“10%” I said...
“10%?! You mean 10% did NOT respond??” My manager replied.
“No... 10% of our testers actually tested our product...” I clarified.
“What about the other 90%?” he challenged me.
“Another 10% just turned it on.. and the rest did…um, nothing. They didn’t respond to any of our outreach”.
That was my typical experience with our beta tests - poor engagement. And when I thought of the time, money and effort that went into developing a product, a 10% engagement rate was not only risky for launch…it was personally disappointing.
If you’ve read this far (and you’ve run beta tests) this probably sounds familiar. Our testers sign up to be involved in testing, but they often don’t respond to our testing requests.
To understand why, one only needs to think in terms of their user experience as a tester:
Our testers receive a product along with a long PDF or multi-tab spreadsheet with instructions and places to record feedback. All at once.
Please review this packet, do these 9 things…and answer these 42 questions when you’re done. Please don’t forget any detail along the way. Heck, maybe just take notes for yourself in a separate document and try to reconstruct your feedback from those notes into OUR document. Sounds like hours of fun!
This is in a world that offers 1.5X speed watching for YouTube videos, limits opinions to 280 characters and allows you to summon a half-caf oat milk latte with cold foam by tapping on a screen a few times. Our beta testing processes are out of step with…everything.
So, when we built Stomio, we put this challenge at the heart of our design. How can we make the experience for the testers quick, easy and fun? How do we drive more engagement?
The answer, in a word (ok, a hyphenated phrase): Micro-Instructions.
Micro-instructions break up your typical long set of instructions into smaller, easier to comprehend, narrowly-focused steps. By doing so, you’re not asking your testers to read lengthy paragraphs or instruction sets. You’re only asking them to focus on the one small step presented to them.
Micro-Instructions also allow you to collect feedback along the way, while it’s fresh (and more accurate) instead of waiting until the end of the test set—or worse, a survey sent weeks after they started testing!).
Micro-Instructions dramatically increase engagement rates–it’s a proven concept that has transformed content marketing and e-learning. And with Stomio, it can transform your beta tests as well.
We don’t have to settle for 10% engagement. And we don’t have to make testing feel so much…like a test. Think in terms of smaller steps and you’ll see bigger engagement–and insights.
If you agree/disagree with us, I’d love to hear from you.
Ayham Ereksousi
Co-Founder CEO