Over the last couple of months we built a platform with a similar goal to http://upwork.com. Basically you can sign up as someone looking to hire help for small projects, or you can sign up as a "freelancer" to help people out. We installed Hotjar to get as much insight out of this as possible.
The goal of the website in these early stages is to get as many people actively participating as possible after launch. We will initially try this in a small-ish town as an experiment. So, conversion is important, but the people have to stay on the platform and use it as well.
We made a smaller scale usability in the earlier phases of the project which was very insightful. It was a guided test with 3 people.
Now we have 25 pairs of people signing up either as a "freelancer" or "employer". We have about a week to do some usability testing with these participants. This is only remotely (although I'm sure I could get 5 people to come in for an interview).
I never had this many people available. How do I go about testing the website as efficiently as possible without going crazy myself?
Thanks for your help!