Should I Pay My Beta Testers?
Centercode
AUGUST 16, 2023
As a beta manager you want to get as much relevant feedback from each tester as you can. Incentivizing and rewarding testers for their participation is a key part of getting that feedback.
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Beta Testing: How to Find The Ideal Beta Tester For Your Software
Userpilot
NOVEMBER 21, 2022
The elusive search for the ideal beta tester is something many product managers will be familiar with. You know you need to find testers… But sourcing people who strike the right balance of experience, first-time usage, and insight is a massive challenge. In-app beta testers are often ideal (and free).
User Testing 
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Webinars
The Path to Product Excellence: Avoiding Common Pitfalls and Enhancing Communication
Peak Performance: Continuous Testing & Evaluation of LLM-Based Applications
From Developer Experience to Product Experience: How a Shared Focus Fuels Product Success
Understanding User Needs and Satisfying Them
Beyond the Basics of A/B Tests: Highly Innovative Experimentation Tactics You Need to Know
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Learning to Love the Novice Beta Tester
Centercode
AUGUST 16, 2023
And sometimes we see companies that only want to select tech-savvy beta testers. A tester team needs to reflect the product’s target market, which usually means recruiting testers with all levels of expertise — even low levels. When you rely solely on expert beta testers, your results can be incomplete if not misleading.
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52 Webinars
The Path to Product Excellence: Avoiding Common Pitfalls and Enhancing Communication
Peak Performance: Continuous Testing & Evaluation of LLM-Based Applications
From Developer Experience to Product Experience: How a Shared Focus Fuels Product Success
Understanding User Needs and Satisfying Them
Beyond the Basics of A/B Tests: Highly Innovative Experimentation Tactics You Need to Know
Are My Testers Ready for Beta Testing?
Centercode
JULY 7, 2023
As a follow-up to our product readiness checklist, we put together a list to help prepare your testers for beta. You put a lot of time into planning your beta test and recruiting great testers. Here’s a list of a tasks that need to be completed to prepare your testers for success.
2 Important Ways Your Testers Increase AI Performance
Centercode
NOVEMBER 23, 2020
” Using Testers to Combat Big Challenges. Using beta testers to validate machine learning algorithms before release is essential to understanding how your tech performs in the real world. Here’s where your beta testers can step up to the plate again. So what can you do about this? How Centercode Helps. We got you.
7 More Beta Tester Recruiting Sources
Centercode
DECEMBER 28, 2022
At Adobe, we’re always trying to introduce new testers into our prerelease program (that’s what we call beta). There are many benefits to getting new testers into each prerelease cycle. The challenge for many beta managers, though, is where do these new testers come from?
Webinar on Recruiting and Selecting Great Beta Testers
Centercode
JULY 6, 2023
Perhaps the most important aspect of any beta test is recruiting the right testers to use your beta product. After all, these testers will be tasked with volunteering their […] Not to worry — you can still download a recording of the webinar to watch later or share with your colleagues!
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Ask the Expert: Should I Add More Testers?
Centercode
DECEMBER 8, 2020
Is more testers always the best solution when you’re experiencing a dip in feedback? In this Ask the Expert series, Centercode’s Chris Rader weighs in on large tester teams: when they work, when they don’t, and how to manage when your stakeholders want to keep adding testers. What should I do? Chris Rader.
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Scheduling Meetings With Your Beta Testers
Centercode
JULY 6, 2023
The practice is also gaining traction in beta testing, so we thought now would be a good time to discuss some best practices and caveats for scheduling meetings with beta testers. Done correctly, these meetings can have a great effect on participation and open doors to insights that are hard to obtain through other methods.
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Engagement Workshop: Identifying Tester Incompatibility
Centercode
MARCH 4, 2020
Low tester participation is a source of frustration for many Customer Validation professionals. But somehow, only a fraction of your testers are submitting feedback. Sometimes, it’s not you — it’s your testers. These two traits work together because target market testers have an organic reason for using your product.
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6 Tips for Rewarding Your Testers
Centercode
JANUARY 26, 2023
This final post is dedicated to showing appreciation for your hardworking testers. Here are some tips to help you say thank you to your amazing testers. Giving out a reward after your test is great way to increase participation during your current beta, as well as lay the foundation for future successful tests.
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9 Tips for Assigning Tester Activities
Centercode
DECEMBER 28, 2022
Once your beta test is rolling, you’ll need to focus on getting your testers interacting with your product. Here are some tips to help you build momentum and get your testers pointed in the right direction.
How Long in Advance Should Beta Testers Be Recruited
Centercode
MARCH 31, 2023
Recruiting beta testers for a test can be like planting seeds in the desert. Just as seeds need water and fertile soil to grow and thrive, beta testers need the right conditions to be able to fully engage with the product and provide valuable feedback.
