Contents 1. What is Usability Testing? 2. Why Is Usability Testing Important? 3. What Can be Avoided with Usability Testing? 4. Impact of Usability Testing on User Experience (UX) 5. Steps to Perform Usability Testing 6. Examples of Usability Testing Use Cases 7. Top 7 Usability Testing Tools In 2022 8. Conclusion 9. How Can TestingXperts Help with Your Usability Testing Needs

Software testing and quality assurance go a long way in ensuring digital businesses release top-notch products. However, if product testing and QA fails to focus on the end user’s perspective, the result might be devastating. When creating new applications or updating existing ones, it is crucial to ensure that users find it easy and quick to navigate through the application. This is where usability testing comes into the picture and enables product companies to deliver customer-centric digital products.

What is Usability Testing?

Usability or user experience (UX) testing is the process of measuring how easy an application flow or design is to use with a group of testers or real-life users. It usually involves observing users as they attempt to complete tasks and can be done for different types of designs. It is often conducted repeatedly, from early development until a product’s release. A small set of target end-users use an application to expose usability defects.

Whitney Quesenbery, former President of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UXPA), shared the 5 Es of usability testing given below:

• Effective: How effectively or accurately are the goals achieved

• Efficient: How quickly are the goals met

• Engaging: Is the user interface pleasant and satisfying to use

• Error Tolerant: How well the product prevents errors and can help users recover from their mistakes

• Easy to Learn: How well the product supports initial orientation and continued learning

Usability testing mainly focuses on ease of usage, the flexibility of application to handle controls, and the ability to meet its objectives. Given the benefits of usability testing, it is essential to perform usability testing as a part of the product development lifecycle.

Why Is Usability Testing Important?

One of the critical reasons why testing the application’s usability is essential is that there are many similar applications to choose from. Users nowadays simply move to other applications if they cannot figure out how to use or navigate them quickly.

Usability testing aims at gathering as much feedback as possible on how real users interact with the application as early as possible and as often as possible. This enables product businesses to identify design issues before the application reaches the final build. If usability testing is left until the final build, further changes take more time and effort. Easy-to-use apps and websites increase user satisfaction, whereas apps that are not at par with the usability conventions confuse the users and result in revenue losses for the respective businesses.

App/website usability testing enables enterprises to:

• Measure users’ satisfaction with the application’s interface

• Discover the app’s possible weaknesses

• Discover what the users like the best about the app

• Perform tests in real-world scenarios

• Validate localization and personalization features

• Ensure cross-platform compatibility

• Ensure network, device, and operating system compatibility

• Receive helpful feedback on how the app can be improved

• Implement the improvements and boost customer retention

• Provide a great UX

What Can be Avoided with Usability Testing?

QA teams should include usability testing as an ongoing process throughout the SDLC. Doing so will enable teams to streamline the application development by understanding how the end users will respond. Here are a few issues that can be taken care of with usability testing:

• Inefficient design layout

• Navigation issues

• Inefficient app performance across platforms and networks

• Ineffective tasks that demand too much user effort

• Poor performance leading to app uninstallation

• Common errors on the page

• Typos, grammar, and spelling errors within the content

• Inconsistent branding

Impact of Usability Testing on User Experience (UX)

Usability testing is a critical process in developing and delivering user-friendly products. Unlike most forms of software testing, real users are involved in performing usability testing along with professional testers. Only through various usability testing methods can the product stakeholders know unbiased opinions regarding the application’s likes, dislikes, struggles, and uniqueness. While testers may run different usability testing methods to test the application’s ease of usage, the process typically involves a real-life user or tester using the application or performing a series of tasks to ensure they are delivered with a great user experience.

Types of usability testing methods:

• Usability lab

• Guerilla tests

• Screen or video recording

• Leverage Usability testing partners

• Contextual inquiry

Steps to Perform Usability Testing

Examples of Usability Testing Use Cases

• Is the system easy to learn?

• Does the application add value to the target audience?

