Importance of Usability Testing for Web Applications

A large percentage of users nowadays access websites and web applications on their smartphones, tablets, and phablets. Likewise, users spend more time in mobile apps than mobile web. Hence, each web application must deliver immersive user experience like mobile apps to keep the users engaged. To make a web application deliver immersive user experience the developers have to focus on its accessibility, functionality, performance, usability, and security.

They further needs to perform a variety of tests to assess the web application’s user experience across various devices, platforms, browsers, and networks. They also need to evaluate the web application from the perspective of real users and in real user conditions. As a black box software testing technique, usability testing helps QA professionals to check if the end users can learn and use the web application without putting extra time and effort.

The usability testing results help the developers to decide if the web application is user friendly or not. The QA professionals assess the user-friendliness of the website based on key parameters like flow, layout, navigation, speed and content. They further compare the web application with similar websites based on these key parameters. Hence, an enterprise must perform usability testing to check if the features of the web application are easy to learn and easy to use. There are also a number of reasons why usability testing of web application must be an integral part of the software development lifecycle.

Understanding the Benefits of Usability Testing to Businesses and End Users

Enhance the Web Application’s User Experience

The user experience delivered by a web application determines its popularity in the longer run. A web application must allow users to complete a specific task without any hassle or delay to remain popular. Usability testing helps enterprises to assess the user-friendliness of their web applications, and identify all issues that require users to put additional time and effort to complete specific tasks. An enterprise cane easily ascertain the satisfaction scale of users, and fix all issues that prevent the web application from delivering optimal user experience. An enterprise can make it web application popular in a shorter amount of time by including usability testing in the QA process.

Test the Web Application from Perspective of End Users

While assessing the user-friendliness of a web application, the web application testing engineers focus on five important components of usability testing – learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors and satisfaction. The check the amount of time and effort required by both new users and experienced users to accomplish basic tasks. Also, they monitor the errors made by users and assess the severity of each error. At the same time, the testers also monitor the behaviour, attitude, and satisfaction level of end users while accessing the web application. The key components of usability testing helps QA professionals to identify and fix the factors affecting website user experience during the development process.

Evaluate the Web Application based on Key Parameters

There are a number of factors that deliver the usability and user experience of a web application. Hence, an enterprise must check if the end users can learn, understand and use the web application without any hassle. While performing usability testing, the QA professionals assess the quality of the website based on a set of parameters and from the perspective of end users. They assess the usability of the application based on key parameters like flow, navigation, user interface, loading speed and content. Also, they compare the web application with similar websites and web applications based on these criterions.

Ensure the End Users Do Not Face Any Problem

Many users nowadays abandon websites and web applications that are slow and complex. Hence, each enterprise must identify and fix all problems that users may face in future during the development process. The skilled testing professionals assess the user experience of a web application based on important parameters and real user conditions. Hence, the usability testing results help businesses to get all problems that end users may face in future during the development process. Hence, a business can make the web application popular by keeping users interested and engaged.

Identify and Fix the Bugs Not Visible to Developers

While evaluating the quality of a web application, developers and testers often fail to detect all defects and performance issues. The QA professionals must evaluate the application from the perspective of end users to detect the bugs, defects and performance issues while are not visible to developers. Usability testing enables QA professionals to assess features and performance of the web application from the perspective of end users. Hence, they can make the web application deliver optimal user experience by identifying and fixing all bugs and potholes in the development process.

Assess Quality of the Web Application More Effectively

Like other functional and non-functional testing techniques, usability testing also helps businesses to launch web application readily accepted by existing and new users. But usability testing, unlike other software testing techniques, is performed purely from the perspective of real users. Hence, an enterprise can always assess the web application’s user experience more accurately by integrating usability testing with functional, unit, integration, and smoke testing. The usability tests can further be modified to enhance test coverage and produce more reliable test results.

Test the Web Application under Real User Conditions

The usability and user experience delivered by a web application may differ across devices, platforms, browsers, and networks. Hence, the QA professionals must evaluate the website under real-world user conditions to assess its user experience more effectively. While performing usability testing, the QA professionals replicate how the web applications will be used by real users. They further evaluate the website in live environment to assess its user-friendliness and user experience accurately. Hence, enterprises can integrate usability testing with other testing techniques to evaluate the web application on varying real user conditions.

An enterprise can consider automating usability testing to assess the user-friendliness of a web application more efficiently. The usability testing tools to enable QA professionals to assess the user experience and user friendliness of the website on varying user conditions. Each enterprise also has option to combine various tools to assess the usability and user experience of the web application based on many parameters.