Usability Testing as a Marketing Strategy
Usability testing, sometimes known as user-experience (UX) testing, is the process of putting your product through its paces with actual users, while monitoring and documenting their interactions. Usability testing enables you to determine whether your product design is sufficiently usable for your users to achieve their objectives.
As a marketing strategy, usability testing involves having real people test the usefulness and viability of your products. Although you have autonomy over the nature of these tests, you must obtain the consent of the participants at specific intervals. You must also be open-minded about their feedback.
Usability testing can help you to understand the mindsets of your users, so you can package your products to meet their specifications. Often, usability testing gives you new perspectives on your product design. You may see users engage with your product in ways that you didn’t anticipate when you created it.
Usability testing can give you an edge in your marketing process: You can decipher the problems that users encounter when using your product—and, through competitive testing, with those of your competitors—and develop creative ways of rectifying them. If necessary, you can return to the drawing board and repackage your product before releasing it to the marketplace.
Undoubtedly, usability testing is a strategy that every marketer must employ if they’re planning to stay in the marketplace for long.
3 Lessons Marketers Need to Learn from Usability Testing
To achieve the best result, every marketer should try to integrate at least two or more usability studies into the marketing process for their product.
Although there are various usability-testing methods, finding the best approach for your marketing strategy shouldn’t be difficult. Now, let’s consider three lessons marketers can learn from usability testing.
1. Remember, the consumer is king.
One of the most important lessons you can learn from user-experience testing is that the consumer is king. Every action you take should have the goal of ensuring that you meet your customers’ needs. Through usability testing, you can learn about disparate customer preferences, then, as a marketer, sell your product by addressing them.
By conducting usability tests, you’ll learn that it’s not enough to sell whatever products your company has. Instead, you must make an effort to sell customer-centric products. It all comes down to what is best for your customers.
Do your products serve a purpose for your consumers? Do they understand how to use it? Are there ways in which they use it that you hadn’t thought about?
