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 receive feedback from 100% of the participants they were promised. This means if you pay for a 50-person beta test, you can expect to get feedback from 50 people. Given the low participation rates of traditional beta tests, getting 100% of testers to give feedback sounds too good to be true, so we wanted to explain this commitment in more detail.
Why We Created This Guarantee
Over the past 10 years we’ve run hundreds of beta tests and consistently achieved participation rates over 90%. We’ve written an eBook on the best practices and processes we used to achieve that level of participation.
Even though this participation level is more than three times higher than the industry average, we still didn’t feel this was sending the right message to our clients. If we quoted them a specific number of participants, why should they be happy with anything less? So we shifted our strategy to achieving engagement from 100% of our testers. This gives our clients greater assurance that they’re getting adequate coverage and testing by members of their target market.
How We Achieve 100% Participation
Each Managed Beta is quoted for a number of participants, usually in tiers of 25 or 100. In order to ensure we meet that level of participation, our beta managers may recruit up to the next tier. So if you were quoted 50 testers, they could recruit up to 75.
Our beta managers are then responsible for managing the entire tester pool, with any additional feedback given to you at no extra cost. This way you get feedback from all the testers you need, without paying for any extra (unhelpful) testers, and if your testers all end up being rockstars, you get the bonus feedback for free.
There Are Exceptions
Some clients have limitations that keep us from being able to recruit extra participants (e.g. a limited quantity of beta units) or they simply don’t want us to recruit extra participants due to concerns about additional exposure. In those situations our participation goal becomes 80%, and our team works hard to make sure that goal is met (though we’ll still be aiming to reach 90% participation or higher).
If We Don’t Meet Our Guarantee
While we can generally meet our goal, testers are ultimately volunteers and sometimes issues arise outside of our control. If we aren’t able to meet our participation goal, we give our clients two options:
- We’ll extend the test at no cost (if their schedule allows).
- We’ll reduce the price of the managed project to the participant tier we were able to meet.
Hopefully this explains a bit more about our participation guarantee and what it means for you. If you’d like more information on the other commitments we make as part of our Managed Betas. If you’re ready to see what your Centercode Managed Beta Test would look like, request a free beta test plan by clicking below.
