Eero Heino, co-founder of Usetrace, tells the story behind the visual testing tool and explains why it is needed in today’s businesses.

While working on a web development project in 2004, we realized that the evolution of web browsers enabled a new, highly efficient way to test user interface functionality: the cloud. The cloud greatly facilitates the adoption of test automation as users do not need to install software or undertake any maintenance work.

Simultaneously, as new features are shipped at an increasingly fast pace, time-consuming manual and scripted testing have started falling behind the development speed. Instead, we wanted to build a quick, codeless and easily skimmable test automation alternative for today’s agile teams.

Our starting point with Usetrace, therefore, became to revolutionize the way software testing is conducted. In Usetrace, we combine three elements to make testing faster to perform and easier to adopt: the cloud, codelessness and visuality.

Usetrace All Traces view: test fails and successes are marked in red and green for each browser.

How Does Usetrace Work?

Usetrace automates cloud computers to test your website’s features, such as logging in, ordering products and posting comments. When you update your website or introduce new features, Usetrace automatically goes through your site as real customers would – testing that all buttons, texts and forms work across browsers. Therefore, you stay confident that customers continue getting a smooth, bug-free user experience as your website is developed.

What makes Usetrace unique is that it presents tests in a visual, cartoon-like format and requires non-coding skills. Our tool enables non programmers to automate testing while making test creation and maintenance effortless for technical teams.

As a cloud-based service, Usetrace also offers near limitless opportunities to scale test automation: we add new browsers on an on-demand basis according to users’ needs. Our pricing is usage-based as well. Besides a $10 monthly fee, our customers only pay for the time it takes for automated tests to run.

Usetrace Editor: a test for the login form is presented as a chain of visual steps.

Usetrace notices that the form has changed: the text “Sign in” is missing as it has been

replaced by “Log in”.

What Problem Does Usetrace Solve?

Today’s customers are increasingly sensitive to quality, which is also visible in the web space. Functionality is taken as a given, and bugs can make potential users leave a website in seconds. Taking into account the agile development trend, software testing now needs to be extremely rapid while still ensuring high quality for end users.

Our way of addressing this challenge is to automate repetitive tasks as simply as possible, freeing time for demanding exploratory testing. So far, our test automation service has attracted customers in eight countries on four continents – and we are constantly looking to expand further at an international level!

Find out more about Usetrace and check out our free 7-day trial at https://usetrace.com/.

Eero Heino is co-founder and CEO at Usetrace.