5 Great Beta Tester Recruiting Sources
Centercode
DECEMBER 28, 2022
Finding the right beta testers isn’t so hard if you know where to look. This post focuses on 5 simple sources that you can use to build a great collection of qualified candidates for your beta test.
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Free Kit for Finding and Recruiting Great Beta Testers
Centercode
JANUARY 26, 2023
The success, or failure, of every beta test relies heavily upon its team of beta testers. The right group of testers can provide a fire-hose of quality feedback with minimal time investment. On the other hand, the wrong testers will provide virtually nothing of value — despite endless begging and pleading on your end.
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Iceberg of Beta Tester Value Infographic
Centercode
DECEMBER 20, 2022
Most companies recognize the value that beta testers bring to an organization before product launch, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The value that lies beneath the water line expands far beyond what you see on the surface.
Engagement Workshop: How to Recruit Enthusiastic Testers
Centercode
JANUARY 21, 2020
What makes an ideal tester ? It isn’t just the right demographic or technographic qualifications — though target market testers are essential to netting accurate and actionable insights. Matters for Your Tester Team. Chris Rader explained that tester enthusiasm — or a lack thereof — is a central part of that challenge.
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The Iceberg of Beta Tester Benefits
Centercode
DECEMBER 12, 2022
Most companies recognize the value that beta testers bring to an organization before product launch, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The mass that lies beneath the water line expands far beyond what you see on the surface.
The 3 Elements of Recruiting Testers
Centercode
DECEMBER 22, 2022
Once you’ve figured out who your ideal tester is (which should represent a diverse range of your target market), you’re going to have to start thinking about how you plan to onboard them into […] Getting users into your beta test is often one of the first big challenges of preparing to run your beta test.
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The Anatomy of a Great Beta Tester Infographic
Centercode
DECEMBER 20, 2022
Great beta testers share many of the same commonalities, making them a very valuable part of the product development process. Here is an infographic explaining some of the desirable traits to look for in your beta testers.
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5 Expectations to Establish with Testers on Day One
Centercode
DECEMBER 28, 2022
A common mistake new beta managers make is to assume that testers instinctually know what they’re supposed to do during a beta test. In truth, most testers (even the ‘naturals’) need guidance. It’s up to you to provide that guidance so your testers can hit the ground running when your test starts. Be transparent with […]
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The Ultimate Guide to Beta Testers: Everything You Need to Know
Centercode
MARCH 31, 2023
Have a question about beta testers? This guide will answer the most frequently asked questions about beta testers and about being a tester, while also providing tips and best practices from decades of beta testing experience along the way.
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How to Incentivize Software and Web Site Beta Testers
Centercode
JANUARY 26, 2023
We recently released a Beta Test Incentives Kit that helps you build a comprehensive strategy for motivating and rewarding your beta testers throughout your beta test.
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Engagement Workshop: Identifying Tester Communication Problems
Centercode
FEBRUARY 27, 2020
Maintaining tester engagement is one of the most persistent challenges facing today’s Customer Validation (CV) professionals. In connection to this, half also reported challenges when it comes to tester communication. Tester Communication Breakdown: Warning Signs. Testers are unresponsive.
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What to Put in the Welcome Letter to Your Testers
Centercode
MARCH 16, 2023
Finding and selecting the right group of testers to beta test your product is something that you’ll likely spend a lot of time and energy doing. For this reason, once your testers are selected and they’ve signed all the legal forms, it’s crucial […] It’s one of the most important steps for a successful beta test.
What Is The Value of Beta Testers?
Centercode
JULY 21, 2023
Beta testers not only improve products but also act as advocates, making them valuable even after launch.
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Announcing Betabound: A New Way to Find Great Beta Testers
Centercode
DECEMBER 28, 2022
Since Centercode’s early days we’ve had a community of amazing beta testers. Our community has grown organically through word of mouth to nearly 90,000 beta testers. As we’ve grown, our testers have clamored for more products to test, […]
Keep Testers Engaged with These 10 Beta Activities
Centercode
FEBRUARY 8, 2023
There’s a wide variety of activities your beta testers are more than willing to do to help improve your product. The activities that make the most sense for your test will vary based on your product and objectives, but here are ten of the most common ones (spoiler alert: bug reports are just the tip of the iceberg!).
Engagement Workshop: 4 Phases of Increasing Tester Participation
Centercode
APRIL 29, 2020
We’ve already dug into diagnosing potential challenges — communication breakdown , recruiting the wrong testers , friction caused by tools , and a product that isn’t ready for customer-testers — and how to start addressing them. What are your testers doing? Define your test objectives and tester selection criteria.
