1. Nailing the customer experience is more important than ever. A survey by Econsultancy found that companies say the most important factor in launching successful apps is customer experience. That’s echoed by the customer intelligence firm Walker, which found that 85% of buyers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience, and that customer experience will overtake price and product to become the key brand differentiator by 2020. 2. Fewer than 25% of app users come back to the app after the first day of use. A survey by Appboy, a mobile marketing automation platform, found that big of a user drop-off after day one. And retention rates nosedive from there. Poor user experience is clearly a reason for the churn. 3. The average app loses 95% of its users after the first 90 days. So finds mobile intelligence firm Quettra. Given the Appboy findings, that should be no surprise. Even the most popular apps face steep drop-offs, the company says: The top 10 apps on Google Play lose almost 50% of users over their first three months. Quettra CEO Ankit Jain says: “The key to success is to get the users hooked during that critical first three-to-seven-day period.” One of the most effective ways to make sure users don’t abandon your app is using QA to guarantee a great user experience. 4. 67% of users say bad app experiences are the reason for customer churn. This, according to a survey done by Esteban Kolsky, who founded the thinkJar customer strategy consulting company. The same research found that 55% of consumers will pay more for a guaranteed good experience. 5. A reasonable level for company’s QA budget is 25% of the entire IT budget. So says the World Quality Report. The report also found that the QA budgets of large enterprises rose from 18% to 31% during the five-year period ending in 2016. 6. External testers can reorient your priorities. Sometimes people in-house may come across a bug that they believe is important, but others don’t pay attention to it. But when a community of vetted testers classifies an issue as a debilitating bug, your company will treat it more seriously, and make it a higher priority. Sometimes it takes an expert consultant to call a bug a bug. 7. QA partners can add significant value in localization. Having testers who are native speakers is helpful, but that’s only part of their benefits they offer. Users who live in the countries where the app will ultimately be deployed will better catch UI issues, such as graphic elements and menus. In addition, apps might operate differently depending on their location, for example, because of differing network speeds, so need to be tested in their local environments. 8. Professional testers can also test a wider range of devices with different operating systems and screen sizes than you can do in-house You can give external testers clear guidelines to focus on most critical app areas, so you can unearth critical issues before your app’s users start complaining about them. Even if you don’t immediately fix all the bugs they unearth, you can prepare your customer support team to be ready for them, or release help articles about potential workarounds. Make the customer experience part of your competitive advantage. Download The QA Partner Playbook today.