactive video conversations
- Integrations
Pros:
- Creates engaging and fun-to-complete surveys
- Customizable
- Great UI
- Detailed reports and data summaries
- Free plan
Cons:
- The interface lags sometimes
- May be expensive for those on a budget
Pricing: Free plan is available. Basic Plan is 21€/month, when billed annually.
4. Productboard
Productboard is a product management software that helps product teams understand what customers need, prioritize what to build next, and align everyone around the roadmap. The platform allows you to create easy-to-share roadmaps, prioritize product features and helps to centralize user feedback.
Features:
- Roadmaps
- Feature prioritization
- Feedback
- Integrations
- Idea validation
Pros:
- Uses AI to help you turn data into actionable insights
- Great UI
- All-in-one product management software
- Free plan
Cons:
- Searching for already submitted requests can be difficult according to some users
- Limited free plan
- Paid subscription can be costly for those on a budget
Pricing: free plan is available. Paid subscription is $20 per maker/month, billed annually.
5. Google Trends
Google Trends is another free tool that can be used for product research. It helps to evaluate the popularity of specific search queries across different regions. Use it to measure the demand for your product, identify relevant markets and their trends and overall predict consumer behavior.
Features:
- Historical data
- Geographic data
- Related topics, keywords and search queries
- Comparison tool
Pros:
- Its free
- Helps with online research, market and competitor analysis
Cons:
- Not representative of all search engines, Google only
Pricing: the tool is free.
6. Miro
Miro is a digital whiteboard tool that will help you organize your product research findings and streamline collaboration across different teams. They also offer tons of templates to assist in conducting and organizing the insights from different research methods.
Features:
- Whiteboard
- Templates
- Apps and integrations
Pros:
- Easy collaboration
- Numerous templates
- Free plan
- Integrations
Cons:
- Some editing options are limited
Pricing: Free plan available. Pro plan starts at $8/per member/month, billed annually.
7. Figma
A well-known prototyping platform also offers tons of opportunities for product research. In the Figma Community you can find all kinds of templates to streamline your research studies and use the platform itself to create concepts, wireframes and prototypes.
You can then test those design concepts for usability using UXtweak Prototype Testing tool. It easily integrates with Figma and allows you to collect feedback from users with little to no effort.
Features:
- Prototyping
- Wireframing
- Templates
- Collaboration
Pros:
- Familiar UI that is easy to use and navigate
- Lots of templates
- Free plan
- Integration with research tools such as UXtweak
Cons:
- The platform often has performance issues and is slow to load
Pricing: free plan is available for 3 Figma and 3 FigJam files. Paid plans start at €12 per editor/month, billed annually.
8. User Interviews
User Interviews is a platform focused on helping you recruit participants for moderated user tests and interviews. They can help you recruit targeted participants for your product research studies and conduct interviews to gather qualitative feedback from users.
Features:
- Recruiting for user interviews
- Research hub
- Integrations
- Scheduling
- Incentives
Pros:
- Quick and easy recruiting
Cons:
- No free plan
- Can be quite pricey
Pricing: Starts at $45/session. No free plan available.
For cheaper recruiting options, check out UXtweak’s cost-effective User Panel. Recruit from 155M+ respondent pool for as cheap as $6/respondent!
9. Qualtrics
Qualtrics is an online survey and research platform that can help you with survey design, data analysis, market and user research.
Features:
- Surveys
- Market research
- Participant recruitment
Pros:
- Customization
- Great customer support
- Help with recruiting
Cons:
- Steep learning curve
- The platform is quite expensive compared to the competitors
Pricing: free trial and free plan are available. Pricing starts at $1500.00 /year.
10. AB Tasty
AB tasty is an experience optimization company that is mostly used by teams to conduct no-code A/B tests. The platform offers great personalization capabilities with AI-based segmentation.
Features:
- A/B testing
- Personalization
- Behavioral targeting
- Analytics
Pros:
- User-friendly UI
- Integrations
- Personalization
Cons:
- Limited design options
Pricing: available upon request.