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Recruiting and Selecting B2B Beta Testers
Centercode
JULY 6, 2023
Recruiting the right beta testers is crucial to the success of any beta test, but it can be especially challenging when running tests for B2B (business to business) products. B2B products need customer validation just as much (if not more) as B2C products, but it can be incredibly challenging to get good feedback from people […]
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6 Tips for Assigning Tasks That Your Testers Will Actually Complete
Centercode
DECEMBER 28, 2022
One of the most effective ways to obtain feedback from beta testers is to ask them for it in the form of tasks. A task is a specific activity you can assign to your beta testers that they can perform and report back to you on. You can request testers do everything from installing the […]
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The Beta Tester Community that Fuels Centercode’s Success
Centercode
JULY 6, 2023
You also need targeted beta testers to try out your product and provide feedback. At Centercode, we have a growing community of over 100,000 profiled beta testers called Betabound. Having the right tools and expertise to run a beta test is only a piece of the puzzle. We use this community to find the perfect […]
How to Recruit Beta Testers
ProductPlan
JUNE 13, 2019
Working with beta testers is a great way to ensure a new product or feature is ready for “prime time” before you actually let it loose into the world. But what makes for a good beta tester and how do you find them? Here are some qualities to look for in a beta tester and nine tips on recruiting them. How to Recruit Beta Testers.
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13 Tips for Communicating with Testers
Centercode
JUNE 4, 2021
How you communicate with your testers has a huge impact on the success of your beta. If you don’t communicate clearly or often enough you risk alienating or confusing your testers. On the other hand, if you communicate too much you could frustrate testers with your constant micromanaging.
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6 Steps to Get Your Testers to Complete All of Their Activities
Centercode
DECEMBER 28, 2022
It doesn’t take much for inactive testers to affect your data, especially when it comes to analyzing forms of directed feedback (like surveys or tasks). Even if a small percentage of your testers opt out of responding to a mandatory activity, it can affect your data in a big way. For example, maybe testers who […]
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4 Tester Activities You Haven’t Tried
Centercode
DECEMBER 28, 2022
Directed feedback plays a crucial role in beta testing because it allows you to get specific data from your testers to meet your objectives. Rather than just hoping that information comes up as testers use your product, directed feedback allows you to assign certain activities that are designed to collect the exact kinds of feedback […]
Maximize Beta Tester Engagement With Strong Communication (with Examples!)
Centercode
JANUARY 10, 2023
If you’re stuck or just want some best practices, dive into these tips and examples to help you write the best weekly announcement emails your beta testers have ever read. Effective communication is crucial for the success of any beta test.
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How to Thank Your Testers
Centercode
NOVEMBER 24, 2021
And yes, those are both common and viable ways to reward testers for their participation. When you think of "incentives" in user testing, the first thing that comes to mind might be a free product or a gift card.
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10 Tips for Selecting Great Testers
Centercode
JUNE 4, 2021
For our third installment of the Beta Tips series we’re covering tester selection. You know that your testers can make or break your beta, so how do you make sure the testers you select are top notch? At this point you’ve planned your beta test and you’ve recruited a large pool of people interested in testing your product.
How Many Beta Testers Do You Need?
Centercode
JULY 20, 2022
Determining how many beta testers you need for a given project is one of the most common headscratchers when planning […] The short answer is that it depends – but it’s probably not the number your stakeholders threw out on a whim. If this question is giving you a headache, you’re not alone.
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Our Favorite Thank You Notes from Customers and Testers
Centercode
NOVEMBER 27, 2019
With Thanksgiving coming, we’re feeling especially grateful to work with you guys — the best customers, collaborators, contributors, and testers in the world! One of our testers got a heart rate alert from the device, took it to a doctor, and found out they had a heart problem that needed treatment right away.
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Human vs. Bot Testers
Centercode
JUNE 4, 2021
However, one question we’ve seen come up in the industry in recent years as automated testing becomes much more powerful is if human testers are needed for this type of testing anymore. Testing your product before launch and collecting pre-release user feedback is a crucial part of the product development lifecycle. If you’re trying to […]
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Rewarding Your Beta Testers with Incentives
Centercode
JUNE 8, 2021
Testers want to know what they get for participating in betas, and companies want to know what’s appropriate to offer them. There are several key things that companies need to be aware of when it comes to rewarding their testers. In fact, “incentives” is one of our most common Google search keywords.
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8 Key Characteristics to Look for When Recruiting Beta Testers
Centercode
DECEMBER 22, 2022
Great beta testers have a combination of personal characteristics and skills that make them effective at testing and providing valuable feedback on a product.
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