Expertly-executed usability testing for websites, apps and more – delivering unbeatable user insight.
When you’re committing long-term investment to the development of a new product or digital transformation strategy, or to improving the performance of your current digital channels, you need the highest levels of confidence before you commit to any decisions.
At Box UK our consultants have hundreds of hours of User Experience (UX) testing under their belts for clients across a wealth of industries – not least FMCG, finance, membership and education – and we offer a number of different user testing services that fit the bill no matter what your particular need.
What is usability testing?
Catering to your unique timescales and environments, our agile usability testing services provide in-depth insight into your users, giving you the confidence you need to make decisions about features and roadmaps as well as satisfying your stakeholders that budgets are being appropriately spent.
By employing a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods in our UX testing programmes you’ll get a rich picture of user behaviour that gets to the very heart of their needs, motivations and expectations. And if your digital product or service is already live, usability testing can provide you with insight into behavioural patterns and user perceptions to help you understand how it’s currently performing – and what you can do to improve.
Every one of our projects begins with a collaborative workshop, led by a senior UX consultant and shaped by insight from tools such as Google Analytics and heat maps service Hotjar. It is here that you will agree objectives, define user types, and map out the key user journeys and tasks to be tested.
Your UX consultant will then create a bespoke test plan that details exactly how your programme of testing activity will be executed – from participant recruitment through to the carefully-crafted test script.
Depending on your particular needs this test plan may draw on a number of UX testing approaches, but no matter what techniques are used, your consultant will analyse and interpret all findings to deliver you a comprehensive summary report.
How can we help?
Whatever your requirements, as an experienced agile usability testing agency we have the skills and expertise to help you. Your usability testing report will include:
- Observation notes, task timings, success rates and participant feedback, highlighting common patterns, key findings and priority areas to focus on.
- Any additional findings such as the output from architecture reviews, content audits, site search analysis, and navigation and taxonomy assessment.
- Results from tree testing, card sorting and five-second testing activities.
- Relevant industry data and supplementary UX research, including competitor analysis, to understand how your service performs against usability standards.
- Prioritised short-, medium- and long-term recommendations for improvement, providing clear next steps to share with your wider team.
Our approach to usability testing
Our range of UX testing approaches means that whatever your particular needs, we have the solution, with a range of methods including:
Guerrilla UX testing
Guerrilla UX testing is conducted using portable equipment and loosely-defined test scripts in natural environments – a lightweight approach that particularly lends itself to finding out what users do and don’t like about individual elements of your website or application. As the planning and execution of these sessions requires less time and lower overheads than other usability testing methods, guerrilla testing can also, importantly, be conducted frequently throughout your project.
Remote user testing
Of course, in some cases it may be difficult for participants to attend usability testing sessions in person. In these cases conducting moderated testing remotely means you’ll still get the rich, qualitative insight you need. Unmoderated remote usability testing, on the other hand, allows participants to follow pre-defined test scripts in their own time – delivering large volumes of quantitative results, and quickly.
Laboratory testing
Lab-based testing is one of the most powerful means of uncovering usability issues in your site and application. The specialist facilities available at Box UK mean clients can monitor the moderated in-person usability testing session via remote video link – whether in our dedicated observation room or from anywhere else in the world. Using the latest technology means that you can discuss activity as it’s taking place without running the risk of compromising the accuracy and trustworthiness of results through the use of one-way mirrors.
We also offer a range of specialised testing services including focus group usability testing, mobile usability testing, web accessibility testing, and user testing with both UK and international audiences, to give you targeted insight to support your digital strategy.
Benefits of usability testing
Whether you’re launching a new product or are in the process of improving something that already exists, understanding what your users truly think is crucial, as the best-designed websites and applications – with the highest return on investment – result from researching the needs, motivations, expectations, contexts and constraints of the people who will use them.
Undertaking a programme of UX testing will deliver you improvements in both user satisfaction and business performance, by revealing common drop-off points and areas of complexity along with the improvements needed to enable visitors to complete tasks quickly and seamlessly.
By testing with users on a variety of representative devices (guided by your analytics and user research techniques) you’ll also improve cross-device performance and ensure your website or application keeps pace with changing technology trends. Direct user feedback additionally allows us to capture valuable insight into new features and innovations that can deliver crucial competitive advantage, and help drive the future growth of your digital platforms.
