Imagine a well-designed e-commerce platform that functions as expected yet still struggles to attract users. Everything works as intended, but why do customers still abandon their carts halfway?
Many teams focus on functionality and overlook experience, leading users to leave the app within minutes. Smooth functionality alone doesn’t ensure satisfaction; experiences that are intuitive, accessible, and enjoyable do. Product success is measured by functionality and an intuitive user experience. From our experience with businesses, we know that the true business differentiator is user experience (UX).
In this blog, we will explore what UX testing is, why it is essential, and how GAT teams help companies with UX testing and ensure customer success.
What is UX Testing?
UX testing is the process of how real users interact with a product, website, or application to discover usability problems and gauge how easy, efficient, and pleasant the experience is.
Foundation of UX Testing
A practical user experience is:
- Intuitive: Let users navigate confidently. So they can find what they need without stopping to figure it out.
- Quick: Keeps users engaged by reducing friction from start to finish.
- Visually clean: Provide a smooth, seamless navigation experience.
- Accessible: Allows differently-abled people to navigate the product with confidence.
- Consistent: Ensures user expectations without surprises or confusion.
UX testing vs functional testing
While functional testing evaluates product functionality, UX testing ensures the overall experience and user engagement. Together, they deliver a well-performed product and a seamless user experience that keeps users coming back.
Let’s dive deep into the difference:
|
Aspect |
Functional testing |
UX (user experience) testing |
|
Core question |
Does it work? |
Is it easy and intuitive to use? |
|
Primary focus |
Verifies that each feature functions as expected. |
Evaluates how natural, simple, and enjoyable the product feels to users. |
|
Example scenario |
A login button successfully logs in users. |
The same button works, but is too small to tap or poorly positioned, which frustrates users. |
|
Outcome |
Ensures functionality of core business logic.. |
Ensures satisfaction, engagement, and smooth interaction. |
The real-world impact
Let’s look at a real example of how UX testing translates into measurable outcomes:
Carry1st, a gaming & payments platform, was facing friction in its checkout flows, especially given the vast variety of local payment methods. GAT identified usability and performance issues. After addressing them, Carry1st saw a 12% increase in checkout completions for some payment types.
This demonstrates how thoughtful UX testing converts user feedback into tangible performance gains.
Why UX Testing Matters for Modern Businesses
Oftentimes, something as minor as a cluttered layout or poorly designed form can instantly disrupt engagement. At Global App Testing, we place UX testing on par with functional validation.
Here’s why:
- Retention & loyalty: Identifying confusing screens, navigation gaps, and points of frustration in UX testing enables the team to refine workflows and make the user journey smoother.
- Conversion growth: Small changes in faster checkout, clearer CTAs, or improved layout flow can directly increase customer satisfaction. UX testing helps identify such UI improvements.
- Accessibility compliance: It ensures your product is well-designed to meet the needs of regular users and users with disabilities who have visual, auditory, or motor limitations.
- Global readiness: UX testing ensures consistent performance across devices, languages, and regions. Through crowdtesting, teams can validate how users from different markets experience and respond to the product.
GAT UX Testing Services
At GAT, we treat UX testing as a business essential; every friction point impacts conversions. Our specialized testing turns UX strategy into actionable insights to resolve issues before launch
Types of UX Testing Services
Different UX testing types address usability, performance, and accessibility. In practice, the most thorough evaluation combines all of them. Our services include:
Types of UX Testing Services
1. Usability testing
By examining how users interact with an application, Usability testing helps teams uncover and resolve issues that hinder ease of use. It focuses on identifying friction points and navigation gaps that affect the overall experience. GAT’s testing teams summarize findings from a user’s perspective to guide meaningful usability improvements.
2. Accessibility testing
Evaluating a platform against standards such as WCAG and ADA helps determine its level of inclusivity and compliance. GAT testers replicate real user interactions with assistive technologies to identify accessibility barriers and suggest practical improvements that make the product easier to use for everyone.
3. Cross-device and platform testing
Testing across devices and operating systems ensures consistent performance and prevents UX disruptions. GAT’s global testers run real-world checks to uncover issues early and maintain design consistency.
