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Importance of Usability for Web or Mobile Apps

· app development

Before purchasing any appliance, you check if it is working as per the specifications and if it provides you with a good experience of using it. Similarly, before launching your web or mobile app for the users, you need to check if it is ready for the market or not and get it fixed. According to you, your website or mobile app may be scalable and feature-rich, but that may not be adequate for your users.

Users these days expect a lot from the websites or mobile apps. Apart from useful content and intuitive design, they want attractive visuals, responsive pages, and targeted and engaging experience. Mobile app developers in Ireland ensure that the users are provided with a positive experience through usability testing. Let’s know more about what it is, why it is done, when and how it is done.

What is usability testing?

Usability testing involves comprehending the user behaviour from the usage data of the website or mobile app. It is also known as ‘black box testing’ as it measures the quality of true experiences of the users. The five crucial components that play an important role in understanding the user behaviour are efficiency, learnability, memorisation, satisfaction, and errors. Developers should take these parameters as a reference to identify user behaviour in a targeted manner. Usability testing can, in fact, be considered as an umbrella term that encompasses many testing techniques like unit testing, system integration, functional testing, and smoke testing.

There are two primary types of usability tests: formative and summative. While the focus of formative tests is on diagnosing and fixing problems during the product development by repeatedly testing it during development to optimize usability, the focus of summative tests is to establish a metric baseline for validating the requirements of the product after completion and is dependent on a larger number of participants to make it statistically valid.

Why is usability testing done?

While statistical reference may give you a clear idea of the app data usage, usability testing helps you delve deep into this data and uncover its significance. The complete and precise picture of user behaviour can be presented through accurate and comprehensive usability testing.

  • Improves app marketing: This is a direct benefit of usability testing. Usability testing can considerably upgrade the marketing of the app or website along with usage data. A hypothesis can be formed about user behaviour and experience by identifying ambiguities in the design or deployment of the website or application. These can then be improved upon to enhance the user experience.
  • Enhances user satisfaction and retention: The brand perception of the websites and apps can be significantly improved by eliminating any potential usability issues. Users can choose opt-ins in a better way and enjoy the interaction with the app or website in the best way and ensure regular engagement with users. Developers can access user preferences and requirements and offer opt-ins accordingly. Moreover, usability testing can bring in short learning curves for new users by making the website or app easy to use, and enhance the acceptance of apps.
  • Increases time and cost-effectiveness for developers: By testing the usability of the app, the time and money spent on development process is eventually decreased as the errors can be rectified easily in the initial stages preventing losses and delays. Additional late phase design and coding work can be avoided. The ROI and maintenance cost is increased as developers can know and correct their mistakes early during the development cycle.
  • Better team alignment: The team members may be having different assumptions regarding what may be functional, useful, learnable, or delightful for the users. However, after usability testing, the team has an idea about the user’s expectations and “wants”, and the team can be aligned and set to tasks accordingly to provide what is best for the users.
  • Boosts conversion rate: By improving your vision on how to create a user-friendly site or app, usability testing removes a significant barrier that keeps away your customers from dealing you’re your app or website.
  • Better competitive edge: When your site gives your customers a positive impression of your company, they are more likely to come back to you instead of going to a competitor.

When should the usability be tested?

Usability should be tested early and frequently to optimise the development cost and decrease the development time. Though the best practice is to test the app or website on a periodic interval, often usability tests are done before the launch and many times after the launch. It has been suggested that for achieving the best results, no more than five users should be tested at a time and as many small tests should be run during the development process as can be afforded.

How is the usability tested?

You may carry out usability testing by various methods. However, here we are discussing the simplest method to do it.

  • Identify the testers: Identify your real targeted users based on the demographics and then use similar people as testers to test their experience of using your website or app.
  • Create a hypothesis: It is very important to spot the trends and obstacles and formulate a hypothesis about what works, what doesn’t, and where improvements are needed based on the web metrics after using analytics.
  • Recognize the goals for the user test: Be very clear about what you want to achieve from the test. This gives a direction to your user test and allows you to measure and analyse the changes needed. While your first test may be general and deal with core website tasks, later periodic tests allow you to test at more granular levels.
  • Design the tasks: You need to design some specific actionable tasks around the primary features initially for the user to complete. You need to maintain consistency in the tasks and their order. You should include a short script about the background of the site, basic information of the tester, and give them around 5-10 specific tasks to complete.
  • Do the testing: Collect your materials and set up your testing location. You may invite observers to watch the live testing sessions, especially the managers and executives. You can ask qualitative, non-leading questions and check the verbal reaction of the testers. You can also offer rewards to testers for participating.
  • Summarize and analyse the results to create a short recap: The results of the test should be compiled and analysed based on the tester comments and the problems faced by them. You should also create a short recap for presenting the issues faced and the need to fix them based on priority.

Concluding thought

Usability testing is an important aspect of the website or mobile application development. You can set your website or mobile app ahead of competitors, improve performance, enhance user engagement, and hope to achieve success by performing usability tests in the right manner.