User research and user testing — shareholders’ view
Users want to tell you what would make them share their coin$, the question is, do you want to listen?
Let me give some statistics that would change your view about User Research and User Testing from being just some gibberish that your IT guys keep telling you in meetings.
- Successful A/B testing can bring a 50.7% increase in the average revenue per unique visitor for ecommerce sites. (VWO)
- The Obama campaign tested out various photos, videos, and website layouts, which increased the campaign’s website sign-up rate by a whopping 140%, boosting the funds gathered by a massive $75 million. (WIRED)
- SAP increased their conversion rate by 32.5% by using the color orange, while statistics behind A/B testing conducted by Performable showed that the company improved their conversion rate by 21% by using the color red. (Quicksprout)
- Google carried out its first A/B testing way back in 2000, in a bid to determine how many search results they should display per page. Then, 10 years later, Google was running around 7,000 of these tests per year. Currently, A/B testing facts reveal the number of A/B tests Google runs exceeds 10,000 per year. (Learning Hub)
User Research basically is the intentional study you make about users — knowing why they would need your product and how they would be using your product, which would in turn give your team the right information on how to create the perfect product that users want to interact with before they go to bed.
And User Testing is how you know what users are happy or sad about when they use your product.
We say it every day, “the world has gone digital”, we interact with them daily, from the time we wake up, when we go for a jog, at work, to when we are about to shut our eyes, digital platforms are a part of humans already.
Wouldn’t it then be nice that our interactions with them be as seamless as possible?
Luke Wroblewski made a tweet on 26 August 2019, talking about how 4 billion smartphone users on earth get to experience the bad UX on the web.
It is nearly impossible to create a good experience for users if they are not talking to you, because what data would you be working with then?. Assuming for users has proven to be a bad play in the past. A beta testing Amazon once carried out showed that some of their users in China thought that the magnifying glass (search icon) was a ping-pong paddle.
Who would have ever thought the Icon for search isn’t that recognizable for some people? Well, maybe no one, until Amazon carried out the user testing. I remember when I was trying to figure out how I would explain to my mum that whenever she wants to send a picture, a document, a video, a contact to someone on WhatsApp, all she had to do was click the icon that looks like a safety pin.
Every company needs to be on the same page with their users, so they are not just beating against the wind. You need to know if the next action you are taking for the product would get you more users or not. You need to know if the action would make the existing users stay or leave. You need to know why some users didn’t complete a process, and did not bother returning. If a product is naturally a go-to for users because it gives them little or no stress at all while using, that gives the product an obvious edge.
It is no news that Canva is an extremely used product. When they first started the team conducted some tests and noticed that some users did not complete their signing in process, because they felt they were not creative enough to design. Then they decided to add some little changes that would inspire normal people without a fore knowledge of design to want to actually use Canva.
Include your users in your product journey — they’re the only other people who will care about your vision as much as you do. UserTesting helped us understand what they needed on both a UX and emotional level. — Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva
Research is a very important part of product development that all companeis should pay attention to. Investing in a process that helps your users tell you what would make them spend time with you sounds exciting right?
Jennifer Derome2016, Canva uses UserTesting to optimize onboarding experience, accessed 9 July 2022, https://www.usertesting.com/blog/canva-case-study
A/B Testing Statistics, accessed 9 July 2022, https://truelist.co/blog/ab-testing-statistics/
