Incentives

What are testing incentives?

An incentive is a reward or thank you gift for testers who have participated in a user test. Incentives can also be given to testers to encourage their continued participation in a user testing program. 

Eligibility for testing incentives is usually determined by tester compliance and participation. For example, this could mean testers will only receive an incentive if they've completed all the weekly surveys on time and turned in their beta units.

Why are incentives important during testing?

Incentives can be used as a perk of test participation or a way to generate an action from a tester. In our experience, test participants who are genuinely invested in your product, and whose primary motivation is helping you improve it, provide more complete and nuanced feedback than those who only care about getting a reward.

That said, testers are essentially donating their time and resources to your cause. While early access to your product might be considered its own reward, saying thank you in the form of an incentive shows just how much you appreciate their efforts. It also increases product evangelism and encourages testers to return for future projects.

Types of incentives

The most popular and commonly used reward for participating in a project are gift cards. But there are both monetary and non-monetary rewards you can use as incentives.

Monetary

Note: In most cases, monetary incentives shouldn't be publicized during recruitment.

• Gift cards
• Products
• Discounts
• Merchandise
• Subscriptions
  

Non-monetary

• Interaction with the brand or organization
• Impacting the product
• Engaging with like minded individuals
• Recognition
• Vanity titles