Beta testing is the final phase of testing your product before you fully release it into the wild. This gives you a controlled production environment to find as many bugs and usability issues as possible, and it can dramatically increase your likelihood of a successful launch. Beta testing should be performed after you’ve done extensive testing on your app to check the functionality, usability, performance, security and stability.
Running a great beta test can boost your product’s growth, revenue, and user retention as soon as you launch. Some of the biggest benefits of beta testing are:
- Improving the overall quality of your app by identifying any bugs that slipped past QA and UAT
- Collecting feedback from testers about the app’s usability to determine if any changes need to be made before releasing to a wider audience
- Gathering new feature requests from testers and prioritizing them into a product roadmap for future releases
- Improving the onboarding flow within your app or adding documentation that may be useful to end users.
- Informing your marketing strategy based on how your testers use the app, and collecting testimonials from these users.
Whether you’re getting ready to kick off your beta testing or you’re still trying to decide if it’s the right step for you, I’ve compiled some of my favorite tips and tricks below to help you make sure it’s as successful as possible.
Plan like crazy
I’m a big advocate of planning for any stage of product development, and beta testing is no exception. Starting with a meticulous game plan will make sure things run as smoothly as possible once you start testing. Some things to consider:
- Will you do a closed beta (restricting the audience to a limited group) or an open beta (soft releasing to the public and making it available to anyone on the internet)?
- What are the top 3 things you want to know at the end of the beta testing period? For example: do you want to get testimonials? find a lot of bugs? find usability issues? test out a certain feature? Having a target will help you focus on a north star.
- How will you collect feedback?
- How many people do you want to reach?
- Do you want to meet with users, send a survey, or collect feedback in the app?
- How often are you going to release bug fixes?
Solidify your communication plan
Once you’ve got your plan in place, communicate as clearly as possible to both your internal team and your beta testers. Your internal team needs to know all the aspects of your plan: who is responsible for different aspects of beta testing, who is going to fix bugs, how often you’ll release fixes, and when beta testing will take place.
Beta testers need to know:
- Set up or installation instructions
- What to look for in testing (Is there a certain feature you want them to focus on?)
- Clear expectations on how much time they should spend testing
- How to report issues or feature requests
- Beta testing start and end dates
- Whether there are any next steps after they submit feedback (for example, if you would like to interview them about their experience)
Get your beta testing group just right
Target your beta testing audience as much as possible to make sure they’re the same type of people as the ones who will ultimately use your app. If the audience demographics don’t fit your app, they’re not going to give good feedback no matter how many of them there are. So for example, if it’s an app for women’s health don’t flood your beta testing group with users who are men. If it’s an app for construction workers, don’t create a beta testing group of strictly kindergarten teachers.
Really spend time thinking about how you’re going to collect data, because this can impact the size of your beta testing group:
- If you’re planning to interviews with all these people, you’re not going to be able to interview 100 users.
- If you’re planning to collect user data on how they interact with the app by tracking their actions, then a larger sample size would be better.
- If you’re collecting surveys or soliciting feedback in the app, consider a mid-range sample size so you aren’t inundated with data when a lot of people send feedback, but you still account for the people who don’t actually test (there will definitely be some people who skip beta testing).
Create a stable testing environment
Test, test, test before you send the app out for beta!! Make sure it works on every type of device your testers will be using, and there aren’t any major, obvious bugs. The last thing you want is to have to scramble to fix a badly broken app moments after sending out the beta release. For a few of your users, this is going to be their first experience with the app and you want it to be a good one. And some users will simply stop participating in testing if the app doesn’t work, which means you’re losing out on valuable feedback.
For beta I always recommend pushing a stable release, and not adding new features to that build until testing is complete. That way, users aren’t confused by constant changes, and they don’t encounter newly-released bugs. I also like to communicate with them about what features are in the works so they don’t suggest things that are already in progress. You can still continue working on a different code branch so that when the testing period is over, you’re ready to release a new version.
Intermittently fixing bugs throughout the beta testing phase is ok, but communicate the bug fixes to your beta testers so they don’t re-report it and they aren’t surprised.
Get the most out of your feedback
If you plan to interview or survey beta testers, spend some time formulating your questions to make sure you’re asking in a way that will get you the best feedback. Stick to questions that are relevant, open-ended, and probing. Try to ask one question at a time (rather than questions with two parts). Really be sure that your questions aren’t biased or leading in any way.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, try to avoid asking people if they like your product. Likability is not a success indicator: just because someone likes it doesn’t mean they’ll use it or take any specific action.
Once you have your data from testers, it’s time to look at the results and start finding trends and patterns. Drop your bias and read through all feedback with a neutral mindset: resist the urge to start thinking about solutions right away! When you get through it all, highlight or make notes about the trends you identified.
Take feature requests with a grain of salt. Sometimes participants will share ideas for features with you. It could be as big as, “Why don’t you add cryptocurrency?” or as small as “Move this button to the left side.” Don’t take these suggestions at face value. Stop and ask yourself what problem the user is trying to solve with the feature suggestion. Understanding their motivations will help you decide if you want to make the change as suggested, or solve the problem in a better way that will resonate with more users. You might also consider interviewing other target users to see if this feature has viability with other people before deciding whether to build it or not.
And finally, you’re at the fun part – deciding what to do with your data. Once you have established your themes, think about what that means for your product. Ask yourself:
- How should I prioritized these changes?
- What needs to be changed right away?
- Are all of the features right for the app?
- Do we need to change our strategy or pivot?
Ready to start your beta testing journey? We’d love to help you make it wildly successful! Contact us to get started.
