Overview
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Mobile user tests – Improve mobile touchpoints quickly and easily

author: Johanna Waldmann
Mobile Screens und Leute die Feedback dazu geben

3 essential lessons gained from current user tests and key factors that help you to boost digital performance, particularly on mobile devices.

Reasons

User testing is a quick and effective way of optimising the user journey, finding leverage for conversions and prioritising the right measures on your digital roadmap. We've summarised the reasons for focusing on mobile testing and how this can help you become a mobile hero for your customers here.

Mobile growth

Mobile consumer activity has increased significantly – Brands are still focusing on desktop users

Over the last 2 years e-commerce and mobile e-commerce have immediately become matters of life and death for businesses. Mobile surfing and shopping have rocketed, since new target groups have now become mobile users.

Surprisingly, although there have been lockdowns and people have spent more time at home, instead of using PCs and laptops it's mobile devices that have accounted for the greater growth in traffic. Most usage has been explained by occupational purposes. Smartphones, however, are very commonly used for private purposes. Users mostly consume entertainment offerings (podcasts, videos, apps for meditation & relaxation); or they conduct numerous daily purchases like shopping & household tasks, such as ordering food, looking for recipes, searching for and ordering consumer goods, and all kinds of Click & Collect activities. Mobile shopping has now become commonplace.

Mobile entertainment

For many brands and businesses traffic has moved even more strongly into the mobile domain. The only digitally successful brands are those with a universal, emotionally appealing and visitor-friendly user journey – that can be consumed in a mobile environment.

How do businesses manage to create a fantastic user experience?

A study conducted by McKinsey shows consistent and analytical design & customer orientation can generate financial performance improvements of up to 33%. The following 4 factors explain the success of these leading companies, and why they will continue to be digital heros.

  • Iterative development

    Repeated, ongoing user research, testing and speedy implementation of changes, all reduce the risk of unwanted developments.

  • Analytical approach

    Measure design performance as strictly as commercial results.

  • Everyone's responsible

    User-centric design is everybody's priority - not just the duty of one department.

  • No silos

    Dissolve internal barriers between physical, digital and service design.

Think mobile!

For many brands, the intention of turning heads with a brand in the mobile realm, of providing pinpoint communication, great service and an all-round excellent mobile user experience - is still not their top priority. So they're missing out on one of today's best opportunities to grow.

User testing is a cheap, quick and cost-efficient way of discovering the changes that need to be made to improve customer orientation for users of mobile devices, to raise your conversion rate and to stand out as a digital hero. Iterative user testing accompanies progress along the digital roadmap to take a business all the way from good to great.

Johanna Waldmann
Senior Digital Strategist

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What are the benefits of user testing?

User testing  and customer research doesn't have to be complicated and tedious. 5-7 short tests help to identify 80% of the obstacles users commonly encounter on their most important customer journeys.

Zeit Icon auf einem iPhone

Insightful

Testing is effective. Wherever we need to ask "Why exactly does the customer do that?, we need to employ qualitative user research methodologies, such as user testing, open-response questionnaires and panel interviews. These allow us to discover the motives, needs and 'pain points' of individual users. Ideally, this qualitative approach is complemented by quantitative evidence, such as from Google Analytics and Hotjar, to discover critical event triggers before they occur - like high bounce rates within the conversion process, or strange click behaviour. This also helps retrospectively when checking findings quantitively and measuring progress meaningfully.

Fokus auf den User auf einem iPhone

Impactful

Testing is effective. A profound understanding of, and insight into the problems faced by, test users allows precise changes to be made. Ideally, user testing is an ongoing procedure repeated along the route of your digital roadmap to provide an ongoing progress report in the course of digital transformation.

Hand mit Münzen auf einem iPhone

Cost-effective

Testing is cheap & and limits expenditure later. The earlier customer feedback is used when developing and launching products, the lower the costs. Rapid and precise tuning can be done and help to avoid expensive and disappointing failures.

Test everything

User testing enables you to test an immense range of digital touchpoints, products and innovations:

✔ Websites, apps, prototypes, marketing campaigns, landing pages, menus, newsletters, Social media
✔ Features, new products, new design, header variations, search functions etc.
✔ Job offers, employer branding initiatives
✔ Entire user journey: 360° check of central user case

The 3 major mobile challenges & what they teach us

Here, we've compiled a summary of the most important things learned from our most recent user testing activities. It provides an overview of what causes mobile users the greatest problems, and where minimal adjustments can be of major benefit.

Komplexe Produktsuche für Kunden

First challenge

A needle in a haystack - Product searches are complicated

Users are often overwhelmed by the range of products and don't know how to limit their searches, particularly using mobile devices.

Lessons

KISS!

  • Keep it as simple as possible

    Keep it short & simple (KISS) with search logic & categories.

  • Design makes the difference

    Users are more motivated to browse if they have visible search bars and fixed menus for orientation.

  • Try to display the most useful search results

    It pays to invest in search algorithms.

  • Dynamic filtres strengthen the context

    At the beginning, only display the key filtre categories, and only display subcategories if the detail filtre has been selected.

  • Speak the language of the user

    Understand the language of the user. If necessary, re-sort your products, re-categorise and even re-name them.

  • Set the tracking focus to searches & filtres in analytics

Textlawine ist im Anrollen

Challenge

2. Look out! Here comes a text avalanche

To find what they need, users are still being expected to sort through swathes of text that look even longer on mobile devices.

Lessons

Help me or entertain me!

  • Content must be useful, varied and entertaining!

  • Headlines are everything

    Today, time pressure causes users to scan rather than read.

  • Shorten content!

    Reworking and shortening content is an important content production task in itself and must not be overlooked.

  • Short videos, long videos and animations

    It has been proven that videos stimulate buying activity and are the most emotive means of communicating content.

  • Brand loyalty has decreased significantly due to the Corona pandemic

    Consequently, users 'bounce' more readily in the search for cheaper alternatives.

Komplizierter User Flow zwischen einzelnen Screens.

Challenge

3. Complicated procedures and products are shown in too much complexity

Users often lose patience and give up when a company's complex internal data structures are shown at the touchpoint.

Lessons

Take off your corporate spectacles

  • Start testing products and designs as early as possible

    Test at the prototype stage and definitely before the launch to identify blind spots and UX obstacles.

  • Always initiate the design process on mobile screens for digital touchpoints.

    This forces you to produce a compact look with short, precise bursts of information.

  • Design offerings & products to be as simple as possible

    Challenge yourself to create what you truly believe is the best, most compact solution: "Is it short and easy to understand?" What can we remove? How can we shorten?"

  • Especially during checkout procedures: There are key user expectations.

    Users punish you hard if essential information is held back until it's time to pay.

Test your website!

So you want to take the digital experience of user testing to the next level?