Building a customer-centric app with Web Usability

Creating a friendly and inclusive environment is key to offering customers an enjoyable online experience. 

To do this, any new digital service should involve real customers in its development, and consider the needs of all stakeholders, including those with accessibility requirements. 

Web Usability has been working with Bright to do just this.

Responsible for being the voice of the customer, Web Usability will bring its unique mission to its collaboration with Bright, in order to ensure this new social app is designed and developed with members at the heart of the process. 

Involving your audience in the development

The benefits of testing with stakeholders during the development of a new digital app are many and varied. The top two are:

• It saves time and money across the life of a project: early-stage changes can be incorporated quickly before lots of expensive design and coding time has been invested.

• It results in an overall improved audience experience, both increasing usability and ensuring content meets the audiences' needs — which will improve satisfaction on the website or app.

Ensuring the new app works for everyone

Online accessibility is about making the digital world usable for people with disabilities. While this is an important part of accessibility, it is not where the impact ends. Accessibility is really about universality and making sure as many people as possible, no matter their physical location or ability, can access a website or app.

Accessibility is really about universality, and making sure as many people as possible, no matter their physical location or ability, can access a website or app.

In the UK, there are currently 11.2 million people with a registered disability.

But there are countless millions more who may struggle to use a website or app that are not represented by this number.

These might be people with a short-term injury, such as a broken arm in a cast, or a repetitive strain injury, who might struggle with the fine motor control required to use a mouse.

Or people with age-related issues, such as deteriorating eyesight, who may have trouble reading small print or seeing text with poor colour contrast.

Or people for whom English is not their first language, who may struggle to understand complex or wordy text.

Or even someone sitting in front of a brightly lit window with the sun shining on their computer screen who may have difficulty seeing website content.

By considering the needs of customers with accessibility issues, you will improve the digital experience for your entire audience.

By considering the needs of customers with accessibility issues, you will improve the digital experience for your entire audience.

To ensure universal access, Web Usability conducts accessibility audits, which assess the app against the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines set a benchmark for online accessibility and are the standard used by governments around the world to provide an inclusive digital environment. 

As part of the testing programme, the Bright app will also be tested by an audience with a range of disabilities to ensure it not only complies with the guidelines, but is genuinely accessible and usable for all. 

About Web Usability

Web Usability is a user experience agency that puts the voice of the customer at the heart of an organisation’s digital services. By conducting research and testing with real users, we are able to identify what people need from digital services and how well those services currently meet these needs. We strongly believe in the importance of an inclusive online world, and work collaboratively with organisations to ensure digital services are designed and developed in a way that makes them accessible to everyone. 

More about Web Usability: https://www.webusability.co.uk/