If you possess an opinion, that building an app which is stuffed with great features and has excellent audio-visual appeal stands you a chance to rise above the others in this market, you need to rethink about your impression. The experience of the end user is what determines the success and the download rate of an app. So, if you want to ensure that your app goes a long way and gets great popularity, you first need to test it’s usability. Usability testing ensures that the app you have built delivers what it promises, without shutting down or causing any disturbance for the users, while it gives a good insight of the user behaviors and their usage patterns.
How does Usability Testing help?
‘Usability answers the question, “Can the user accomplish their goal?”’ says Joyce Lee, Human Factors Design at Apple.
Usability determines the quality of user-experience when an individual is making use of any software application on a mobile or a website. It takes just a few seconds for a prospective user to determine whether a particular app is operative as per that user’s will, and a tiny glitch or issue with their usability makes the individual ditch the product and move on to the several other similar options available to him. Many app developers or owners give least importance to the software testing step to check for user-experience once their application has been developed, as they are mostly in a hurry to launch the app in the market. However, every software application may contain bugs, errors and issues related to scope deviation and this should be tested by good software testing company
Properly conducted UX testing detects the user-behaviourism and finds out what works well, and what does not. Based on that, the shortfalls in the application can be observed, so that they can be rectified and brought back to the right track. UX testing thus makes your application ready for a long and successful journey.
Let us take a look at some specific factors that make usability testing of your application essential:
- To learn the essential components of user-behaviour
In order to make your application best suited for your user’s experience, you need to acquire a clear-cut knowledge about the user’s inclinations and behaviour. Usability testing helps you to understand some of the most indispensable concepts related to the response or conduct of your users. These include:
- Efficiency – whether the application is efficient enough to meet the user’s purpose
- Learnability – whether the app easily adapts to the user-behavior and still remains relevant for the customer’s use
- Memorization – if the software application can remember the user details and fetch correct results related to it every time
- Error-count – what are the chances of errors when the application is being used
- Satisfaction – whether at all the end-user is happy with the app and are spending quite some time on it, without leaving it.
With these specific parameters to check through, not only would app owners be benefited, but it would also be a fulfilling experience for the end user.
- To benefit the customer
When the owner or developer of the application takes care to ensure each of the above criterion has been met, it would of course benefit the end-user. Thus, accessibility testing when carried out to ensure great user-experience, will help the customer with great quality, ease of use, seamless functioning with lesser errors etc.
- To improve the opt-in rate
If continuous user-engagement is desired for an application, regular opt-ins would be a great way to ensure it. Since usability testing can help the owner gauge the preferences and requirements of a customer, it can actually improve the number of opt-ins, facilitated through push-notifications etc.
- To market the app better
When usability testing for an app is conducted, the developer gets a clearer concept about the experience as well as the behavior of the users. This facilitates in detecting errors and gauging the intensity of the errors. The owner or developer can detect the loopholes in the application’s layout, design or functioning, and rectify it. Thus, with an opportunity to have a better hypothesis about his end users, he can market the app better.
So, if a highly functional application with stunning functionalities is desired, user experience testing can actually reap huge benefits. After all, a great user engagement on a highly performing app is what every app developer would wish for.
