The financial and banking industry is changing both massively and quickly these days. Digitalization is occurring in every industry and banks, insurance providers, and other financial companies have to adapt, as well as compete with entirely new players from the fintech world. 

Artificial intelligence is shaping the industry, as are digital application processes. Apps become a necessity and insurance providers try out new models like telematic tariffs, for example.

These changes lead to new technical challenges that don’t end with development, but rather only begin with development.

New digital services need proper testing before they can be released and are ready for your customers. The first step on the testing highway is to make sure that your product (whatever it may be) runs flawlessly on every device and operating system, and every software and browser version.

Why is this so important? Because otherwise, you’ll not only lose customers, but also see negative effects on your brand image.

How Bugs Affect your Image and Conversion Rate

All of us fill out a lot of online forms on our laptop or mobile – short ones, longer ones, and ones that seem to be never-ending. So we make our way through those forms, trying to fill in all the details and data needed until we can finally click that very last button. What a relief!

Now imagine that this very last step doesn’t work – an error occurs and all your work is lost and for nothing. How would you feel?

Well, I can tell you how I would feel: Angry – very angry to be perfectly honest. 

Like it or not, this anger also reflects on the brand that offered this non-functional online form: “Why didn’t they test properly?”, “For sure I won’t fill out that form again!”, “Let’s see where else I can get the same product/ service!” – those might be my thoughts at that moment.

So, one tiny little bug managed to kill my trust in the brand and made me go to a competitor. Perhaps I’ll come back if I can’t find exactly what I’m looking for, but most likely I won’t.

What does this have to do with the finance and banking sector? Well, don’t you have online forms? Or an app? Or any other digital service? I’m sure you do – or at least plan to have one soon.

And I bet you want your customers to love your digital services and use them without the slightest feeling of anger or distrust.
In the financial sector especially, where you’re dealing with sensitive information on a daily basis, trust is something you really can’t afford to lose. Especially not due to a bug you could have found and fixed beforehand.
The same goes for revenue or conversions of course. It’s obvious: if a bug stops your customers from finishing a process, your conversion rate will drop and so will your revenue. 

But luckily you can prevent this. By conducting bug tests with your own target users. How? I’ll show you.

Different Kinds of Bug Testing With the Crowd

So, now that we know why bug tests are important, I want to let you know what kind of bug tests there are, how they differ and why Crowdtesting is a good way to ensure the quality of your digital product or service.

In any kind of bug test – we will learn that there are two different kinds of bug tests – the testers ensure that your digital product runs smoothly on every device, every software version, every operating system, and every browser.

Therefore it’s very important to have different testers with a variety of devices. In our Crowd, there are more than 900.000 devices registered by our testers. Depending on your wishes and prerequisites we can filter them by device, software version, and much more.

So, what kind of bug tests are there? There are two types of bug tests – structured bug tests and exploratory bug tests. For detailed information, you can have a look at the services on our website – but I’d also like to give you an overview here.

During structured bug testing the Crowd tests your digital product step-by-step, following a test script. Testers must follow the script exactly, which gives you a lot of control of what will be tested (and what won’t). Such structured tests are especially useful when you want to test the core functionality of your product like the registration process of your app or online account or the different steps of your digital application process.

One downside might be that because of the structure you give the testers you might miss bugs you didn’t even think existed or that are outside the scope of the test.

That’s where exploratory bug tests enter the stage. In this type of test, testers explore your digital product freely without limitations or plans. Testers need to find their own way through the product and solve problems that might occur independently. This makes exploratory bug tests especially interesting since you see testers use the product in a way you, your developers, and your designers had never thought of.

Ok, now that you know the theory, it’s time to give you a practical example in the next paragraph.

Example of a Bug Test for Generali

The Italian insurance company Generali is the third-largest in the world. While telematics or usage-based car insurances are already quite common in the UK and US, they’re still relatively new for the German market. Generali was one of the first insurance providers that wanted to introduce this type of tariff in Germany. Instead of a permanently installed box in the car, they wanted to collect the driving data through an app.

Generali worked together with us to test the app with real users in real conditions.

The main questions were: 

• How does the app work outside the lab and in non-ideal conditions?
• Does everything run smoothly?
• How satisfied is the customer?
• Is the app easy and intuitive to use?

Our testers went on a structured bug test and found bugs that were categorized from “minor” to “critical”.

All the bugs were gathered and clustered by our project managers who could then give clear recommendations for adjusting the app to suit real-world conditions even better.

If you want to know all the details about this test of the Generali Mobility app, download the full case study here. 

Are you interested in learning more about Crowdtesting and how it could help you create better digital products in the finance and banking sector?

Leave us a message, we’re happy to talk about your goals and how we can support you in reaching them.