• Are the content, color, icons, and images aesthetically pleasing?

• Are the controls used self-explanatory?

• Is the application responsive on all the targeted devices and operating systems?

• Is the necessary help available for users to understand the application?

• Is the navigation minimal to reach the desired screen?

• Is the scrolling minimum?

• Is the format of screen/pages in the application/website uniform?

Top 7 Usability Testing Tools In 2022

Conclusion

Usability testing is required by all business applications as it gives first-hand information about whether the product meets the user’s expectations. It is very helpful for getting user reactions and feedback about the product.

Leverage TestingXperts usability testing services and gain insights about product experience in advance to ensure its success.

How Can TestingXperts Help with Your Usability Testing Needs

• Talented pool of Usability testing experts to guide you on the strategy

• Assistance in coming up with a list of sample users based on application characteristics, business objectives, and user demographics

• Ability to perform crowdsource testing through the wide user community

• In-depth survey forms that ensure real user usability testing

• Comprehensive usability reports along with detailed recommendations for improvement

Talk to our QA experts today.

The post How to Perform Usability Testing – A Quick Guide first appeared on TestingXperts.

Enterprises and businesses are in a fast-paced environment thinking all the time about a faster time to market and quicker return on their investments. But, in reality with the ever-changing user expectations, there is an emerging need for businesses to concentrate on their software’s usability which includes the ease of usage of the application or the product along with the efficiency of the interfaces.

Contents 1. What is Usability Testing (UT) All About? 2. Why Should Usability Software Testing Be a Part of SDLC? 3. Benefits of Usability Testing 4. At What Stage Are These Usability Tests Conducted? 5. What are the top Usability Testing Tools for Enterprises? 6. Conclusion

What is Usability Testing (UT) All About?

Usability testing is a unique and effective way to identify and fix any product or application related usability issues and ensures to deliver an amazing UX for the end-users. It is like a black box testing of an application to ascertain if the product built is convenient to use and easy to learn.

It is typically an assessment of how easy is it to use the software’s user interface along with the ease of navigation of the app’s flow. Especially, it is the user interface which is the key to success for all mobile applications and for websites that deal with e-commerce applications.

Why Should Usability Software Testing Be a Part of SDLC?

The basic idea behind the usability software testing is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes, identify any pain points, inefficient loading of screens or any other hindrances that might occur while using the product. This sort of user experience testing should necessarily be a critical component of any software development lifecycle (SDLC) as it can help businesses to get the desired product with all relevant features at a first-hand.

It further helps to protect your brand and ensures higher ROI when once the software is launched into the market. Such applications that are tested for their usability are bound to deliver greater success and helps to be ahead of your competitors. Moreover, if the application does not meet the user expectations, then the entire purpose of application development is lost at a higher end.

According to one of the Forbes Technology Council post, it states that Usability testing should start as soon as there are tasks for a user to complete, because the earlier that product teams can start getting feedback from users on what they are building, the better it is.

It is to be noted that many businesses and even enterprises of mid-sized or large, are not factoring usability testing in their SDLC workflow. Some of the reasons could be, “It’s too expensive, it’s not in our budget,” or “We don’t need to do user testing, or is it so important now or let’s just focus on other testing aspects.” But, in reality, usability testing services are needed to know about the various aspects related to the real-time usability of their software, and hence is a need today for businesses to make use of these services and be in-line with the advantages it brings about.

Benefits of Usability Testing

1. Provides insights on product/apps learning curve variations:

The learning curve behind the software or the application should be the least as today’s users have very less time to even take a second to understand the functionality. If there is complexity in the usability, then they will dump that web or mobile app and might move to the nearest competitor.

Hence, by performing usability testing in the right way, at the right time with the right set of people, it reduces the risk of building the wrong product; thereby saving time, money and other precious resources. Further, if it is done at an early stage when the product is at the paper prototyping stage, it helps to find the user issues quickly and it could work out cheaper to fix them.

