Why You Should Beta Test?

Why You Should Beta Test?

It is not uncommon for beta testing to get ignored or neglected in the enterprise application development cycle. However, it’s a crucial phase that has a great value and can determine the success of your mobile or web app.

Also known as user acceptance testing (UAT) or customer acceptance testing, beta testing comes with many benefits, considering it’s focused on end-users or customers. In most cases, beta testing helps in generating unexpected feedback concerning product quality and user experience. With the help of feedback, developers can refine the product before it gets launched.

Despite being a fairly common practice among mobile and web development teams, a lot of misunderstanding still surrounds beta testing. Here, we will help fill in gaps about beta testing and discuss why it should be part of your mobile or web development cycle.

What Is It?

Beta testing is the last step of web or mobile development before an application gets released to the market. The project team gives a nearly finished product to a selected group of users to evaluate the performance of the software in the real environment.

It aims to help uncover glitches, bugs, and usability issues in the product before it goes live. The end-users conduct the procedure in a production environment (hardware, network, etc.) similar to the one the final product will run on.

Besides identifying bugs in the application or software, this procedure provides you with the opportunity to test the security and reliability of the product because these aspects are difficult to test in a lab or stage environment.

It can be divided into two classes: open and closed. In open beta testing, anyone can use the software and provide feedback. On the other hand, closed testing involves only a few selected participants comprised of current customers, paid beta testers, or early adopters.

This testing process can run for a predetermined period or until new issues stop popping up and all the bugs get fixed.

While there’s no specific standard for conducting beta testing, you need to ensure the procedure aligns with your testing goals. Nevertheless, here are some requirements that your product needs to meet in order to be ready for beta testing.

• The software should contain all the features planned for the final version
• The mobile or web application needs to be stable (end-users should not encounter unexplained crashes)
• Selected participants should belong to the product’s targeted group
• Test participants should test the product in the real-world environment

Why You Should Beta Test?

Testing is a quick and easy way to gain in-depth user research around your software or app and find if your product meets your users’ needs and wants. In addition to that, this testing procedure offers you a complete overview of the true experience gained by test participants while using the products. Other reasons you should do beta testing include:

Measuring your product’s real-world compatibility: During the testing process, testers will open your applications via a wide range of devices, operating systems, browsers, etc.

Uncovering bugs and gaps in the end product: A wide range of platforms that customers use in the real world might not be available for your internal testing team. Therefore, beta testing can help you identify bugs, flaws, and other issues in your products that the development team missed.

Improving your product to work with all possible platforms: Beta testing allows you to identify platforms that don’t work with your application. Using this information, you can refine your product to be compatible with them.

Bottom Line

A product development cycle is only successful when users like the final version of your mobile or web app. And the best way to confirm if your targeted audience loves your product is to beta test.

This allows end-users to experience the product before the product goes live. Although this process varies from one product to another, the ultimate goal is to create a quality product that delivers an excellent user experience.