Improving Customer Experience Amidst Global Recession Through Localization Testing

In today's world, where consumers are almost glued to smartphones and different digital platforms, it's critical to maintain a good customer experience. Organizations that provide good customer experiences and satisfaction typically also have a good brand reputation. A customer that has a bad experience will often disregard you in the future. While organizations create products to meet a general need, they also must make these products inclusive to as many markets as possible. A user's local culture, language, and other regional attributes like currency, date, and time information all will impact their digital experience.

This is where 'Localization testing' comes in. Localization software testing refers to the process of testing where the behavior of software is tested aligned to a specific region, locale, or culture. Localization testing aims to test the right linguistic and cultural elements in the software to customize the software as per the target country or region.

How does the global recession impact customer experiences?

Owing to the recent economic downswing, enterprises have compromised on investments in essential software and also laid off multiple employees or even shut down different departments to cut down costs. This has led to less-than-ideal productivity rates at a time when customer retention is especially important. Deteriorating the quality of products or services or competitors who move faster than you leads to poor customer experiences and loss of brand reputation.

Check out: Mobile App Performance KPIs to Minimize Economic Downturn Impact

Therefore, it is necessary that companies focus on tools that enhance current training and testing resources to ensure the continual delivery of superior customer experiences. 

The primary checklist for localization testing

Phase 1: Pre-localization

Ensure that the testers possess the necessary documents, tools, and data required. This includes software, hardware, and (if applicable) approved marketing materials that show the expected text results.

Phase 2: Regional test

Test that names, colors, formats, and others are compatible with country-specific regulations. Ensure cultural appropriateness, political sensitivity, and market specifications are all in line.

Phase 3: Language test

Consider the different aspects of language, including grammar, spell checks, punctuation, currency, symbols, icons, pricing, payments, Right-to-left language (RTL) evaluation, client-specific app terminology, and much more. Further teams should include linguistic and translation testing to test for

• Usual or inaccurate translations
• Consistency of language across the application
• Idiomatic testing, ensuring the right tone and relevance

Remotely test and debug mobile, web, audio and video applications on thousands of devices around the world. Know more.

Phase 4: Appearance and layout test

QA teams should examine the user interface of the application. The UI must meet the specified standards and should be user-friendly, flexible, and easy to use.

Phase 5: Functionality test

This phase involves testing the localized application features to ensure that these function appropriately.

Also check: A Complete Guide to Functional Testing

How does localization help boost customer experience?

Offering customized content that meets the customers' changing needs and provides them the services in their native language can significantly drive brand value. When companies use culturally and regionally appropriate content, terminologies, and other services, they are able to ensure that the user experience is suitable for the target market, making it easy for customers to navigate the websites and interact with them, thereby helping to boost customer loyalty.

Connect to our real local devices worldwide and run geolocation tests on your mobile apps and websites. Learn more.

Following are a few critical benefits of localization software testing that help drive user experience -

• Compliance: Localization testing helps teams ensure that the software complies with the applicable regulations and meets the target market's requirements, enabling them to ensure a good CSAT.

• Cost reduction: Localization software testing enables teams to significantly reduce costs by avoiding extra expenses associated with reworking and fixing localization bugs in the production stages. 

• Lowering customer churn: As localization testing aims to perfect the software quality as per the regional and local attributes of the customers, it helps to enhance the customer experience. Localization testing takes into consideration the software quality in localized contexts and improves the overall end-user experience. As a result, the target market satisfaction is significant, and brand value is improved.

• Expanding into new markets: Improved localization helps apps to attract more users and expand into newer markets.

Read: What is Test Automation? A Comprehensive Guide on Automated Testing

Best practices for localization testing that helps to improve customer experience

The following are 5 key practices for performing robust localization software testing —

• Define a strategy

QA teams need to design an effective localization strategy —

• What should be the scope of the typography and UI testing
• Which are browsers and OS required for the testing
• What are the users' characteristics, including product usage patterns and users' geodemographics and attitudes
• What tools should be used for testing and achieving the desired outcomes
• When in the SDLC will the feedback be addressed, and many more

Also read: 10 Ways to Accelerate the Software Testing Cycle

• Monitoring localized KPIs

Selecting the right metrics that need to be tested within the region and local market is the initial step toward ensuring that the software meets the market requirements. Further defining the KPIs is critical in the process. Following are some of the KPIs to help measure the impact of localization:

Check: 5 Testing Strategies for Improving App Release Cycles

• Early testing

Early localization testing in the SDLC ensures seamless bug detection and resolution, allowing teams to reduce costs and improve time to market. Thorough planning, research, and market analysis are necessary for effective localization testing.

• Automating localization software testing

Automation improves productivity for localization software testing and reduces errors. For complex projects, automation is a must. Key steps for localization automation testing include choosing a tool, defining the scenario, writing scripts, and evaluating results.

Key steps to consider in localization automation testing include:

• Select the automation tool to write the scripts.
• Choose the scenario to be tested for localization strategy.
• Write the scripts according to that.
• Gather the results to update the scenario as 'Pass'/ 'Fail.'

Read: Why is Real Device Cloud Critical in App Testing?

How HeadSpin helps companies improve web and mobile app localization testing workflows

HeadSpin's data science-driven Platform enables companies to run end-to-end testing of their apps across 90+ locations and capture critical KPIs to ensure perfect customer experiences.

HeadSpin offers a secure global device infrastructure that helps connect to real, local devices across the globe and run geolocation tests on a wide range of mobile apps and websites.

By performing efficient geolocation testing on real devices, HeadSpin enables companies to test application features against geography-dependent requirements to ensure optimized performance.

Different location-based scenarios that HeadSpin offers:

• Geotargeting tests: Geolocation testing helps apps deliver content based on customers' geographic location and improve customer experience.

• Geofencing tests: With HeadSpin, companies can seamlessly test apps to ensure that the app triggers the right action when users enter a specific location.

• Geoblocking tests: HeadSpin enables companies to control user access to various sections of the app. This form of testing helps to identify whether the app is able to limit or block user internet access rightly.

• Geotagging tests: HeadSpin's testing capabilities help companies to ensure that user devices show the right geographic coordinates to the location of their images or videos.

Bottom line

Though localization seems complex, investing in the right localization testing tools and strategies help in long-term growth that helps boost brand revenue and reputation. To provide excellent services to customers in a new region, bridging the linguistic and cultural divide by localizing the app is crucial, enabling brands to deliver remarkable customer experience journeys across different geographic locations.

FAQs

Q1. What are some of the primary factors for test cases for localization testing?

Ans: The test cases are designed depending on the functionality and use case of the application. Three key factors to focus on while writing test cases include:

• Language accuracy
• Visual quality
• Functionality

Q2. What is the key difference between localization testing and internationalization testing?

Ans: In Localization testing, teams verify whether the application's design is in a way that is suitable for a specific culture, region, or local. Whereas internationalization testing helps verify whether the apps are suitable for any and every culture, region, and language.

In the case of localization testing, testers focus on creating a specialized experience for the user. While in internationalization testing, testers focus on creating a generic user experience.

Q3. What is pseudo-localization testing?

Ans: Pseudo-localization is an efficient way of software testing that is leveraged to test the internationalization aspects of software and helps test the localization-readiness of an application.