It also helps to understand the user’s success rate and time spent to complete a particular task. There are many success cases where usability testing has proved to be a good exercise in terms of ROI.

2. Defines the ease of application usage:

Usability testing being a black box testing technique, establishes whether the users feel at ease with the application or with the website they use. The ease of usage is bound to deliver better end-user retention and ensures more downloads in case of mobile apps and helps to uphold brand identity.

3. Delivers first-hand information on user interface perspectives:

Usability tests help identify if there is any preliminary design issue or any other intervening issues with the user interface at the first level. It helps to throw insights on certain issues that could not be thought about at the initial designing phase.

4. Furnishes real-time usability insights early:

The goal of usability testing is to better understand how real-time users interact with your product and how best to improve the product usage based on the results. In a typical usability test, real-time users try to accomplish formulated goals or tasks with a product under controlled conditions to derive defined results.

5. Delivers quicker design inputs with stakeholder’s participation:

Usually, all the stakeholders should be equally involved as each might have a different view point for a design decision. Being subjective by nature, design decision often leads to long debates among stakeholders. Thus, most often design decisions are influenced by stakeholders and such interactions helps in iterating and validating design concepts effectively. It gives objectivity to design debates and it helps in taking fact-based design decisions early.

6. Uplifts especially Omni-channel experience:

When you log on to an e-commerce application or a website and if it fails to give the desired and required experience, then it adversely affects the brand’s loyalty. Usability tested applications lure customers with effective UX and sustain their interest in the brand and users continue to prefer the same brand over competitors due to its significant ease of usage and excellent UX.

At What Stage Are These Usability Tests Conducted?

These Usability tests can be conducted at different stages of the applications design process. They are broadly divided into the Formative tests and Summative tests.

Formative Tests:

These are usually the low profile tests that are conducted to gain insights through prototypes. They are usually conducted during the very initial development phase using paper prototypes which can be done anywhere and a formal lab is not required. Moreover, these tests can also be done just between a moderator and a participant.

This method helps observe the behavior of the users to find out what works and what doesn’t work. Users are given specific tasks to complete and observers watch their body language, facial expressions, emotions and encourage them to “think aloud” i.e. speak up whatever comes to their mind while using the product. Some of the results of a formative test may be in the form of user comments such as emotions or any visible action changes.

Summative Tests:

These tests are of high profile nature and are related towards the metrics capture. These tests are usually carried out at the end of the development stage and at this stage usability of a product is validated which gives answers to how usable is the product, or draws a strong comparison against its competitor products.

It is conducted in usability labs or remotely using many tools available where users can perform the tests using their computers or using their mobile phones.

What are the top Usability Testing Tools for Enterprises?

1. Userlytics:

2. Crazy Egg:

3. Optimizely:

4. Qualaroo:

Conclusion:

Usability testing is needed for all business applications as it gives a piece of first-hand information about whether the product meets the user expectations and is very helpful for getting user reactions and feedback about the product. Hence, businesses need to leverage usability testing services to gain insights about their product in advance and be sure of their product’s success and eventually safeguard their brand.

The post Top 6 Facts Why Businesses Should Embrace Usability testing first appeared on TestingXperts.

Web applications are more than just simple information-based websites. The increase in size and complexities together with shorter development cycles in Agile and recurrent changes in requirements present numerous QA and testing challenges.

Contents 1. Web Application Testing 2. Web Application Testing Practices 3. What are the benefits of web application testing? 4. How to test Web Application? 5. What are the challenges faced in web application testing? 6. What are the tools for Web Application testing? 7. Conclusion

Web Application Testing

With all the impending issues, web app testing holds more importance than ever. However, testing a web application is not just an ordinary task, and depends on several factors such as compatibility across various browsers, application performance, user experience, user acceptance, ensuring proper security, etc.

The enterprises must deploy skilled testers to assess all aspects of the website across platforms, browsers, and devices. The testers must always implement web application testing best practices in order to produce accurate and reliable test results without increasing testing times.

