The importance of employing usability testing tools during production

This article is part of the CommerceLab Reference Library, a set of online business tools that provide introductory and background information to help educate those new to the areas we cover. 

Creating the right user experience is essential if you want to engage your customers and develop a trusting relationship with them. This is one of the main reasons why usability testing is such an important component of developing new technologies and business processes. Usability testing tools help work out bugs during the design process to make a user’s experience as pleasant and easy as possible.

However, even though usability testing is one of the most important steps, it is often rushed. This is why we see so many technology products and websites go live while still having issues. Perhaps two of the most recent glaring examples of rushed usability testing are the Obamacare website, healthcare.gov, and Motorola’s Cyber Monday promotion.

The serious problems on both of these websites have led to significant backlash, something that all companies strive to avoid during the launch of a website, product, or service.

Why usability testing tools are a sound investment

Testing the usability and functionality of a website or product pre-launch is a sound investment. It is beneficial for the developing company and the end user in the following ways:

• Save money long term: bringing usability issues to light earlier in the production process will save you money. It will be easier and more cost-effective to fix issues with a website or digital display before it goes into production or is released to the market.

• Better overall experience: employing usability testing tools to refine a product will help to create a better overall experience for users once the final product is complete. The majority of usability issues will be identified through simple testing.

• Increased conversions: once a website or digital sign has been usability-tested, you have the ability to optimize the conversion process to make things as easy as possible for your users to complete a desired task.

• Objective feedback about the design: it can be easy for a development company to overlook flaws during the design process, especially if it is up against a tight deadline. Usability testing tools provide objective feedback from a third party that can identify issues that could improve overall usability.

Usability testing shows you the problems that you are too close to see during development, when you are focused on meeting timelines and might overlook important usability issues.

Whether you are designing a new website, a mobile app, or an interactive display sign, it is important that you don’t make your users think—instead, make it easy for them to understand the technology.

The next desired step for a user should be abundantly clear. If users cannot find the information they are looking for or have trouble completing a transaction, you will lose customers and you will lose sales. People have short attention spans and if you cannot make their experience a pleasant one, they will move on and you will lose their business.