UX-Testing: Meaning, Advantages, Methods & Tool Tips

Dennis Fäckeler6/1/2022

In this article, you will learn what the significance of UX testing is, what advantages you can gain from it, and which methods and tools you can apply for your UX testing.

Table of contents

In this post, we answer the following questions for you:
What is UX testing?
What is the difference between User-Experience and Usability?
Why should you conduct UX testing? What benefits does it provide?
Benefits of UX Testing – what can you achieve with UX Testing?
What areas/factors can be analyzed in UX testing?
How does UX testing work in practice?
Which UX testing tools are recommendable?
are suitable.
refers to an approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The goal is for you to always be able to link the results so that you gain as deep an understanding as possible of your target group and the question.
With the deep understanding of the actual needs and goals of your users, you can then develop products much better and continuously improve customer experiences in agile loops and iterations.

A good User Experience (UX) is usually inconspicuous.

When you're smoothly shopping online, apps are functioning effortlessly, or applications are understandable from the start - then you're experiencing good UX.

Strong digital experiences or enthusiastic customers are always the result of good user research and UX testing.

In this post, we answer the following questions for you:

What is UX testing?
What is the difference between User-Experience and Usability?
Why should you conduct UX testing? What benefits does it provide?
What areas/factors can be analyzed in UX testing?
How does UX testing work in practice?
Which UX testing tools are recommendable?
How does UX testing fit within UX methods?

What is UX testing?

UX testing is the systematic analysis of the User Experience (UX) in user research. In UX testing, real users are integrated into the development process to evaluate and optimize existing or new products, applications, apps, websites, etc. in terms of usability or the overall product experience (UX). UX testing is therefore one of the essential elements for Conversion optimization, along with agile product developments and within User-Research.

What is the difference between User-Experience and Usability?

Within both areas (UX & Usability), real users are at the center of the investigation. Usability describes the general use of the product - you analyze whether the goal can be achieved satisfactorily, effectively, and efficiently with the interactive system.

User-Experience, on the other hand, describes the holistic experience as well as the expectations and perceptions (before, during, and after the interaction). Both areas are part of the Customer-Experience (CX) or Customer-Experience-Management (Customer Experience Management), with the aim of creating positive customer experiences and an emotional connection between your product and your customers.

Difference User-Experience and Usability

User-Experience (UX) can be translated literally as user experience, user experience, or usage experience. User-Experience describes the overall and subjective user experience when interacting with a website, a product, or a brand. It analyzes the individual perception, the triggered emotions, and thoughts of people when interacting with your content.

Usability, on the other hand, refers to the usability, usability or operability during the interaction. Criteria for good usability are regulated as usability rules in a corresponding standard (DIN ISO 9241-11). Especially for digital products, additional interaction principles or design guidelines for the creation of interactive systems (DIN ISO 9241-110:2020) exist.

Why should you conduct UX testing? What benefits does it provide?

Nowadays, it's no longer enough to develop new products and simply offer them on the market - the risk of misinvestments or products being developed past the end customer or the actual user requirements is too great.

If it's not immediately clear what value a product offers and what the unique selling points are, it quickly appears irrelevant to users - they will look for something else. If too many stumbling blocks occur on the way to purchase, customers either change providers or at least cause high support overhead.

Benefits of UX Testing – what can you achieve with UX Testing?

At the core of UX testing stand your strategic and prioritized conversion optimization goals as well as the improvement of other, relevant KPIs for you.

You can:

Evaluate approaches for success-critical product requirements
Secure innovations and product developments early on
Analyze motivators and demotivators in purchasing processes
Investigate the behavior and needs of target groups
Improve customer satisfaction targeted
Abandon corporate glasses
Generate hypotheses and idea development for A/B Testingoperate
Improve relevant KPIs
Focused product optimization
Conversion Optimierung prioritized

UX Testing is therefore used by successful companies throughout the entire product life cycle and during the evaluation and development of new products to best capture the target groups and achieve business goals.

Good UX Testing and a downstream implementation of the insights, always leads to more sales, less support effort, and increased customer satisfaction, while reducing development cycles.

Mister Spex tests and improves continuously along all touchpoints the UX and has won the Shop Usability Award in addition to many new insights.

What areas/factors can be analyzed in UX testing?

As the name UX testing already suggests, you can examine and test the entire experience. This can also go far beyond UX - from the first touchpoint of your advertisements to the unboxing. Some possibilities in UX testing:

Advertising impact and ad campaigns
First touchpoint e.g. search result pages towards the website
Website interactions
Checkout processes
App usage
Software applications
Prototypes, innovations, and product ideas
Designs and design drafts

So if you want to test the user experience, you have a variety of options available. It is important to choose the right method at the right time. Here you can find more 14 ideas for the creative use of crowd usability tests.

How does UX testing work in practice?

Tip: If you have not yet conducted any UX testing, it makes sense to start with a general all-round check. Here, you focus on the most common uses of your website or app. Some UX testing providers also have extensive knowledge databases for UX testing, so you can create your tests quickly and easily.

In UX testing, real users interact e.g. directly on their end device with your website, app, or are analyzed at the respective touchpoint regarding the user experience. In the UX test of an online shop, for example, the clicking behavior as well as image and sound are also recorded. The special thing: In UX testing, your target group verbalizes their experience with your product. The often very natural environment (e.g. UX test on own smartphone or laptop) provides open and honest feedback. At the same time, you gain a deep insight into the behavior of your target group.

