The State of Digital Quality in 2023

Rob Mason
Applause

The digital landscape is continually evolving, and as businesses strive to provide exceptional user experiences, digital quality becomes a critical factor in ensuring customer satisfaction. The State of Digital Quality report from Applause examines real-world testing data to shed light on the most common flaws in digital experiences across various industries, including digital banking, streaming media services, wearable devices, online shopping, and voice-activated devices. In this blog, I'll delve into the key statistics and insights revealed by the report, offering guidance on how organizations can improve their digital quality and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Understanding the Flaws

According to the report, functional, visual, and content defects make up over 90% of all bugs discovered. This highlights the need for a rigorous testing approach that addresses these key areas during the development process to ensure a smooth and seamless user experience.

Emphasizing Accessibility

Accessibility remains a significant concern for digital products. For the second consecutive year, 65% of the identified accessibility bugs were attributed to screen reader errors. Addressing accessibility issues is not only a matter of inclusivity; it directly impacts customer satisfaction and market reach.

Tackling Payment Processing Challenges

One of the critical insights from the report is that 80% of all payment bugs were categorized as "functional." Such issues indicate that certain aspects of transactions couldn't be completed as intended. As digital transactions become increasingly prevalent, ensuring a seamless payment experience is paramount for retaining customers and avoiding revenue loss.

Localization Errors on the Rise

The report draws attention to the rising incidence of localization errors, which accounted for 73% of digital quality defects related to missing or poor translations. This increase of 8% from the previous year highlights the importance of providing accurate and culturally relevant translations to engage international audiences and build trust.

Impact on Customer Satisfaction and Business Performance

Underscoring the significance of digital quality, the report reveals that unresolved defects and friction points along the customer journey can lead to adverse consequences for businesses. Digital shopping cart abandonment, missed conversions, customer service complaints, low customer satisfaction, and negative ratings can all significantly impact a company's bottom line.

Best Practices for Enhancing Digital Quality

Drawing from the report's insights, several best practices emerge for companies seeking to improve their digital quality:

1' Invest in Comprehensive Testing: Adopt a holistic testing approach that assesses various components of a digital experience to gain a deeper understanding of customer engagement.

2. Prioritize Customer Journey and UX: Create frictionless and accessible customer journeys across all touchpoints and payment methods by testing with real users in real-world scenarios.

3. Test Across Diverse Devices and Networks: Given the variations in device behavior, test across multiple real-world combinations using crowdtesting to ensure broader coverage.

4. Adopt a Solid Testing Strategy: Document test cases and results, and implement quality management practices to create scalable and repeatable processes.

By focusing on areas including accessibility and localization, organizations can significantly improve customer satisfaction and ensure long-term success. As new technology and innovations continue to advance, a commitment to prioritizing quality testing from design, through development, and deployment is critical.

Rob Mason is CTO of Applause

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The State of Digital Quality in 2023

Rob Mason
Applause

The digital landscape is continually evolving, and as businesses strive to provide exceptional user experiences, digital quality becomes a critical factor in ensuring customer satisfaction. The State of Digital Quality report from Applause examines real-world testing data to shed light on the most common flaws in digital experiences across various industries, including digital banking, streaming media services, wearable devices, online shopping, and voice-activated devices. In this blog, I'll delve into the key statistics and insights revealed by the report, offering guidance on how organizations can improve their digital quality and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Understanding the Flaws

According to the report, functional, visual, and content defects make up over 90% of all bugs discovered. This highlights the need for a rigorous testing approach that addresses these key areas during the development process to ensure a smooth and seamless user experience.

Emphasizing Accessibility

Accessibility remains a significant concern for digital products. For the second consecutive year, 65% of the identified accessibility bugs were attributed to screen reader errors. Addressing accessibility issues is not only a matter of inclusivity; it directly impacts customer satisfaction and market reach.

Tackling Payment Processing Challenges

One of the critical insights from the report is that 80% of all payment bugs were categorized as "functional." Such issues indicate that certain aspects of transactions couldn't be completed as intended. As digital transactions become increasingly prevalent, ensuring a seamless payment experience is paramount for retaining customers and avoiding revenue loss.

Localization Errors on the Rise

The report draws attention to the rising incidence of localization errors, which accounted for 73% of digital quality defects related to missing or poor translations. This increase of 8% from the previous year highlights the importance of providing accurate and culturally relevant translations to engage international audiences and build trust.

Impact on Customer Satisfaction and Business Performance

Underscoring the significance of digital quality, the report reveals that unresolved defects and friction points along the customer journey can lead to adverse consequences for businesses. Digital shopping cart abandonment, missed conversions, customer service complaints, low customer satisfaction, and negative ratings can all significantly impact a company's bottom line.

Best Practices for Enhancing Digital Quality

Drawing from the report's insights, several best practices emerge for companies seeking to improve their digital quality:

1' Invest in Comprehensive Testing: Adopt a holistic testing approach that assesses various components of a digital experience to gain a deeper understanding of customer engagement.

2. Prioritize Customer Journey and UX: Create frictionless and accessible customer journeys across all touchpoints and payment methods by testing with real users in real-world scenarios.

3. Test Across Diverse Devices and Networks: Given the variations in device behavior, test across multiple real-world combinations using crowdtesting to ensure broader coverage.

4. Adopt a Solid Testing Strategy: Document test cases and results, and implement quality management practices to create scalable and repeatable processes.

By focusing on areas including accessibility and localization, organizations can significantly improve customer satisfaction and ensure long-term success. As new technology and innovations continue to advance, a commitment to prioritizing quality testing from design, through development, and deployment is critical.

Rob Mason is CTO of Applause

Related Links

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Many organizations rely on cloud-first architectures to aggregate, analyze, and act on their operational data ... However, not all environments are conducive to cloud-first architectures ... There are limitations to cloud-first architectures that render them ineffective in mission-critical situations where responsiveness, cost control, and data sovereignty are non-negotiable; these limitations include ...

The New Perimeter Is the User: Why Identity Is the Real Network Edge

For years, cybersecurity was built around a simple assumption: protect the physical network and trust everything inside it. That model made sense when employees worked in offices, applications lived in data centers, and devices rarely left the building. Today's reality is fluid: people work from everywhere, applications run across multiple clouds, and AI-driven agents are beginning to act on behalf of users. But while the old perimeter dissolved, a new one quietly emerged ...

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Resilience can no longer be defined by how quickly an organization recovers from an incident or disruption. The effectiveness of any resilience strategy is dependent on its ability to anticipate change, operate under continuous stress, and adapt confidently amid uncertainty ...

Mobile Users Expect Perfection in 2026

Mobile users are less tolerant of app instability than ever before. According to a new report from Luciq, No Margin for Error: What Mobile Users Expect and What Mobile Leaders Must Deliver in 2026, even minor performance issues now result in immediate abandonment, lost purchases, and long-term brand impact ...

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AI systems are still prone to hallucinations and misjudgments ... To build the trust needed for adoption, AI must be paired with human-in-the-loop (HITL) oversight, or checkpoints where humans verify, guide, and decide what actions are taken. The balance between autonomy and accountability is what will allow AI to deliver on its promise without sacrificing human trust ...

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