Web application testing Practices:

1. Emphasis on Cross-Browser Compatibility Testing

With more and more users accessing websites on their mobile phones and tablets, enterprises are exploring more ways to make their websites mobile-friendly. Responsive web design makes the web applications deliver a rich user experience on every device. To ensure that the web application is able to work well on all browsers and devices, developers build responsive websites by using open web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Hence, it becomes important to perform cross-browser compatibility testing to ensure that the website is accessible on every available version of individual web browsers.

2. Evaluate the Application’s Performance Under Various Conditions

In addition to assessing the proper working of the application on all devices and browsers, it is also equally important to ensure that it does not crash under heavy loads. Sometimes minor flaws in the coding or design can affect the website’s performance adversely. Therefore, it is important to perform load testing and evaluate how the application performs under varying loads. There are various automation load testing tools available to accelerate load testing.

3. Choose the Right Parameters for Usability Testing

Usability and the user-experience of the web applications are of the utmost importance to keep the visitors engaged and convert them into customers. Hence, it is important to evaluate the usability of the applications based on most appropriate parameters. Performing usability testing on the application before its release is a best practice. Usability testing involves several parameters such as UI design, speed, navigability, content readability, and accessibility.

4. Validate all Security Issues with Security Testing

Underestimating the significance of web application security is a ticking time bomb. Even a single vulnerability can lead to a massive data breach that can shake even the largest of companies down to its grounds, causing a negative impact, substantial financial consequences, and the loss of public trust. It is therefore imperative to ensure that the web application is thoroughly tested on the security front. A number of strategies that should be incorporated into the web application security testing are as follows:

• Defining coding standards and quality controls

• Creating strategies based on both internal and external challenges

• Using industry standards as a benchmark

• Implementing a cross-functional approach to policy building

5. Integrate Exploratory Testing in the Software Development Lifecycle

Exploratory testing reduces testing time and discovers more defects. As a regular practice in the software testing approach, testers write and execute test cases simultaneously. When failing to understand the shortcomings of exploratory testing, they are surrounded by more defects. By integrating exploratory testing with other black-hat and white-hat software testing techniques, the limitations of web app testing can be easily overcome. The integration can help in producing more reliable test results while reducing the testing time significantly.

How to test Web Application?

There are six important steps to test a web application:

1. Functionality testing:

This step ensures that the functionalities of a web application are properly functioning or not. Functional testing takes place in the source code.

Functionality testing includes:

• Determining the data input and entry
• Test case execution
• Functions need to be properly identified because the software runs effectively through the integration of functions
• Actual results must be analysed

2. Usability testing:

This testing type focuses on how user experiences while using a particular web application. Efforts are put in to ensure that the application is built in-line with user needs. This testing method makes it a point to see that a user is able to easily navigate through the various functions of an application. The content that is displayed in the web application must also be clearly visible.

3. Interface testing:

This testing method ensures that the three main components of a web application which are web server, web browser and database are running harmoniously. This testing type checks whether there is any interruption while the data is being transferred. Upon that, the communication taking place between various interfaces is also thoroughly checked.

4. Compatibility testing:

This testing methodology ensures that a particular web application is compatible with all browsers. Compatibility testing takes place at three levels which are browser compatibility, operating system compatibility and device compatibility.

5. Performance testing:

In here, a specific web application is tested in terms of how better it can perform under stress conditions and heavy load. How the application is able to perform under different internet speeds, networks and browsers are also worked upon. Stress testing is one form of testing which is used to determine what amount of stress a web application can go through until it ceases to function. Also, how an application performs when it is running through various hardware configurations and what are the mechanisms that need to be strategized in order to prevent the application from crashing. All the above-mentioned aspects are thoroughly scrutinized and tested under the scope of performance testing<.

6. Security testing:

The final and most important step of testing a web application is Security testing. When a web application is being built, there is a lot of data that is being used and stored. Some of this data can be sensitive and needs to be protected at any cost, failure of which can cause a lot of technical issues for a web application to function properly. In order to fully secure these types of mission-critical data, security testing is implemented.