4. Localization and regional UX testing
By checking content, design, and functionality across regions, localization testing ensures consistency and proper adaptation for each market. It focuses on cultural and linguistic accuracy to deliver region-appropriate user experiences.
Common UX Challenges and Pain Points
At Global App Testing, we’ve seen even the most experienced design and product teams face recurring user experience challenges that quietly impact engagement. Even minor design oversights can impact user satisfaction.
We identify these recurring challenges, including:
- Confusing navigation: Many applications are designed with minimal design. But when users struggle to find what they need, it leads to frustration.
- Visual overload: Complex visuals lead to cluttered UI and lower task completion rates. Test the app as a new user or compare its interface with user-familiar apps.
- Accessibility gaps: Poor colour contrast, tiny fonts, or missing accessibility labels can make an app unusable for people with visual or physical impairments. Testing teams identify these gaps by including accessibility test cases in the test suite.
- High drop-offs: When registration or checkout processes are long, users often abandon them. At Global App Testing, streamlining checkout flows helped Carry1st raise completion rates by 12%.
- Target-audience mismatch: Misaligned design lowers engagement and conversions. This can be avoided by designing the applications according to user expectations.
At Global App Testing, we help teams turn real user insights into design decisions that drive engagement and retention.
The UX Testing Process: Step-by-Step
Each project is different, yet UX testing success depends on a precise and repeatable process. At Global App Testing, our process turns real user interactions into actionable insights that shape better digital experiences. Here’s how we do it:
Step-by-step process of UX testing
-
Define user personas & goals: User testing starts by mapping real user profiles and defining measurable experience goals. This paves the way for navigation flow, layout adjustments, and accessibility fixes.
- Select key user journeys: The second step is to prioritize and list the key user journeys, such as product discovery, sign-up, purchase flow, and post-purchase feedback journey, to improve retention and revenue.
- Recruit representative testers: Based on your use case, select a global partner with which you can test cases across the globe on different devices and locations.
- Execute tests & capture insights: After onboarding our global testers, create and run a test plan combining exploratory, localization, and accessibility testing to uncover real usability insights across regions.
- Analyze, iterate, and improve: Finally, gather the reports and key metrics, including UI alignment issues, UX bug count, and supported locations. These reports help the dev and design team address bugs and design lapses.
Now, let’s see how a professional partner helps you scale quality and deliver better user experiences.
Benefits of Partnering with a Professional UX Testing Provider
Working with a professional partner transforms testing into a consistent process for continuous user experience gains.
Take our collaboration with a leading global marketplace, where Global App Testing ran continuous UX and usability tests across regions, identifying localization and navigation gaps that led to measurable engagement.
The brand faced inconsistent engagement across regions. With targeted UX improvements from Global App Testing, it resolved navigation challenges, achieved measurable growth, and improved customer satisfaction, showing how external testing can uncover issues internal teams may overlook.
Below are the top benefits that a testing partner can provide in terms of UX testing:
- Objective, unbiased feedback: Global App Testing collects objective feedback from real users worldwide to ensure unbiased insights.
- Access to diverse testers worldwide: Our diverse testers ensure that UX decisions reflect your entire audience.
- Faster turnaround: GAT delivers Test execution and results in hours rather than weeks by partnering with global testing companies.
- Scalable, repeatable process: We adjust test coverage and team size as your product evolves.
UX Testing with Global App Testing
Global App testing QA teams help companies improve user experience by integrating UX testing and real user feedback into each step of the software development life cycle. For us, user experience testing is not a check before release, but a continuous process that requires QA involvement from UI design through test execution to bug verification.
UX testing with GAT
Here is how we help companies with UX testing on scale:
- A vetted global network of real testers across 190+ countries, mirroring your user base.
- Pre-configured UX test scenarios for faster execution.
- Actionable reports built for both design and product teams.
- To learn more, download our 5-minute primer about benchmarking your UX against competitors.
Come talk to Global App Testing to discover how our UX testing services help create experiences that delight your customers across every market, every device, and every user journey.