AUTHOR

Emily Hossellman

The Five W’s of Beta Testing

Test Strategy

In part three of our Customer Validation webinar series, we discussed Beta Testing and the importance of assessing customer satisfaction with your entire product experience. If you missed the webinar, here are the major takeaways to help you plan and run an effective Beta Test. What is Beta Testing? Beta Testing is the second (and […]

The Key to Climbing the Product Management Career Ladder? Understanding Your Customers.

Events

It used to be that if a product manager wanted to move up in their career they only had two options: director or VP. Now, a diverse range of new product-related roles are popping up at B2B companies, allowing product managers a wide variety of opportunities to grow. But if you’re in a product manager […]

RSVP for Our Upcoming Educational Networking Event on Customer Validation

Events

We understand the expectations and stress that come with releasing a new product. With so many new products launching every day, there is tremendous pressure to deliver high-quality products that exceed customer expectations and stand out from the crowd. In addition to your day-to-day tasks, getting customers to give you actionable, meaningful feedback about your […]

Centercode Sets the Standard for Customer Validation with C14

Centercode News

This week we’re releasing the latest version of the Centercode Platform, and it is our most significant release yet. With this release we’re going beyond the platform to provide our customers with not only the technology to run successful Customer Validation tests, but also the people and processes that are integral to building an industry […]

Why You Don’t Need 10,000 Beta Testers

Test Planning

This week Apple announced that you can now invite up to 10,000 beta testers through TestFlight to beta test your apps. Apple says this will help developers get more feedback on their apps before launch. While this may sound like great news (the more, the merrier, right?), there are actually a lot of reasons why […]

How Do I Make Stakeholders Care About My Beta Feedback?

Test Closure

You put a lot of time and effort into collecting actionable feedback during your beta test. This feedback not only has the power to improve the quality of your product, but can positively impact the entire customer experience — ultimately helping you release a better, more successful product. But that will only happen if your […]

What Makes Feedback Actionable?

Test Management

We talk a lot about the importance of “actionable feedback” here at Centercode, and that’s because not all feedback collected during beta testing is actually useful. Oftentimes, companies will throw up a feedback form and then get buried under the avalanche of unorganized feedback that comes rushing back. They’ll try to sift through it, but […]

The Value of Your Tester Community

Community Management

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we wanted to take a moment to talk about the power and value of your tester community and why they’re something you should be giving thanks for this week. Many companies are so focused on finding people for an individual beta test that they forget about the importance of building […]

What Makes Calculating the ROI of Beta Testing So Difficult?

Test Management

For anyone that’s had to stand in front of their executives and justify their budget or make the argument for additional resources, you know that calculating the return on investment (ROI) of a business process is both incredibly hard and incredibly valuable. If you can show the impact your team is having on the company, […]

You Can’t Hide a Bad Product Behind Paid Reviews

Test Planning

Research shows that 61% of customers read online reviews before making purchase decisions, and having a slightly higher star rating can mean dramatically higher sales for products. So it’s no surprise that companies have started paying a lot of attention to their online product reviews. This week Amazon announced a major change to their review […]

This is the Beta Test Pied Piper Should Have Run

Test Planning

Note: This is the second part of our spotlight on the most recent episodes of HBO’s “Silicon Valley”. If you haven’t yet, read part one: HBO’s “Silicon Valley” Shows Us Exactly Why You Need to Run a Decent Beta. If you’re continuing on, spoiler alert! Sunday night’s episode of “Silicon Valley” had Richard ready to […]

HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Shows Us Exactly Why You Need to Run a Decent Beta

Test Management

Note: In today’s blog post, I’ll be talking about the last few episodes of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” It’s the third season of the show, and Richard, Gilfoyle, Jared, and Dinesh, under the startup Pied Piper, are gearing up to release their data compression platform. If you haven’t caught up to the show, you can head […]

Cutting Support Costs with Beta Testing

Test Management

We all know that beta testing holds immense potential for achieving quality and marketing goals. It allows you to find and fix bugs that could’ve been catastrophic at launch and helps hone your marketing message to make sure it resonates with your market. But beta testing can also help you decrease support costs, which can […]

How to Avoid Disappointing Your Customers When Launching a New Product

Test Management

If you’re building a product that makes an element of everyday life “smart”, you’re probably also helping to create a whole new market that has no set industry standards or expectations. What many people don’t realize is that this makes aligning customer expectations a major challenge since, in most instances, you’re working with customers that […]

The 3 Elements of Feedback Scoring

Test Management

Prioritizing feedback during a beta test is one of the most important and difficult parts of being a beta manager. It doesn’t take much for an engaged tester team to generate an overwhelming amount of feedback, and the more feedback you collect, the more labor intensive it becomes to review and organize it. With all […]

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