Software Testing Blog

I’m thrilled to let you know that last week uTest was internationally recognized, wining the 2009 WebAward for “Outstanding Website” by the Web Marketing Association.

A big thank you to our partner Boston Interactive for helping us incorporate a more human face to uTest’s website and revamping it to reflect uTest’s community-centric business model.

As you know, we relaunched our website back in May 2009, and four months later, we’re already receiving high honors for it! Now in its 13th year, the WebAwards is the premier annual website award competition that names the best websites while setting the standard of excellence for all website development.

During this year’s competition, more than 2,000 sites from 45 countries were nominated in 96 industry categories. Entries were judged on design, copy writing, innovation, content, interactivity, navigation, and use of technology.

The new uTest website has enabled us to bring the real-world stories of our customers and testers to the forefront of the web experience to increase visibility into uTest’s global testing community of 19,000+ and enhance collaboration among software professionals worldwide. We’re honored to be among this year’s winners!

To see all 2009 award wins, check out uTest’s Awards Page!

As the Community Ambassador here at uTest, I spend the bulk of my time conversing with testers from our office here in Southborough, Massachusetts. So you can imagine how excited I was when I got the chance to host an off-site tester meetup – in Tokyo of all places!

I was already planning to vacation in the area, and so I decided to “advertise” the event in the uTest Forums. Since I posted the meetup on relatively short notice (10 days), and seeing how we have only launched a handful of releases in Japan (so far), I was somewhat unsure of the response I would receive. Well, after five days, I had been contacted by five our testers, and so we decided to meet at the world’s busiest intersection: Shibuya’s famous Hachiko area.

So how, you ask, were our fellow uTesters able to find each other in such a hectic setting? Easy – the uTest t-shirt. A few minutes before the meeting on a Saturday afternoon, our first Japanese uTester – an Austrian gentleman who has lived in Japan for the past 15 years – flagged me down when he caught glimpse of said t-shirt. Ten minutes later, the other testers showed up and we took our meeting across the street to the Excelsior Café – a nearby coffee shop that is a favorite among the locals.

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