🧪 Where to find alpha testers?
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One of my young and enthusiastic maker followers recently asked me for advice on finding alpha testers.
And honestly… I realized I’m not the best person to answer this one =D
We built RunEvr inside an animation studio, so our team of artists naturally became our first alpha testers.
We had a real product, a real team, and a real workflow to test it on from day one.
So I couldn’t really give advice based on my own experience.
Instead, I offered to create a thread and ask YOU - the community:
Where do you find your alpha testers before launch?
Would love to hear what worked for you - and what definitely didn’t.
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I would start with people who already have the problem even if they arent friends. their feedback is usually much more honest.
@margret_rhyme Hi! May I know how do you get in touch to these people? Do you have any recommendations? Thanks in advance :)
@margret_rhyme @mindyorzi Yes, Margret, what strategy do you use to find people with a specific problem?
Small communities have worked better for me than broad launches. a handful of relevant users can reveal more than hundreds of signups.
@alira_salu But where? What’s your advice for finding small communities for this case?
This question is really important for beginners
I've had the product idea for about two years, but I only started actually building it three weeks ago. I've set a hard deadline for myself to ship ASAP — partly because my one developer friend rated the idea a 3/10, while I'm convinced it's at least a 7/10. He's the only person I can really talk code with, but he's busy. My other friends are not very passionate about productivity tools, and I feel like I've already bothered them too much. T T
I think one of the biggest problem is how to reach those people, Is there any community that people love to test new products?
@mindyorzi I think you can be active here on PH, on Reddit, and show your idea through screenshots or by talking about it yourself. That way, you can probably understand better how people react to your idea.
@adana Yeah, that would be the best solution for me right now ㄒoㄒ
Thanks again!
I still do not know what is the answer between Alpha and Beta :D
@busmark_w_nika Look =) Beta testers are users who join when the product is officially live, but there are still some bugs and many features that need testing and approval. Overall, though, the product works clearly.
Alpha testers are your squad of testers when the product isn’t live yet. They test, test and test it again =D
@adana aaaa okay :D i probably skipped alpha testers part :D
@busmark_w_nika Haha =D I think for not so complex products, it’s totally fine!
Our shortcut was having users of our older apps already, so the first testers came straight out of the support inbox. People who have written in with a complaint before will tell you the truth about a new thing. We went live with something today and a good chunk of the early feedback came from that same list.
@yelyzaveta_kibets Great! Not every maker can brag about having such a head start =)
@adana True, though it cuts both ways. The people who try a new thing first are also the quickest to tell you it is worse than the old one, which is useful and slightly bruising at the same time.
Existing users are gold if the product solves a problem they already complain about. they dont need much convincing to test something new.
@adams_parker But where to find them in a very early stage of building - people who are already complaining about a problem you have a solution for?
The best alpha testers arent necessarily the most enthusiastic ones. i would pick people who will actually use it repeatedly and tell you whats annoying.
@andrew_dale2Â Agreed. But the problem is where to find them =) Do you have a specific strategy for finding people like that?
I like the idea of recruiting testers around one specific use case instead of asking people to try the product. it gives much clearer feedback.
@irsa_doham I like that - one specific use case...
But the problem still remains: who do you ask, and where do you find the people who will actually test it?
Your animation studio setup is actually a huge advantage. real workflows produce edge cases that a random tester probably wont discover.
@jeremy_loomis Can’t disagree! It’s a 101% advantage =)
But when I think from the perspective of a solo maker with no team, I really start to struggle - where to find them - those testers?! =D
on how to actually reach them, the thing that worked for us was going where people complain about the problem in public and then contacting them one at a time, instead of posting an ask anywhere. for our first product that meant reading google reviews of the businesses we wanted, because the owner is usually the one replying to the bad ones and they sign those replies with a name. that gave us a real person plus something they had already said out loud was broken, so the first message was about their thing rather than about ours. hit rate was still bad and most of it was calls that went nowhere. but those were the only people who told us anything true. anyone who agrees to test because you asked them nicely will just tell you its fine.
Good strategy with the reviews! =)
And I totally agree about testers who just say everything is fine... That’s the worst thing that can happen to a maker =D
@adana the fix that worked was asking them to send me the thing they made with it, instead of telling me how it went. one person sent a screenshot with three steps in it i never designed :) that told me more than the whole call did.
@rabnoor_s Yes, usage scenarios can be unexpected sometimes =)