Blog Posts by Luke Freiler

Democratizing User Testing

Centercode introduces new editions for companies building a product regardless of structure and scale.

Beta Testing Is More Than Just an Insurance Plan

Here’s the universal truth about insurance: you buy it, but you hope you never actually have to use it. We treat insurance as a necessary evil for this reason. Nobody ever looks forward to purchasing or using it. In every case where insurance gets used — be it for your car, your house, or your […]

Extending the Value of Customer Testing Through Integrations

Product Development

Today’s platforms collect and catalog more data than ever, but for many organizations, that data is gathered and stored in multiple places, making it very difficult to access from one tool to the next. The ability to push and receive data is especially critical to Customer Validation programs, whose organizational value is directly proportional to […]

Three Ways Centercode Helps Product Test Managers with GDPR Compliance

Centercode News

Next week, we’re unveiling Centercode C14.5, our newest platform release that gives product test managers and their Customer Validation Teams peace of mind as they work to comply with the EU’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), effective May 25, 2018. This most recent edition of the Centercode Platform offers a host of new features and […]

Latest Centercode Release Overhauls Onboarding and Reporting Features

Centercode News

I’m exceptionally proud to announce the latest release of the Centercode platform, which is a huge step forward in advancing its customer validation capabilities. This release focuses on the two extreme spectrums of the customer testing process — the beginning, with a highly flexible user onboarding system, and the end, with a whole new approach […]

The Next Generation of Beta Testing is Officially Here

Centercode News

At long last, we’re ecstatic to announce the new Centercode beta test management platform has finally arrived. With this release we’ve entirely re-imagined what’s possible through beta testing and customer-driven development, offering a range of new capabilities including powerful feedback scoring, collaborative feedback discussion, and intelligent feedback automation, accessible through a mobile interface optimized for […]

How Is It Possible to Guarantee 100% Participation?

Centercode News

The single biggest challenge of nearly every beta test is participant engagement. Typical beta tests have very low participation rates (20-30%), meaning over 2/3 of the testers simply walk away with the product or gift at the end without giving any feedback. As part of our Managed Beta Tests, we promise our clients that they’ll […]

Feature Requests in Beta Testing

Test Management

Beta testing has many different moving parts. With so many pieces, it can be difficult to keep everything in perspective. We’re putting together a series that looks at the roles of different activities and functions in beta testing, so you can make the most of everything beta has to offer. This first post will look at the important, but often misunderstood, role feature requests play in beta.

What Constitutes “Participation” in a Beta Test?

Test Management

We’ve made the claim that our managed beta tests achieve an average active participation rate of over 90%, something almost unheard of in beta testing (where participation rates average ~30%). While in the past we’ve covered many of the tactics and tools we’ve used to reach this level, we’ve never published a definition of exactly what this benchmark is.

Centercode 2013 Managed Beta Refresh

Centercode News

We’ve been providing managed beta tests as a service to companies of all sizes for more than 10 years now. We’ve managed tests for countless product categories, from mobile apps and massively multiplayer games, to next-gen thermostats and enterprise hardware. At this point I think it’s safe to say that we’ve managed a wider variety of beta tests than any company, ever.

5 Ways to Increase Beta Tester Participation

Test Management

Consistent tester participation is the bane of most beta tests. Beta tests most commonly result in somewhere between 25% to 50% participation rates, meaning that only about one quarter to half of the beta testers participated to even the bare minimum expected of them, generally simply walking away with the product without providing any feedback at all. This is a huge waste of both time and money. Thankfully, there’s a number of simple things that can be done to raise these rates significantly.

5 Great Beta Tester Recruiting Sources

Test Launch

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.

Two Questions to Ask Every Beta Applicant

Test Launch

There are two simple questions that you can ask your beta applicants that will get you 80% of where you need to be to pick the absolute best beta test candidates from any pool of applicants.

Alpha vs. Beta Testing

Test Strategy

In the past we’ve witnessed some confusion regarding the key differences between the Alpha Test and Beta Test phases of product development. While there are no hard and fast rules, and many companies have their own definitions and unique processes, the following information is generally true.

Centercode So Far (2009 Edition)

Centercode News

As part of our internal 2009 year-end review I asked my engineers to run some queries on our entire software platform to illustrate the total impact our software has had on the world so far. These numbers only cover the last 3 or so years, but I believe they’re great fun stats and do a good job showing the effect we’ve had so far.

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