The objective evidence gathered through usability testing also supports fast, effective decision-making and provides a shared vision for everyone on your team to work towards while helping introduce a culture of user-centred design that focuses attention on the user and their needs, to extend the value of your testing programme long beyond your initial project.
Middlesex University
To gain the rich qualitative insight Middlesex University required to assess the effectiveness of their online platform, we embarked on an extensive programme of website user testing.
Conducting testing with four representative user groups across three different devices and multiple user journeys, we provided the educational institution with the insight needed to move its digital strategy forward, along with expert recommendations for further improvement and refinement.
RCN
With the help of Box UK’s UX consultants, the Royal College of Nursing used their annual Congress to find out what members thought about their brand-new digital platform, while it was still in beta.
Using a combination of user experience testing approaches to gather feedback – including conducting 114 guerrilla testing sessions over the course of three days – our consultants extracted insight to help guide future development plans, producing a series of prioritised recommendations for the RCN to take away.
Best User Experience Testing in a Project
Best Mobile Testing Project
FAQs
What kind of questions do usability tests answer?
Usability testing will provide you with insight into what users think about your website or application as well as common patterns of behaviour, to help guide future design decisions. You’ll be able to understand any common barriers and pain points, and what you can do to address these in order to increase satisfaction, engagement and conversion rates.
The qualitative and quantitative insight delivered through different usability testing approaches also enables you to benchmark current performance of your User Interface (UI) design and measure the impact of any improvement activities. We’ll provide you with the results of user surveys rating various aspects of your website or application – including a Net Promoter Score where relevant – along with in-depth analysis of their journeys and feedback, informing our expert recommendations.
Where required, direct quotes and video clips can be included in your report to give you the evidence you need to shape your future strategy roadmap, and demonstrate to senior stakeholders the business case for further investment.
Why and when should I run user testing?
User experience testing can deliver value throughout the full lifecycle of your website or application. Conducting testing with low-fidelity UI design prototypes during the build phase can help identify and resolve any usability problems at an early stage to avoid unexpected costs appearing later in the build or following launch – when fixes can be up to 100 times as expensive as those made before development is complete.
Conducting final user testing for a product’s usability validates that your site or application performs well before significant investment is committed, helping improve project margins and enabling you to focus your budget on extending and enhancing services to create additional value for your business and your users.
Usability testing is also ideal for diagnosing issues with a website or application that you feel is underperforming, enabling you to pinpoint areas for improvement and providing a cost-effective way to enhance performance. It’s also important to regularly test your websites and applications, to identify areas for ongoing improvement, as well as uncovering additional opportunities that may have been overlooked.
Why is user testing important for your app, site or platform?
The returns from usability testing activities have been proven to be significant and, importantly, long-term, and with usability increasingly a dominant competitive differentiator, it is a critical consideration for all organisations.
By observing how users representative of your target audience really interact with your services, usability testing delivers an independent picture of what is and isn’t working on your app, site or platform; reducing the risk of false assumptions being made and keeping all decisions focused on the needs of real-world users to ensure that your final products are as useful and usable as possible.
Testing is particularly important if you serve a highly-specific or particularly diverse user base, and at Box UK we work with specialist recruitment partners to ensure your testing participants reflect your real users and help you balance what may be multiple complex requirements.
How do you perform a usability test?
Your usability testing plan will be tailored according to the specific techniques being used and following discussion of your target audience, device requirements and any additional considerations, providing a web usability testing checklist to ensure priority areas and journeys are covered.
Typically though, usability testing is performed by asking participants to complete a series of tasks on a website or application, and studying and analysing their actions. Participants are often encouraged to use a ‘think aloud’ technique to provide greater insight into their first impressions, mental models, and expand on any areas of particular interest.
In moderated UX testing scenarios participants are guided through these tasks by a UX consultant, and observed by a second consultant watching via a streaming video link. A camera will be used to record the participant’s actions and audio (as they speak aloud) during the moderated test, while specialist software records screen activity (and finger gestures if touchscreen devices are used). Eye tracking studies can also be conducted, to assess how test participants understand your site or application and its content.
In unmoderated user experience testing – which is used to cost-effectively gather large volumes of quantitative insight – recordings of participants and their screens are captured along with survey data, to support subsequent analysis and recommendations.
