What is Beta Test?
Customer satisfaction is a paramount value that can be achieved, among other means, by letting users use a preliminary version of a product and getting their feedback.
Beta testing is a type of user testing where a group of target users gets an almost finished product to reveal possible bugs, security concerns, and reliability issues and to evaluate how it performs in the production environment. The testing is conducted in the same hardware and networks as the final release and is the final round of testing before the release.
Beta testing objectives
Beta testing is the best chance to see how the product is accepted by the customers. Internal testers will uncover a lot of problems and complete all the tests because this is their job, but real users do not feel obligated to use the product they find too unstable or unattractive, so the feedback is more objective and closer to the real life.
Besides, beta testing has a variety of more specific objectives:
- reveal usability issues and undiscovered bugs;
- test performance under real workloads outside a lab or stage settings;
- validate hypotheses about how the new functionality will be used;
- ensure the product meets customers’ requirements;
- refine the marketing strategy;
- test PR channels.
Types of beta testing
There are several most common types of beta testing that can be combined to be conducted simultaneously in one round of testing:
Closed vs. open beta testing
In closed beta testing, also known as private beta, the testing is limited to a specific set of testers, including current customers, paid beta testers, and early adopters. It is best suited to get feedback on a limited scope, for example, on the core features of the product.
In open tests, the access is given to everyone interested. Usually, the product is clearly marked as beta and there’s a method for submitting feedback provided. Open beta testing often follows the closed tests and is used to collect data about the users’ interaction patterns and to test infrastructure scaling to handle a close to real number of users.
Set time vs. open-end testing
Beta testing can be conducted for a preset period or it can alternatively run until there are no new issues reported and all major bugs are fixed.
Technical vs. marketing beta testing
Technical beta testing is run with tech-savvy users, who are usually internal to the organization. It is conducted to reveal complex bugs and ends up with high-quality testing reports.
Marketing beta tests are focused on drawing attention to the product and are mostly conducted to evaluate marketing channels but can also provide insights into customers’ reactions to new features.
Focused beta testing
Focused beta testing is a type of testing when the team gathers feedback only on specific features to collect focused feedback before the release.
What to do with the feedback
Apart from obvious bug fixing and product adjustment to satisfy the customers’ needs, beta testing feedback is also a useful tool to evaluate how critical a “known issue” is. Based on the feedback, product managers can draw the team’s attention to specific issues.
Revealed performance and scalability limitations can show how fast the product can be rolled out.
Feedback from beta testing proves that any KPIs or OKRs correlate to the expected behavior.
Finally, it’s possible to run A/B tests during beta testing to see which prompts, layouts or messages contribute to the desired user behavior.
Overall, beta testing is a precious tool to improve the current release and drive priorities for future releases. Though it requires effort to support a beta test environment, the resulting feedback overweighs all the costs, making beta testing a mandatory checklist item for every major release.
