What are the Benefits of a User Testing for Mobile App?

Did you know that people will spend about 4 hours daily using their mobile internet and 88% of that will be spent on their mobile apps and not on browsing? This is according to a report from eMarketer. Therefore, creating a mobile app for your business is essential in helping users find your services easily.

However, a faulty mobile app can tarnish your brand image and this would hurt your business as well. Conducting user testing for your mobile app helps you improve your app. In addition, the mobile market is vast and is growing at a faster rate more than ever.

What are the Benefits of a User Testing for Mobile App?

User testing is conducted to determine user experience while they use your mobile app. This helps measure its user-friendliness and lets you determine what improvements or changes are needed to align with your brand’s objectives.

It also ensures that your mobile app is increasing or adding value to your business and meets the expectations of your users. Making sure that your mobile app’s functionalities are working efficiently leads to improved customer service and satisfaction. It also gives you more opportunities to increase your sales and profits.

Ways to Conduct High-Quality User Testing for Your Mobile App

Know Your Objectives

The first essential thing that you need to do is determine your specific objectives for your user testing. There are five things you need to consider when coming up with your objectives such as:

• Learnability
• Efficiency
• Memorability
• Error-free
• Satisfaction

What features do users enjoy about your mobile app? Is it your design or the ease of use? It is crucial that you have core objectives, these could be questions you ask yourself whenever you conduct user testing.

Design the Tasks User Testers Will Do

You need to design the tasks your user testers will do. First, during your mobile app development. You should remove placeholder texts like lorem ipsum and replace them with a draft of what needs to be there. This lets you get a feel of how users will navigate around your app and decide which information is essential.

Always avoid using clues in your instructions, instead provide tips that would make them take actions they wouldn’t even figure out otherwise.

You should also check for ambiguity in your instructions because this may seem like your app is not user-friendly.

User Test Participants

It is recommended that you recruit user test participants who have been using their mobile for at least three months. This would address any difficulty from using the device rather than your mobile app. It is also crucial that your user test participants use their own devices because this would help reveal the real issues compared to using top-of-the-line devices you’re using.

You should build a user persona and utilize them to screen your potential user test participants to choose the right candidates.

Lab Setting vs Remote Setting

There is no perfect option to choose between a lab setting or a remote setting for your user testing. However, there are key factors to keep in mind.

You don’t need to come up with an actual lab to run a test in the lab setting, this only means that you are running the test in a controlled environment. This gives you opportunities to gain extra observations made by your user testers, like a scrunching of their eyebrows or having hesitations about making actions while using your mobile app.

Remote testing, on the other hand, doesn’t require you to schedule a time and place to host your user testers because they can do the testing on their own. In return, they will send you the results and this saves a huge amount of time on your team.

Run the Test

Now that everything you need for your testing is ready, you can proceed to conducting and running it. You can start by asking your participants to think out loud and they work through using your mobile app and the tasks you created.

However, if you’re running the test in a remote setting, you can ask them to note extra information about their thought process.

You can also ask your user test participants to watch a replay of the time they are testing your mobile app and explain their actions to you, this will give you a better understanding of what they think.

Gather and Analyze Your Data

Gather your data and analyze them to draw a conclusion, this will help boost the impact of your testing. You should also review the testing sessions of your users one at a time and look at the notes or recordings you have of them.

You should always use both quantitative and qualitative data. Work on the information you have to determine patterns and trends, and the challenges that your user testers faced. Cross-check your data on the different metrics to show specific patterns in the demographics and devices of your users.

Improve Your Mobile App

Based on your gathered data and conclusion, you can make improvements or changes to your mobile app’s functionalities.

You can base your changes and improvements on your user testers’ feedback. When making these changes, you can categorize them by priority, from low importance to critical.

Then, you can distribute these tasks in order of their priority.

Plan Your Next Test

Conducting user testing for your mobile app should be done on a regular basis. These tests can guide you to come up with new designs or new upgrades to improve your mobile app’s features and functionalities.

You should also keep an eye on your competitors because this lets you stay ahead and keep up with the trends in the industry.

A structured approach to conducting user testing for your mobile app lets you come up with an excellent outcome to help your mobile app reach its full potential and your business successful.

Every user test you conduct brings your mobile app’s user experience closer to perfection.