Tracking the right metrics while conducting beta testing is essential for measuring the effectiveness of your efforts. But what are beta testing metrics exactly and why are they important?

Without tracking your metrics, you can’t improve them. Hence the popular saying, “you can’t improve what you can’t measure.” Understanding metrics and building reliable processes around them is critical to the role of most product and program managers running beta tests in order to demonstrate your program’s worth to executive leadership.

Let’s take a closer look at the importance of evaluating beta program metrics to measure the effectiveness of your tests.

What are beta test metrics?

One of the first and most crucial steps of the testing process is defining your testing metrics based on your goals for the test. These metrics are used to evaluate the performance of your beta product and typically focus on areas such as user experience, user satisfaction, and the overall reliability and stability of the product.

According to Centercode’s 2022 Delta Testing Industry Report, 87% of today’s companies are leveraging beta or delta tests, and 78% of respondents that describe their testing programs as “very effective” or “extremely effective” have defined processes for their programs. And as a product manager, you’re most likely responsible for managing the vision and communicating the information you glean from your testing program metrics into a strategy that various teams within your organization rely on.

Why are beta test metrics important?

By collecting and analyzing your test metrics, you can identify problems or issues with the product, and make improvements to its design and functionality before it is released publicly. You don’t want to risk releasing poor quality products because you didn’t pay attention to the feedback you were receiving from your testers.

Beta test metrics can be extremely valuable for many departments within an organization beyond just the QA team. Keeping the marketing and sales team in the loop with testing feedback and reports on test metrics can be very useful to help identify features and functionality that are most appealing to users. It can help your team understand how users are interacting with the product, and what they think about it. Don’t forget the customer support team – these individuals serve a critical role in supporting your customers' experience with your products and help address any issues they’re facing. 

Measuring your test metrics is an essential part of the product development process and is critical to improving your product performance and measuring the effectiveness of your tests. Paying close attention to the right signals will help ensure that your product is ready for release and meets the needs of users. 

What are some metrics that can be tracked to measure a beta test?

There are a wide variety of metrics that a beta program can capture, but the focus may vary from team to team based on the goals of your test and what you’re looking to understand. 

Here are some key metrics that can be tracked: 

• Quality – Demonstrates the usefulness of the data collected from the beta program and its impact on the quality of products being tested.
• Satisfaction – Measures the satisfaction of products being tested by customers.
• Output – Used to demonstrate the volume of effort within the beta program.
• Efficiency – Measures the results of processes and team efforts from beta projects.
  

Read our blog on The Beginner’s Guide to Identifying Beta Program Metrics to learn about this in more depth.

What are some common Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track?

Metrics are essential because they help you shape the product as it develops and forecast the success of every release. If you're a seasoned product manager, you're probably already familiar with and/or tracking some of these common KPIs:

• Monthly Active Users (MAU) and Daily Active Users (DAU)
• Customer Retention Rate (CRR)
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Feature and Product Adoption
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
• Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
• Customer Conversion Rate

These metrics are powerful tools and absolutely essential to understanding and shaping your product. Read our blog on The Future of Product Management Metrics to learn more.

How does Centercode help you measure testing metrics?

If you aren't using an all-in-one platform, you're saddled with the time-consuming task of pulling data from multiple spreadsheets, tester emails, and tools. Centercode provides a range of centralized tools and services that can help you measure your beta test metrics and evaluate the performance of your product during testing to ensure your efforts are maximized in every way.

Some powerful platform features include:

• ‍Automated dashboards: Get feedback, feature, and tester engagement insights with dashboards built specifically for user testing so you can quickly see crucial project data at a glance and in real-time so you can make informed decisions.‍
• Dynamic reporting: Build custom, visually engaging reports for deep analysis and insights on user, survey, feedback, and participation data.‍
• Feedback Prioritization: Utilize Centercode's prioritization system to determine which feedback, within a particular type, should be prioritized first by your team. Using an algorithm, it automatically calculates the impact resolving the feedback would have on your product as a whole.
• ‍Delta Impact Score: Impact measures the effectiveness of your test by comparing the difference between your success prediction without feedback addressed (i.e. if the product had gone to market without this test) versus your success score based on the feedback you successfully addressed (i.e. the product now). In general, it serves as a type of measurement for return on investment.
• ‍Delta Success Score: Delta Success Score balances the impact of positive feedback like praise, negative feedback like issues, and improvement ideas to show the overall success of your product in real time.
• ‍Delta Health Score: Delta Health Score indicates how well your project is running in real time. This letter grade combines the level of feature coverage your project is getting (based on audience engagement) with the amount of actionable feedback submitted by your audience.
• ‍Custom surveys: Design custom surveys and send them out to targeted groups of individuals. This will greatly help your team obtain user insights and quantify tester attitudes throughout the duration of your test.

Metrics are Essential

Metrics can be tricky, and identifying them without clear goals can lead you down a slippery slope. However, metrics are essential for understanding the performance and effectiveness of a product or process, and for identifying areas where improvement is needed.

While the measurements themselves are important, what matters most is how you use them to improve your processes. If done right, you can ensure that your product is ready for release, and that it will meet the needs and expectations of your users.

Sign up for a demo today to see how Centercode easily tracks all of your important testing metrics for you – seriously, it’s that simple. Centercode helps you manage your programs with confidence and provides you with the tools you need to demonstrate the value of your beta testing efforts to your leadership.