What is UX testing with example

What looks good, sells in the market. Aesthetics matter a lot in the user experience. If your product is moderately functional but has an appealing design, it attracts more users. There are numerous websites on the internet available today, that provide the same services, however, to stand out and attract more customers, business has to provide an engaging user experience. This increases the conversion rates of the product, and ultimately the revenue of your brand. User experience can nudge users buy the product and increase retention.

Hence, delivering a premium user experience should be a top priority for software development.

Why user experience matters the most

A good user experience is meant to keep your customers loyal to your brand, hence would reduce churn outs, and improve retention. There is no specific way of defining what makes a good user experience, however, to deliver a good ux, one has to understand the user mindset and deliver accordingly. Therefore, user experience is an important aspect while building trust and consistency among customers. 

In fact, a good user experience can also help with SEO, improving the overall ranking of your webpage on the SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page). This increases the overall visibility and help gain more traffic and users.

For instance, a user will have a more minimalistic and positive experience in the UI with a hamburger menu while viewing the website on their phone. A hamburger menu reduces unnecessary clutter and provides a neat page.

What is User Experience Testing?

A user experience test is also called a usability test, which is used to evaluate the user-friendliness of an application. The idea behind implementing Usability testing is to evaluate the ease and flexibility of using the application from the user’s perspective. 

Putting in simpler words, how easy and attractive is your application to use?

It is important to evaluate the structure, content clarity, and navigation flow of your website when evaluating the Usability test. In ideal cases, you observe the user’s behavior while a user is testing your product. Designers cannot easily pinpoint flaws in their own products, therefore, the user’s perspective is the heart of Usability testing and shall never be ignored.

Why is User Experience Testing important?

User experience testing is done before the product is ready to roll out in the market for real-world users. The advantages of performing Usability tests could be directly seen in the revenue of the business. However, let’s discuss some merits of performing Usability tests. 

1. It makes your product highly efficient improving the user’s satisfaction with the product. 
2. It helps in covering the usability issues present in your competitor’s products, hence out-scaling your competitor. 
3. Usability tests don’t rely upon opinions, it relies on real user feedback, thus it is efficient in handling Usability errors. 

Pro-Tip: To understand user experience, it is essential to test your website/ application under real user conditions for better accuracy. BrowserStack real device cloud allows you to test on 3000+ real browsers, desktop, and mobile devices for a comprehensive testing experience along with features such as Geolocation Testing, BarCode Testing, QR Code Testing, Testing in Slow Network Conditions, etc.

Run UX Tests on Real Devices

How to perform User Experience Tests 

There is no certain way of performing user experience tests, rather it depends upon the product and what type of testing it deserves. A complex application might require a large number of users reviewing and testing the application, however, generally, a significant number of users are enough to produce a statistically relevant data and uncover a major portion of the testing purposes. 

However, let’s discuss some methods of performing user experience testing:

• Testing the product in the laboratory 

In this, a lot of people are recruited to review the app, and they are made to sit in a large room maintaining enough distance from the observer. After using the application for a while, they are asked certain questions, and the results are analyzed from this survey. 

• Testing through random users 

It is not mandatory that you must have a large laboratory for accommodating numerous people, however, one can also visit nearby public places such as coffee shops, and grocery stores, and would ask them to review your product. Also, surveying them with certain questions is an extra benefit you must aim for. It is also known as Guerilla usability testing. 

• Testing a web application remotely

This method removes the restrictions from the participants, eliminating the need to be present at the moment for testing, thus testing could be performed at any time. 

When using real device cloud like BrowserStack you do not need a physical Digital Lab to conduct usability testing. Rather, the users can easily test the application remotely on different device browser combinations using BrowserStack Live (for websites) and BrowserStack App Live (for Mobile Apps).

How to write user experience tests

Some other tests such as testing responsiveness and cross-browser compatibility also define the user experience of a user. BrowserStack offers cloud facilities to test the responsiveness and compatibility of the website in several combinations of devices and browsers. 

To understand how to perform Mobile Compatibility Tests on a BrowserStack Live, let’s consider below two scenarios to test on BStackDemo website across different devices and browsers to achieve mobile compatibility testing: 

• Verify clicking on “Add to cart” should add the item to the cart.
• Verify clicking on the cross icon on the cart pop-up should remove the item from the cart.

Try Usability Testing on Real Devices

Follow the steps given below and test the above scenarios on real devices.

1. Signup for BrowserStack Live
2. Select the desired Device-Browser combination to test your website on. 
3. Testing Add to Cart and Remove from Cart functionalities of bstackdemo.com on different Device-Browser-OS combinations by manually following the test steps mentioned in the beginning.
4. To switch to a different browser on the same device or to switch the device, select “Switch browser” option from the left toolbar and then Select the desired
5. Device-Browser-OS combination from the options available in the dashboard.

Testing Responsiveness

Responsiveness is pivotal for user experience. Using BrowserStack Responsive Checker Tool you can easily check the responsiveness of your website on different screen sizes and resolutions in portrait and landscape resolutions using real devices. 

Step 1: Sign up/ Login on BrowserStack 

Step 2: Enter the Website

For example, entering bstackdemo.com for testing.Step 3: Select the device for the test

Select from the wide range of devices in which you want to run the test. After that, hit the check button to run the testing and see the result.

Why should you run user experience tests on real devices 

When it comes to testing a product that is a website or a web application, the ideal implementation of user design testing is to implement it over several real devices and browsers, therefore, identifying all the UX errors that could occur. However, practically, testing on several combinations of devices and browsers is costly. Therefore, a better alternative is to switch to cloud testing to perform testing on multiple devices, without having to arrange several combinations physically. 

BrowserStack is a cloud testing infrastructure that allows users to test their website in numerous operating systems and web browsers before releasing it to real-world users. BrowserStack eases the task of performing tests by providing all the real devices through cloud services. It also offers other features that shall be essential while testing, such as Geolocation testing, Test dependent apps, Network simulation, and more. 

Best Practices for User Experience (UX) Testing 

1. Recruiting the right users for testing: In usability testing, it is important to ask questions, but it is more important to determine who is going to answer them. For example, A school-going child wouldn’t be a good tester for a product that is based on parents’ input. Therefore, it is a crucial step to choose the right users for testing. Having users with mixed interests is a good practice. Moreover, users must be under the periphery of the problem you are solving on your product.
2. Maintaining the test results and analyzing them well: What’s the point of testing your product, when you’re not maintaining the test results? Analysis of test results and improvement of flaws are the goals of testing. Maintaining test reports neatly is therefore of utmost importance and good practice.
3. Testing under real conditions: It is obvious that the application is not meant to be kept in the laboratory inside the developer’s computer. It has to roll out to the market, in front of real-world users. Thus, testing your product under real conditions is a good practice to ensure it meets the needs of people. Furthermore, catching errors during the development phase is the perfect time to resolve them.
4. Testing on different platforms: You can expect your real users to use a variety of browsers and devices. For your application to capture a large scale of users, you need to make sure it is compatible with their devices, so test your product on multiple platforms to reach a wide range of users.

Conclusion

Usability testing is good and always recommended as all the costs get paid when your customers are satisfied and build trust in your product. This article highlights what is usability testing, its benefits, and how to perform it. An ideal way of performing usability testing is to do it before launching the product. This helps in raising the standards of the product and eliminating all the errors before it is even seen by the world. 

It is also recommended to test on real devices under real user conditions to get the best feedback and enhance user experience. BrowserStack real device cloud allows you to test on real devices remotely, ensuring a hassle-free usability testing experience.

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