What are the benefits of web application testing?

Compatibility across browsers:

The practice of web application testing helps the applications to be compatible across all web browsers. Every user uses different browsers while surfing websites. The practice of web application testing effectively helps the apps to function the same for every user using different browsers.

Improves website performance:

The methodology of web application testing successfully helps to overcome the slow app performance. Applications with slow performance are not the choice for any user and Google even. Web app testing helps to resolve the load time delays caused due to the graphics, code, etc. and maintains a quality application.

Secures App from vulnerabilities:

Security is one of the important concerns for every application. Day-by-day the rate of website hacks is excessively increasing, so there is an immediate need for every small and large enterprises to practice the web app testing to ensure that the applications are free from the different kinds of threats.

Ensures high quality of the application:

The end-to-end testing practice effectively helps in enhancing the performance and functionality of the app. And, this way of testing helps to find and resolve the bugs at earliest. Thus, a high-quality app will be achieved before the release.

Reduces the Time and Cost Consumption:

The end-to-end testing practice through automation tools reduces the occurrence of errors and the performance of repetitive test cases. This will help the enterprises to achieve quality results with reduced time and cost.

What are the challenges faced in web application testing?

Challenge in interacting with Firewalls:

There are several instances where a firewall or a port can block a web application due to the issues of security certificates. Therefore, to avoid these scenarios, it is mandatory to test the application across various firewalls.

Challenge for validating Web Services:

The modern web applications are prominently depending on the web service layers such as JSON/REST or XML/SOAP to exchange data between systems or applications. So, the need for testing these web services has become huge, but the web automating testing tools are not the ones to tackle the services. Hence, testing web services is one of the important challenges faced by the teams.

Challenge to maintain consistency across browsers:

Interactive and Scalable web applications are always the preference of any user. If any inconsistency is experienced by the user while surfing on different browsers, then this can become a huge negative affecting the enterprise brand and growth. Hence, while performing usability testing, the developers need to monitor the interactivity and scalability of the app across different browsers by using different hardware.

Challenge to overcome performance issues:

An application with slow loading time is not a choice for any user and this drive affects the enterprise’s brand and app future. Hence, to overcome this challenge, developers should find the reasons influencing performance testing such as extending application features, interoperability, and integration issues, etc.

Challenge to secure app from data breaches:

Cyber threats are exceptionally increasing in number and affecting the user’s sensitive data which is available in the apps. In order to avoid data breaches and loss of information, it is important to regulate security testing practices. This will help to avoid the issues related to DDoS attacks and other cyber attacks and if there are any found, they can be resolved at the earliest.

What are the tools for Web Application testing?

Selenium: 

Selenium is one of the leading open-source web automation tools. It helps to perform automation across different devices and browsers. Also, there are several options to choose the language for writing test scripts such as C#, Python, Java, PHP, JavaScript, etc.

TestComplete:

This is an easy-to-use functional test automation tool. It allows in creating and maintaining automated regression tests on various devices. This tool is efficient to run 1,500 tests in parallel across remote test environments.

Qase:

This is a modern cloud-based test automation tool that is designed for helping QA and development teams. This tool doesn’t limit to run test cases or projects.

Zephyr:

Zephyr is also a top tool providing end-to-end solutions for many small and big enterprises. A one-click can enable to integrate with Jenkins, JIRA, Bamboo, etc. Also, it provides a good number of deployment choices for the user.

Robot Framework:

This is an open-source tool with an test automation framework. It helps to drive a keyword-driven approach for acceptance test-driven development and acceptance testing.

Conclusion

Every application whether web, mobile, or desktop-based, is experiencing more users. Considering the device variety, the ease of access has grown fundamentally over the past few years. With so much going on in the software domain, there is no way that testing will get easier. TestingXperts follows a comprehensive QA strategy that handles the unique requirements and challenges associated with web application testing. Connect with our experts to improve the overall user experience of your application with our testing strategies.