Recently, a national survey has been conducted in the Netherlands that sheds light on the economic impact of software failure. The results are alarming, to say the least. According to the research, software errors lead to 1.6 billion euros (!) in productivity and revenue losses.
Software failures lead to loss of customers
Research firm Pb7 further states that twenty percent of the citizens refrain from asking their questions to their local government or healthcare provider due to dysfunctional online software. One in three consumers decides to go to another online retailer when experiencing problems at a web shop. This research has been conducted with the help of 150 IT-stakeholders from large enterprises and more than 300 consumers. The economic damage of 1.6 billion has been determined by multiplying the number of hours that work was interrupted by the added value that would normally be achieved. Furthermore, the revenue losses of customers choosing for another provider are vast.
Alarming news from the Netherlands, which is unfortunately not restricted to that geographical area. Disregarding end-users in the end troubles quality assurance and user retention. So, how can this be prevented? Well, a good testing strategy helps to achieve the desired quality assurance. And in addition to in-house testing, crowdtesting offers important beneficial value. How? By involving the end-users with the software development.
Crowdtesting as a solution
Crowdtesting complements established testing methods for web and native applications and seeks a direct connection with the target audience. This way, key understandings are created concerning the expectations of end-users. What do they expect the application or software to do? And how does a pre-release version eventually work out for an end-user? Next to the findings on user experience, crowdtesting also enables access to an unprecedented amount of smart devices. This makes testing for app compatibility more manageable (especially in the face of BYOD). Moreover, involving the target audience with the development process strengthens the customer experience.
These are only a few advantages to the principle of crowdtesting. Notice that the end-users that make up the crowd are not limited to consumers. On the contrary, with Bring-Your-Own-Crowd, companies and organizations are able to compose their own crowd to test enterprise or organizational apps and websites. So, IT/Project/Product Managers, make sure to know what your end-users want and prevent unnecessary economic losses.
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