It is no surprise that today’s app users are much more complicated than ever before, with the standards and the high expectations that seem to skyrocket, it is difficult to compete for various user-friendly apps among themselves. The users download the apps for a variety of reasons, which includes navigation and engagement in apps. The demand for a good user experience remains high, despite the usage of apps for various and different reasons. 

Secondly, it requires a lot to do with the tools that are being used to analyze the usability of the apps. In fact, back in the day, standard usability tests included in-person interviews/focus groups to evaluate the results but now things have changed. Operating systems like Android that have provided the users with the liberty to modify the apps their way that eventually adds much to the user experience is one good example. In fact, the reason why we have seen Xiaomi mobile price hikes is that the users feel like operating an Android phone is much easier than an iOS Apple mobile phone.

As the times are changing, user preferences and ways of using phones and apps are also changing. So what can you do that will act as a set of tools to effectively analyze the usability of the apps? Well, the powerful combo of two devices that are qualitative analytics and the in-app feedback forms would do the thing for you. Keep reading to explore how. 

Qualitative Analytics:

Some may call qualitative analytics, “traditional analytics”, which focuses on measuring the aspects of the app that can be further represented by numbers. 

Moreover, it focuses on information that can’t be measured by numbers. Mobile usability is oftentimes very unique, a subjective entity that can’t be represented in the form of a number, hence qualitative analytics is the perfect way of analyzing it. 

User recording and touch heat maps are two examples of qualitative analytics that will enable you to get the most actionable insights on the users and know exactly what’s working and what’s not working in your app. It can provide you with powerful visual answers about the usability of the app on a single user level and even aggregate. Let’s dive into more detail with these two short cases.

The In-App Crashes:

In-app crashes are one of the biggest and toughest usability issues to solve. Let’s assume that your qualitative analytics show you that the daily app crash rate has increased by 50{4ff670bb91f5a71bed27471ead6462c9b16f5bdce5956c8330f96255c052ee42}. The percentage is extremely important, but you need to know the reason why it is happening, and to get the visual context, you need to watch the single user session recording of the crashes from that specific day to get the entire picture. It will allow you to reproduce the crash and discern the sequence of the user actions that resulted in a crash. All thanks to the crash visualization, you will identify and then squash the bug without any guesswork. 

The Unresponsive Gestures:

Each swipe, tap, and pinch that is happening on your app contributes to its overall usability. However, you should think about the gestures that your users perform, and yet they don’t receive any response from the app. This one is called the crucial KPI, ‘Unresponsive Gestures’. It can have detrimental effects on the user experience of the app and can increase the frustration of your users. Yet, when they are tracked efficiently, they can reveal UI bugs, flaws in the design, and essential user preferences. 

If you have an e-commerce app with a mandatory login/sign-up screen, you can notice that there would be a lot of users who would want to quit the screen. With the help of a touch heat map, you will see that there are a lot of unresponsive “swipe left” gestures made at the bottom of the screen. It will let you know that most of the users want to swipe out of the login screen and proceed with their shopping experience. 

In-App Feedback:

Qualitative analytics is a great way to gather insight into users, and their natural behavior with the app, and get the required feedback through which you can create more engagement for the user. This is where the in-app feedback tools come into play and take the center stage. It established an open, seamless, and real-time communication channel with the users of the apps who can share their thoughts and questions about certain aspects of your products. Moreover, you can instantly react to what your users are saying and want from your app. 

If you are armed with these two tools then you would be able to measure and in fact improve the usability of the app with full accuracy and confidence.