5 tips to run a successful beta test

It’s not easy to run a successful beta test. The timing is typically short, resources are limited, and it usually involves convincing a large number of users to accept using a flawed product. All of this might put your sanity to the test during an already stressful period. We’ve compiled a list of tips to help you stay sane while maximizing your test results.

1. Make sure you have clear goals

Before you start your beta, be sure you know what you want to achieve. Every test assumes that features’ improvement is a given. The rest is all up to you. During the planning process, engage with other stakeholders in your business to determine what they require, and then construct the test in order to receive the required input and achieve all of your objectives.

These objectives should be clearly stated to your beta-testers. Here are some examples of goals you can have for our beta test:

• Improve usability
• Identify bugs
• Gather testimonials
• Evaluate the impact on a specific metric
• Test the willingness to pay of your users

2. Find the right beta-testers

Qualifying feedback from a non-qualified beta-tester can take forever.

Make sure to target users that are the main target for the feature. You don’t want to receive feedback and then doubt their relevance in regard to your real target.

If you want to gather testimonials at the end of your test, you need to be honest about it and choose people who are willing to do it and eventually become your promotors.

If you aren’t sure which users fit these criteria, don’t hesitate to ask your Sales or Customer Success teams for help. They are usually the ones in contact with your prospects and clients.

3. Don’t spoil your beta-testers

Once you have found your beta-testers you need to get in touch with them and schedule a call to brief them about the beta test. During that call, there are two temptations you will need to resist:

1. Doing a detailed and thorough demo of your feature and not letting your beta-testers discover the user experience by themselves.
2. Telling your beta tester the impact and key results you are expecting from the test.

By doing so, you limit your Beta test to biased feedback that won’t help you get a real vision of the real pains or real impacts your final users might encounter while using your product.

On the other hand, these are the things you shouldn’t forget to speak about with your beta-testers:

1. Explain the objectives of the beta test (and be honest about it)
2. Talk about the way you want to gather their feedbacks
3. Briefly introduce the feature
4. Share documentation about your feature (this documentation should also be available for your final users)

4. Collect continuous quality feedback

Don’t wait until the end of your beta test to ask for feedback. Find a way to maintain a steady flow of feedback during all phases of your beta-test. Manage and filter that feedback to keep it organized, you can qualify them in a matrix to easily quantify and find them. One simple tip would be to send a short weekly survey to your beta testers.

Make sure to start with a general question that assesses their global satisfaction with the feature. Then, have custom questions depending on their rating.

For unsatisfied testers, you basically need to understand what went wrong and for happy users, try to dig into areas of improvement, gather some testimonials and success metrics that will eventually help you promote your feature.

5. Act on your beta-test results

A beta may help nearly every department involved with your product, but only if the information reaches them. Depending on your initial objectives you will need to act on the results of your beta test. If you don’t, all these efforts will go to waste.

• If your goal was to improve your feature and you did realize your users couldn’t get the expected value out of your feature, don’t hesitate to iterate on it if you’re convinced these iterations would bring the missing value;
• If you were mainly aiming for testimonials, well go on and share the testimonials you have on your feature page website, with your sales team, etc.