Beta testing can be daunting, so throughout the year we publish valuable tools and resources that can help ease many of the challenges. From blog posts and case studies to in-depth whitepapers and eBooks, we provide customer validation advice and best practices for companies big and small, no matter what product you’re launching.
So if you haven’t recently browsed our content library or blog, we’ve put together a list of the most popular resources from last year to help you dive into some old and new favorites.
The Most Popular New Resource
The Feedback Playbook — A beta test is only as good as the feedback that you collect. This whitepaper details everything you need to know about how to collect, cultivate, and then manage high-quality feedback during your beta test. You’ll learn the psychology of feedback collection as well as best practices that will ensure you’re collecting actionable feedback that will help you maximize your results.
The Most Popular Resource of All Time
Software Beta Planning Kit — This kit has been a long time favorite at Centercode for both our customers and readers. The kit provides everything you need to plan a software beta test, including a complete template, companion guide, and example test plan. And in case you’re wondering: yes, we also have a version for hardware beta tests!
Honorable Mentions
Here are a few other great pieces of content that gained popularity in 2016:
Beta Test Incentives Kit — This kit covers everything you need to know about motivating and thanking your testers. It also includes a handy beta incentives budget calculator.
The Beta Shipping Manual — This whitepaper shows you our process of getting beta units to testers quickly, securely, and on time. It also includes a handy checklist of everything you should include in the packages you send out to your testers.
Implementing Feedback Scoring in Your Beta Program — This whitepaper outlines the Centercode platform’s Feedback Scoring features and how they can help your most impactful feedback rise to the top.
The Most Popular New Blog Post
HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Shows Us Exactly Why You Need to Run a Decent Beta — Last year, fictional company Pied Piper from HBO’s “Silicon Valley” ran a beta test for their product, an app. Spoiler alert: While they thought the beta test went well, the product’s launch went miserably, with users abandoning the app in droves. So what went wrong? This post details where things began to go belly up for the Pied Piper team. Unsurprisingly, it all begins with their beta test.
Most Popular Blog of All Time
Alpha vs. Beta Testing — Our most popular all time post has been sitting in the #1 spot for a while now. Detailing the key differences between alpha testing and beta testing, it dives into the distinction between the two for anyone tasked with handling customer validation for a product. With this post, you should have a good idea of how each testing phase fits into your product’s development process.
Honorable Mentions
Other must-read blog posts from 2016 include:
This is the Beta Test Pied Piper Should Have Run — A follow up to our popular new blog post, this post details how the fictional company Pied Piper should have run their beta test, along with an outline of the beta test we would have run for their product.
You Can’t Hide a Bad Product Behind Paid Reviews — In this post, we take a quick look at Amazon’s review policy changes and why releasing a high-quality, customer validated product is a much better strategy than hiding behind incentivized reviews.
What’s in a Name? Fragmentation in the Beta Testing Industry — In 2016, we surveyed beta testing professionals from more than 260 tech companies to dive deeper into the state of the customer validation industry. This post details some of the findings, which illustrates just how fragmented the industry currently is.
The Popular New Case Study
Sonim Technologies — Even though the Centercode platform is optimized for beta testing, ultra-rugged smartphone manufacturer Sonim Technologies saw a unique use for the software. This case study outlines how Sonim Technologies was able to leverage the platform to better connect with their developer community in a secure, flexible, and scalable way to gain deeper insights into their customer needs.
The Most Popular Case Study of All Time
F-Secure — This case study continues to be our most popular case study. It looks at how the security experts at F-Secure used the Centercode platform to build and manage a beta testing community that includes over 12,000 of their customers.
With 2017 underway, we’re looking forward to growing our library with more helpful content and sharing our expertise in customer validation. We hope you continue to find these resources helpful in building and improving your own customer validation programs.
If there are any topics you’d like to see covered in a whitepaper, eBook, or blog post, please let us know in the comments below. In the meantime, be sure to check out our resource library as we may have already covered something you’re looking for. And if you’d like a heads up whenever we release new content, you can also sign up for our newsletter!
