User research
Every digital solution must solve a concrete need of a user. The user must be able to complete his task successfully and as smoothly as possible.
But how do you uncover those needs? Bring a few experts together? An off-site workshop with the company's leadership? Although these opinions can certainly be valuable, they remain what they are: opinions. The real needs of your end-users can only be discovered through user research.
So you want to remove as many barriers as possible and offer relevant solutions to your target group. Sounds logical, and yet most of your competitors ignore this basic principle by not doing any user research.
Is user research always necessary?
In fact, for every change or renewal of your digital application you should do some kind of user research. Sounds expensive? Well, it is not. Because by listening to the results of the user research, a lot less budget is wasted on developments that don't deliver. Because admit it: you would never burn your budget on useless features, would you?
Before every change or renewal of your digital application, you should invest in some kind of research. Sounds expensive? Well, it is not.
User research provides you with answers to the following questions:
- What goal does my end user want to achieve?
- What barriers do they encounter when performing their tasks?
- Why doesn't this visitor become a customer, but does he buy from the competition?
- Why don't we get the desired result with our digital application or website?
You can try to answer these questions yourself, but it is much better to let your end users do the talking. The result will always be a better product with more satisfied users. And that, of course, results in a much higher ROI.
Knowledge is power
Depending on the question you want to answer, we can recommend a specific research method. We are already fans of this one, but of course there are many others.
1. User tests or usability tests
In user tests or usability tests, you check (on location or online) how your users behave when they use your website, intranet or web-app. This involves asking users to think out loud and continuously give feedback out loud while performing specific tasks.
A user test is mainly applied before major changes or completely new developments. In the latter case, we strongly recommend doing this from the very first prototypes. This way, you avoid developing features that are rarely or never used by your users.
2. A/B testing
A/B testing is used to test different variants on your target audience. Often, this involves minor changes, but this is certainly not necessary. The goal? You only change something after a test has shown that your idea will actually make a positive difference.
3. Top tasks research
What are our goals? What do we stand for and what do we offer? But have you ever thought whether this is the information your website visitors are looking for? Put the user first and build your website, intranet or web-app from their point of view. Who are you? And what brings you here today? Through this short survey we collect a lot of useful feedback from your users.