Step 1: Problem statement and goals

You should ask yourself the following questions in order to be able to derive good tasks later:

Are there known problems that show up, for example, in analytics data?
Are there already hypotheses on these problems or specific questions to which you would like to receive answers from your target groups?
What is your situation? Are you planning a redesign, for example, or have you just launched?
How quickly do you need the results? (Especially important for sample size and target group narrowing)
What questions should be answered by the target group?
What expectations and further goals do you have regarding the test results? What would you like to use them for in detail?

Step 2: Define target group and sample

It is important in UX testing that you narrow down your target group well in order to obtain meaningful results. So what requirements should your test persons have in order to fit as realistically as possible into the test scenario (e.g. age, gender, interests, characteristics, profession, etc.)?

How many test persons should you recruit? Generally speaking, the more frequently you test, the fewer test persons the individual tests require.

3–5 test persons: can suffice for a first mood image
7 test persons: random individual opinions become less
10 test persons: essential results can be prioritized according to frequency
20 test persons: possibility to derive reliable quantitative statements

Step 3: Formulate test tasks

First, you think about a scenario so that the test persons can put themselves in the right situation well.

Example: Imagine a friend told you how much money he saves after he switched his insurance. You've become curious and want to see if the insurance would also be right for you. via Google, you end up on the insurance provider's page.

Then you take care of the test tasks. A good task describes the goal, not the way, and encourages the test persons to speak and give feedback. Set open tasks and find short and precise formulations. Also think about trigger questions that animate the test persons to think aloud. At the same time, be sparing with your questions and tasks to not overwhelm the test persons. Don't use profession-specific expressions, speak like your target group.

Example: Explain briefly what's important to you in liability insurance. Then look for an insurance that meets your expectations. Comment on the process. What do you notice positively, what negatively? Why?

Step 4: Test phase

Play your test with colleagues before approaching your target group. If everything works, is the setting understandable, and the tasks/goals clear? You can find which tools you can use for UX testing further down. Some tools, like Varify.io already offer results after 24 hours.

Step 5: Evaluation and next steps

Depending on the setting, a UX test can take between 10 and 20 minutes. Therefore, plan enough time to evaluate and cluster the recordings. Tasks will always derive from a UX test. Your task is now to draw the right conclusions.

Have you recognized usability problems? Expect that a UX test will uncover usability problems that should be fixed accordingly.
Have content problems been uncovered? Possibly formulations need to be changed and examined using A/B testing.
Have argument aids for stakeholders been noticed? Frequently, a few UX tests already say and show a lot about target groups, their behavior, and their perception. These highlights are a powerful tool in meetings and stakeholder debates.
Who else should know? UX testing with its numerous insights provides a lot of input for different departments – distribute them!

Which UX testing tools are recommendable?

When choosing the suitable tools for conversion optimization and for UX testing, your respective goals and requirements should always be in focus. Each tool has its own advantages and possibilities. For further tips and tool explanations, please feel free to visit OMR Reviews.

UX & receive user feedback from your own target groups: for this, remote testing tools are particularly suitable to save resources and quickly receive results.

Testing new variants or ideas against each other: for this, good A/B testing tools:

are suitable.

How does UX testing fit within UX methods?

User-Experience or User-Research methods can be used throughout the product development process and product lifecycle. Generally speaking, user research differentiates between qualitative and quantitative methods. Quantitative UX methods

give you numbers, data, facts, and answers to: What? How much? How often? How strong?Qualitative UX methods

give the why and allow you to collect more detailed and realistic insights with open questions.

In the following overview, we have divided proven UX design methods for you. The UX methods best suited to your use case essentially depend on your question and the goals of user research.

Overview UX Design Methods

Depending on the phase of product development, some methods are particularly suitable for quickly generating insights, others for securing strategic decisions along product development and optimization. To meet the different requirements within your UX testing, you can also rely on so-called mixed methods. Mixed-Methods Design

refers to an approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The goal is for you to always be able to link the results so that you gain as deep an understanding as possible of your target group and the question.

Conclusion on User-Experience Testing

If you want to develop enthralling and successful digital products, secure innovations, and specifically improve conversion rates, then you can no longer avoid UX testing. Testing and user research doesn't have to be complicated and time-consuming. Good crowd and UX testing tools in combination with suitable UX methods enable you nowadays to swiftly generate knowledge about your target groups and optimize products.

With the deep understanding of the actual needs and goals of your users, you can then develop products much better and continuously improve customer experiences in agile loops and iterations.

Bonus tip for people with little time and resources: Guerilla Research

The most important thing is to collect insights. Stakeholders who don't yet understand the value of good user research might find the benefits harder to convey. Different questions might come up:
How is the UX research project supposed to fit into the budget?
Is there enough time internally for user research?

Is all the effort worth it?

Sometimes not all stakeholders can be directly convinced of the added value and necessity of UX testing and user research, so you have to be creative. Guerilla research is one of these creative methods.

Page Experience User Experience

Author

Dennis Fäckeler

Dennis Fäckeler ist Chief Growth Officer bei Userlutions.com, der UX-Agentur aus Berlin. Der gebürtige Sauerländer hat Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen und Marketing Management studiert, das Marketing bei Homelike aufgebaut und geleitet und verschiedene E-Commerce Projekte wie Druckerpatronen.de mit aufgebaut. Sein Fokus liegt auf Performance, Business Intelligence und Growth Marketing.

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