10 Essential Tips for Successful Beta Testing
Beta testing is a crucial phase in the development of any product, where real users put a product through its paces before it hits the market. As a potential beta tester, your feedback is invaluable to developers looking to refine their products. Whether you’re new to beta testing or a seasoned pro, these ten tips will help you make the most out of your testing experience.
1. Keep your profile up to date
While having an updated profile is not essential to start beta testing, it is one of the best things you can do to get invited to more tests. On Betabound we have test platforms, which are short profiles for the tech products that make up your testing ecosystem. They help us understand what products you have and how they might interact with a product you’ll test. Completing these is optional, but very rewarding! These Test Platforms allow us to match you with the right testing opportunities for you and your testing environment.
The owners of the products we test often look for testers with very specific testing environments. For example, if a company needs testers with particular cell phone service providers, they’ll provide the Betabound team with a list of what they are looking for. In this case, if you have a Mobile Platform indicating that you have a phone with one of the required service providers, you will definitely get an invitation to that test. Having several test platforms and keeping them updated will expand your testing opportunities by a large margin.
2. Participate a bit each day
The best way to ensure you meet participation requirements is to do all activities, complete all surveys, and provide thorough feedback. This can seem like a daunting task if you have 4 activities each week that take time and effort to complete. However, by doing a bit of work for the test each day, your effort can be spread across a longer period of time and you will not get burnt out or have to rush through all your activities at the end of each week.
As Centercode Program Manager Mike Fine explains in his interview, if you are part of a three-week beta test and have four activities each week, that is 12 activities in total. For each week, if you do one activity a day, you’ll have all activities completed in four days and will have three days to turn in feedback related to those activities. By the end of the test, you would not only have all your activities completed but would also have submitted 12 pieces of feedback.
3. Submit your surveys on time
Our clients use the feedback gathered from beta tests to make actual changes to their upcoming products. Surveys in particular have a big impact because they can show trends in what is working and what needs to be improved by getting responses from every tester. Surveys often have a quick turnaround time and are typically live for one week. The sooner you submit your thoughts, the more likely it is that your feedback will lead to a change in that product’s development.
Being timely with your survey submissions also means you won’t receive reminders in your email inbox, and it will improve your perceived reliability in our community. By submitting surveys on time, you’re building a reputation for yourself as a responsible, reliable tester – which improves your likelihood of getting asked back for future beta projects.
4. The quality of your feedback matters more than the quantity
Unlike other beta testing communities, Betabound believes in full-spectrum testing. This means that all your feedback, not just issues, is considered. Our clients appreciate Betabounders that take the time to offer feature suggestions, share their use-case experiences, dream up new versions of a product, and explain the good and the bad of a specific tech product. Being so close to their products, our clients appreciate our testers’ ability to help them step back and look at the big picture.
It’s great to be active in our projects, but it’s even better to share meaningful insights about a product. Those pieces of high-quality, thoughtful feedback are the ones that could shape a product’s final development, and are therefore, the responses we hope testers will focus on if they’re interested in truly helping a team improve their final design.
5. Follow your tester agreement documents
Testers are often asked to sign legal agreements as part of joining a company’s product test. While it may be tempting to just sign the documents without reading them, it’s important that you understand what you’re agreeing to. This will ensure that you don’t accidentally violate the rules of the test at a later date.
Companies take test secrecy and participation very seriously, so you should too. The two legal documents you’ll usually see as testers are non-disclosure agreements and test participant agreements. They may be given to you as a single document, or separately, but they do address two different aspects of being a tester for a pre-release product. By not breaking the rules listed in these documents, you can ensure you will not face any consequences from Betabound or the client’s legal team.
6. Communicate with your test manager
Life happens, and circumstances may occur where you are not able to commit to part or all of the test even if you initially thought you had the time and energy to do so. If this is the case, a great tester will contact their test manager immediately. The test manager will then let them know how best to proceed with the test. Missing a few days is usually not going to result in negative outcomes for your testing reputation, and some tests allow you to bring the product with you and test on the go so you can test while traveling.
Communication is not only vital when it comes to giving a heads-up about an absence during a test, but it also is necessary when you run into anything that is completely stopping you from testing. This could be that the software is not running on your computer, you are unable to submit any feedback, or you cannot find a piece of content that was said to be live. When these issues occur, letting the test manager as soon as possible will not only help the issue be solved for you, but it may also help other testers who have not yet reported the problem.
7. Upvote feedback you agree with
Often, submitting the same piece of feedback other testers have submitted is not helpful for the test manager, as it means more time spent on going through each piece and finding the trends throughout the pages of feedback. When submitting a piece of feedback, you have the option to match your feedback with another one that was already submitted, saving everyone time and showing that you have a similar issue, idea, or praise. You can also match feedback while looking at the entire feedback list by hovering over the number on the left-hand side and clicking the arrow that shows up.
Adding upvotes or matching feedback is extremely helpful in showing how many people encountered the same thing while testing. The bigger the number, the more likely the problem will take that piece of feedback seriously and implement the changes needed in the final version of the product. You can even go one step further beyond upvoting by leaving a comment on the piece of feedback you are matching. In your comment you can state why you agree with the feedback, and if anything different in your situation may be helpful for the test manager or client to know.
8. Have a positive attitude
One of the best (and easiest) things to bring into a test is a positive attitude. Our tests are commonly betas, which focus on unreleased products that are likely to have a quirk or two. The whole point of testing is to find out these quirks before the product gets released. Since it can take far longer to look into these issues than you’d expect, the test management team deeply appreciates when our beta testers are patient and understanding.
The issues you find in testing are issues that millions of people may not experience thanks to your feedback. We love testers who have the overflowing curiosity and passion required to test a product to the fullest. On the other hand, test managers won’t select testers who are testing solely because they expect compensation. This kind of testing isn’t a job, and it shouldn’t be treated like one.
9. Return your test devices on time
When selected for a hardware test, you get the opportunity to try out an upcoming version of a company’s product. While every test is different, you should be under the assumption that the hardware is not in its final state and will need to be returned to the manufacturer. This may be for a variety of reasons such as analyzing wear and tear, investigating any malfunctions, and performing further internal testing.
If a device is not returned on schedule, a series of steps will be taken to ensure the product is returned to the client. If none of this works, the tester will be blacklisted from future Betabound opportunities and may cause legal action to be taken against the tester. By adhering to return policies, testers help maintain product integrity and confidentiality, fostering a collaborative and trustworthy relationship between testers and companies.
10. Remember to have fun!
While it is important to take testing seriously, as your feedback will have an impact on the future development of the product, this does not mean you should only do the tasks requested. It can be very rewarding to explore a product’s full potential in the way that feels most comfortable to you.
Your method of using a product can reveal new insights and suggestions, and may even help you find issues nobody else did. Project managers want you to take the product to its limits to find out what is possible. When you explore all the edge cases of a product, that is where you find the innovation the client is looking for.