Designing an App Beta Progam. Share recommendations, best practices πŸ™

Aditya
24 replies
Hey PH fam - I'm designing a 'Beta Program' for an app launch and I'm looking out for best practices, recommendations, and inspiration. If you have worked on any beta program or have been a beta user, share your experience so that I learn and make this program a success!! What is the beta program for? I'll keep you guessing πŸ˜‰

Replies

Nikhil Bapna
From my experience (of not doing this but should have)... have open communication of every little update/change you do in the process of the development. Engage the beta testers to be a part of the development. The goal here would be to curate somehow beta testers who are emotionally invested in the project rather than fly by testers who don't really engage.
Swopes Vanwormerson
@nikhilbapna yeah you are right. When we were designing app for https://www.apkmamba.com/mario-k... so we did the same. It helped in developing an amazing product and also it increase our trust in customers heart.
Having been part of quite a few these are the things I'd like: - Some way of automatically recording device/software/browser info etc. - Quick way to report within the program bugs that you encounter, preferably with the ability to annotate - Chat function within the app rather than having to use some other medium.
Aditya
@maxwellcdavis that's some great feedback! Was wondering if beta testers' community is a cool idea? Maybe all the testers become a part of the Slack community for an app! What do you think about it?
Dylan Merideth
@adityavsc @maxwellcdavis whats one way you could annotate and report bugs? Does this functionality already exist in some product?
Funniest Cats Life
@maxwellcdavis yeah you are right. When we were designing app for https://apkbeer.com/angry-birds-... ..... so we did the same. It helped in developing an amazing product and also it increase our trust in customers heart.
Jenny Romano
I'd say making it as easy as possible - on the channels beta testers prefer - to share feedback with you is a big priority. Along with that, going through / clustering / prioritizing their feedback frequently so you can iterate on it and get feedback on the iteration, and most importantly make beta testers feel heard and valued!
Aditya
@jenny_romano absolutely! Beta testers are such a big part of the product development process. I intend to remain in constant touch with them, create a board where they can see the action taken on their feedback, and also mention their contributions in release notes :)
Michael Novotny
Hi Aditya, not sure if this is what you’re looking for but TheLeanSideProject.com is a lean approach to making and launching including beta from an indie or early startup validation perspective.
Aditya
@michaeljnovotny really like this super lean approach. In fact, I'm in great admiration of founders that choose to remain lean - Sahil from Gumroad ✨
Solomon Bush
If we can guess what the beta program is for, will you tell us πŸ˜ƒ?
Dextrome
This makes zero sense, what are you talking about?
Paul VanZandt
QA and bug testing will be crucial to the growth process - find a way to do this manually or create test automation to make your life easier. Documentation is key here too. Best of luck!
Ste
Eager to see what you're making! (love that cat) As someone who just launched their product in beta, I can say I'd definitely need this. The way I handled it right now on https://unblokd.com is through a simple feedback button. There are also a couple of feedback related products that stood out on PH: https://www.producthunt.com/post... https://www.producthunt.com/post... I think the most important part would be incentivizing people to offer feedback. Founders love to post feedback requests. But rarely offer feedback to others. A pretty good approach I've seen is https://karma-community.com/ - where you exchange platform karma for help or feedback. Curious how it will play out. I think gamifying it is the way to go.
Evgeniy Yakubovskiy
We did beta testing of our no-code builder inqoob. The second stage is now underway. I will describe the results of the first beta test below. The main goals of the beta testing were to get feedback from the first users and to complete the constructor with the required functions. The tests started at the end of December. Within a month, we had gathered a lot of material for further work on the constructor's functionality. We built an audience of the first 500 users. In beta-testing, we managed to conclude six major collaborations, which brought our designer to another level. There were no financial goals. We understood that it would be a waste. Still, it allowed us to research user expectations and adapt the designer to them. The next step in expanding the platform's functionality will be the launch of boxed solutions from inqoob partners.
Titiksha Tolia
@evgeniyyakubovckiy sounds great! Can you share more about how you built an audience of 500 users? That's a very impressive number!
Punit Chawla
Efficient in app feedback systems! Asking people for feedback at the end of a user journey or task can help you understand various painpoints.
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Solomon Eseme
I'm building Contentre, the app that runs your freelance writing business. https://app.contentre.io It helps freelance writers (content creators) organize their content, manage clients, create multiple portfolios, discover new opportunities, and lots more, all in one place. I'm about to move to the beta program. I need all the advice I can get. I am new here and looking for friends.
A Studio
This is amazing looking forward to try it in the future as soon as it launch. It feels quite good when you start a project and then it into a diamond. Like it was hard when I started out working on https://apkvez.com/ice-village-m... designing but when I got the final results it feels good. We all know good products always increase customers trust. Looking forward to trying it out
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