At UXArmy we have a rule for user research — do not proceed with a user research until the goals of that research have been fully established. Clear goals linked to business objectives are fundamental to derive the purpose of user research. The purpose is then further broken down into scenarios and associated questions that users would be asked during the research.

Exactly as the so called “normal start” of a bright career in the IT industry, after completing my Bachelors of engineering I started out as a Software developer in my home city. Soon my skills brought me an elevation to Senior software developer at the same company. This company was providing software services to it’s clients. As a PHP developer, I worked on the most widely used website making software — no prizes for guessing, “WordPress”. This was my entry point into the deep understanding about the delivery of complete real web development projects. Before this time, I had acquired the basic skills that most beginners need: mastery of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, alongside familiarity with CakePHP, Yii, CodeIgniter, and Laravel.

If you’ve clicked this far to find out the actual price your business pays by not user testing, the answer is a whopping $300 million, at least.

The actual price could be more, but this is just based on the highly-publicised true story in 2009 from Amazon.com, the giant e-commerce retailer that needs no introduction. This story is widely known as the “$300 Million ‘Continue’ Button”.

Long story short, the e-commerce player found a bottleneck in its checkout process. Users were asked to log in or register an account after checking out their cart.

Mobile app users are less forgiving than desktop users.

The sooner you realize this, the quicker you can find creative solutions for these users.

Having made hundreds of user profiles and done numerous analyses on smartphone users over the years, I have learnt that mobile app users are driving markets for good.