Philippe Leclercq, President of Ad4Screen and Relatia, hosted a session on user testing during Digital Day, alongside Lorenzo Palacios, Chief Experience Officer at RATP, Nicolas Guirao, President of Testapic, and Etienne Debouzy, Customer Success Manager at Testapic.
Testapic is a user testing platform designed to help businesses understand user behavior and continuously improve their digital experiences. One of the key challenges for the years ahead is to further accelerate data processing and analysis.
Testapic has been working with RATP for several years on its UX challenges.
RATP serves 8 million users across its website and app. Its app currently generates 100,000 new downloads every week, with users opening it 5 to 7 times per week. It also has excellent ratings, with 4.8 on iOS and 4.4 on Android.
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Today, mobile web traffic remains higher, but the app represents the biggest area of opportunity, particularly as RATP continues to integrate new mobility services such as ride-hailing and scooters.
What is the difference between UX and UI?
UX stands for User Experience and encompasses the emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviors and actions that occur before, during and after using a product, system or service.
UI stands for User Interface. It is an essential part of the user experience, as the interface remains the primary channel of communication and interaction between a product or service and its users. In the digital world, this mainly takes the form of graphical interfaces across apps, websites and interactive terminals.
How are user tests integrated into RATP’s strategy?
There are three stages at which user testing can be integrated:
- Research: to validate assumptions, understand user needs and expectations, and test service or feature concepts as early as possible.
- Design: to validate design choices and test features before development. This stage also enables teams to design solutions that address actual user needs and pain points.
- Production: to add qualitative insight to quantitative results and identify potential barriers or friction points.
There are three main user testing methodologies:
- Video testing (Qualitative): users’ screens and voice commentary are recorded as they navigate the interface. The aim is to observe spontaneous behavior and understand how users complete relatively unguided tasks.
- Questionnaires (Quantitative + Qualitative): users answer questions while navigating the interface, allowing them to react spontaneously to a specific feature or element. The goal is to gather both qualitative feedback and quantitative data on perceptions of a specific element.
- Surveys (Quantitative): users answer open and closed-ended questions without navigating an interface. This approach is used to gather quantitative insights at scale around expectations, behaviors, ideas and concepts.
How does RATP handle feedback, particularly negative feedback?
It is important to remember that if one in five users struggles to complete a task, that issue could potentially affect 20% to 40% of the wider user population.
All feedback therefore matters. To identify the most relevant insights, RATP combines both methodologies: qualitative testing to identify problems and quantitative testing to measure their scale and determine whether they represent a broader issue.
How are user insights prioritized?
User testing should be about learning, not simply validating ideas. This is why RATP tests virtually everything, generating a large volume of insights that then need to be prioritized.
Testapic observes that clients often prioritize their roadmaps based on what internal teams consider important, rather than what users consider important. The two can sometimes be very different. Testapic therefore helps advertisers gain an external perspective and prioritize improvements based on actual user feedback.
Since the most valuable customers are often found within the app, having a strong product foundation is essential, particularly when running acquisition and retention campaigns. In fact, an app rating below 3.5 on the app stores can naturally cut marketing effectiveness in half.
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How do companies balance testing across websites and apps?
More and more clients are taking a mobile-first approach, and this is reflected in Testapic’s customer base: the majority of tests are now conducted on mobile, particularly among more mature clients.
The nature of testing is also evolving. Tests are being introduced earlier in the user journey, increasingly focus on apps — including elements such as app store visuals, and many clients now manage multiple applications.
What are the key Do’s & Don’ts?
Do :
- Test frequently
- Adopt a continuous optimization approach
- Test with relevant users
- Test early, before launching an action, feature or new functionality
Don’t :
- Don’t test simply to confirm an opinion formed internally. Teams need to be prepared to accept the results and incorporate them into a continuous improvement process.
Watch the full session How can user testing improve the mobile UX? on replay
