The development process has several stages that add value to a given digital product. The user testing is no different, but it must be optimized to hand out helpful highlights.

Optimising user testing is, therefore, essential to have detailed results and products that are still up-to-date and wanted by the public.

In this article, we’ll review what user testing is, the advantages of doing it regularly and how to optimise this stage of the development process.

 

What is user testing?

Gathering feedback from users and consumers is a way to evaluate the functionality and the general user experience of users. In a nutshell, this is what user testing means.

Without feedback, it is not possible to know if a product is still relevant for users and, thus, if it should be taken out of the market or just updated to better fit their needs.

Although feedback is the biggest feature of this phase, there are a lot more features associated with this part of the production process. To optimize user testing, companies should have a sample group of their audience, it might be moderated while used by consumers and the results should be deeply analysed.

 

The benefits of user testing

User testing can truly contribute to the success of a digital product. Here’s why:

• It helps understand user needs and identify issues within the platform, enabling teams to develop more effective solutions and, therefore, increase user satisfaction.
• It exposes the reasons behind the lack of conversions, it helps developers and UX designers to make the changes necessary and, therefore, boost conversions and sales.
• User-testing is a way to reduce customer’s bad experiences and, therefore, the number of support calls. All in all, it will also reduce the time spent on customer support, as well as its costs.
• By optimizing user testing strategies, companies can accelerate the iteration cycles during development and upgrading the digital product. With this, it will be able to cut overall costs.

 

Optimising user testing – How to conduct it

Set up user testing strategies and optimising them as time goes by can be an overwhelming task. However, it is crucial to add more value to the digital products a team is developing or upgrading.

As we’ve stated in the section above, a good user experience can be the motor for driving more users to a platform, as well as, generating more conversions and, ultimately, revenue.

So, for optimizing user testing strategies, teams should:

1. Research the user journey and understand it in detail. It is possible to do this with usage data analysis, surveys, and interviews.

2. Conduct a pilot test before making it public, so that teams mitigate issues to the minimum.

3. Define goals and clear instructions for users to follow.

4. Diversify their testing methodology. The more diverse, the better the results. Teams might want to test the platform with card sorting, remote testing or in-person testing, as well as conducting A/B tests to compare the changes made in the product.

5. Use tools to help them distribute the test to distinct groups of users (which are representative of a specific audience), gather feedback, analyse it, point out the most necessary changes and automate most of these tasks.

6. Look for intuitive behaviour. When testing a platform, it is important to collect data regarding the natural behaviour of users, so that teams can make changes that are actually beneficial for possible visitors.

7. Analyse the collected data either manually or with analytic tools and make improvements with those results in mind.

8. Test the platform from time to time to keep the product up to date and respond to the needs of the users.

Which user testing methods should a team choose?

Optimising user testing does not only revolve around the stages of the process, it also relies on the method chosen by the teams to make it evergreen.

These are the most relevant ways of user testing:

• Moderated – Conducted by a trained person that guides the user to a certain goal.
• Unmoderated – In this environment, users complete tasks on their own, without anyone guiding them through.
• Explorative – It is used to identify new audiences, new features and whatever is missing from the digital product.
• Heat map – It is related to the analysis of the user journey: what the users click the most, the pages they check the most and the way they interact with the platform.
• Card sorting – As part of the UX testing, this is a methodology used to evaluate the architecture of a website and the design elements.

 

Conclusion

User testing is one of the strategies that companies use after developing a digital product to help them find out what features need to be perfected for a better user experience.

And, by providing a better user experience, companies can collect more leads, have a higher conversion rate that might turn into more revenue. For this strategy to work perfectly, optimising user testing is strictly necessary.

Companies usually bet on distinct types of tests and methodologies to discover the user journey, understand the users’ needs and enhance the user experience.