Usability testing is crucial in an industry dedicated to providing an excellent experience for those who use apps, products, and services. Usability testing’s primary purpose is to help design from the end user’s perspective. UX researchers have many methods for validating and testing product hypotheses and making design decisions.
Many methods are available, from well-respected lab-based usability tests to those that are more recent. There are so many options it can be overwhelming to choose the right one for you.
Let’s look at the most popular usability testing methods and compare them all. We’ll also identify the best use cases, advantages, and disadvantages for each.
Table of Contents
What is Usability Testing?
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is one part of usability testing. This involves testing mobile apps, websites, prototypes and wireframes, and software products to assess the user experience.
To test the product or website, the testing involves monitoring the user’s movements and experiences to determine how they interact with it. It’s an excellent way for users to identify unanticipated, even minor, issues and then resolve them to improve their experience. Companies want to make it easy to navigate their websites, use their products and reach their goals. Therefore, the method is focused on usability. The higher the usability, then the higher the conversion rate. Let’s take a look.
Benefits of Usability Testing
There are five key advantages to usability testing over other methods (e.g. surveys or questionnaires) of evaluating a product’s user experience.
- Our usability testing allows you to examine the user experience of your product or website in a direct, objective, and impartial manner.
- It is possible to resolve internal disputes by testing the usability of the website or product on real users.
- It is easy to conduct usability testing. You must find a quiet place and bring your portable recording equipment. You can have notes taken by someone in your group if you don’t own recording equipment.
- You can use usability testing to determine your users’ actions on your website or product.
- You can use usability testing to identify the problems with your product or website before spending a lot of money on a bad design.
- Intuitive design can increase customer usage and drive your product’s popularity.
Top 7 Usability Testing Methods for SaaS Products
Each method provides answers to your research questions. Your resources and your goals will influence the way you choose.
1. Performance Tests
SaaS applications must perform well. It is essential to test the app modules along with the workflow. Additionally, testers can assess the bandwidth performance expected during work. The team might estimate the application’s ability to handle loads and determine the maximum load by placing high loads on it.
SaaS providers must focus on performance when testing their products. Performance testing includes stress, load, and scaling tests. You need to test an application with different loads to evaluate its response. This includes loads that are higher than the average operating load. SaaS testing is also dependent on failure and recovery tests.
These tests verify that the system can recover from various types of disasters, including internal failures (for instance, when writing data into a database) and external (for example, power outages or internet connection problems).
2. Functional Tests
Functional testing is used to verify that an application works as it should. It takes into account the requirements and needs of the end user. It is implemented in a pre-determined environment using manual testing according to test plans. These tests are part of functional testing:
- To test app performance in different browsers, use the browser compatibility test.
- Every release, minor update, or integration will be subject to a regression test.
- Automated functional, regression, and validation tests.
- Reliability testing to identify app flaws and decrease the failure rate during deployment.
3. API Integration Testing
SaaS applications’ success depends on the ability to create third-party applications that use your API. This adds value to your product and makes it more valuable. API interface functionality, safety, performance, and documentation must be tested.
4. SaaS Products’ Features Testing
Functional testing is also known as testing in SaaS. There is a high demand for this type of testing. This is due to frequent releases and customer demands for quick fixes. Customers expect to be notified immediately if a function doesn’t work. Your SaaS product’s development and testing must be fast. Agile methods are the best way to get this speed. These allow you to begin testing as quickly as possible during your development cycle. Testing should be fast, efficient, and partially automated.
You can speed up the user’s access to your applications by making it a quick process. This requires QA teams to develop innovative ways to catch up to product development.
Unit testing allows the QA team to simulate incomplete components and visualize services. Automating regression testing allows them to perform simultaneous tests rather than waiting for the cycle’s end.
5. Conduct the Study
Participants should be asked to complete one task during the study without guidance or assistance. Measuring how long it takes for users to find your interface is essential. It is also a good idea to ask participants to think out loud. This will allow you to see what happens inside a user’s mind when interacting with your product. Ask them for feedback after they have completed each task.
These qualitative data can help you identify your design’s strengths and weaknesses.
6. First Click Testing
The first-click test measures whether users can quickly identify the location they need to navigate to complete a task.
How easy it takes for users to decide can help you determine how intuitive your website design and linking structure is. How do you implement this?
To see if users get stuck:
- Could you give them a checklist?
- Reward them for completing the tasks.
- Track their interactions with the UI.
You want to see if they follow the happy path. This will help you identify friction points and drop-offs within the product.
7. Testing via Recruiting People (Users)
Recruiting should be simple if you work on a project with existing customers. Reach out to the stakeholders or sales team and make contact with customers. Reach out to Facebook friends that fall within the target audience for a personal or in-house project. Another option is to ask your contacts for a referral. You can also ask for referrals from other members of your team. It is essential to find impartial participants who are not only willing to be “nice to you”, i.e. they like everything they see. To get the most out of the test, it would be helpful to have neutral feedback (good and bad). We recommend using services like validately.com or clicktale.com if you work with an external client for a larger project.
When recruiting, it can sometimes be challenging to describe what you are looking for in a user. Most people aren’t comfortable participating in user testing. Having at least 3-5 tests (remote and in-person). This should give you enough material to complete the first iteration.
You can offer coffee/tea, snacks, gift cards, or discount codes from the company to participants in exchange for their participation if you have the energy.
Conclusion
It is a great way to identify areas for improvement in your product. It is a must for every SaaS company to conduct it at least once during product development and once in a while when new features are introduced.
There are many ways to test usability, but none is superior. It all depends on the product you are pushing for, your audience, and what problem you’re trying to solve.
