You’ve finally thought of an amazing groundbreaking idea for a product, and you’re ready to get going and selling it online to make your millions. However, no matter how exciting your product, how can you know for sure that people are actually going to want to buy it and use it?
Product testing.
If you don’t know what product testing is, it’s a very important phase of product development or making stuff to sell to others. So whether you’re making earrings and cupcakes, or interesting storage solutions, you’re going to need to go through a product testing stage to get your product the best it can possibly be before going on the market.
Through your product testing stage, you will get vital feedback from testers either through surveys, verbal feedback, or you could learn about getting UX feedback by following this remote unmoderated usability testing guide so that you get feedback in real-time.
The testing stage helps you to realize the viability of your product or service prior to its launch.
Why is product testing important?
Throughout the initial stages of planning your business, especially before you launch, it is critical to get an outsider’s perspective on the product you will have to offer. Your product testing phase will also give you a glimpse into the market. If not, you may well have wasted a lot of time and money investing in a product that will be a flop.
Product testing may seem like a lot of effort at first, but putting in the steps to really understand and seek out market insights ahead of your initial launch will save you time and money long term.
How to test a product before you launch
- Conduct some market research
As you form your initial business idea, you should take the time to learn more about who your product will be aimed at in the market. You can get into the minds of your customers, understand your competition, and get acquainted with trends within your industry.
While you may have a general idea about who your target audiences are, the market research phase is where you really begin to understand their hearts and minds.
You can use the internet to help you as a business owner to learn about your markets and customers online. Various tools can be used within the Google Customer Insights section.
It’s never a bad sign to be aware of who else is doing what you do. Having this type of competition means that your ideas are marketable and have commercial value. Your job will then be to find your own unique selling point so that you’re different to everybody else doing similar things.
In order to do that successfully, you will first need to understand how your competitors operate and how they communicate with their customers.
Can you find them easily online? That’s one place to start. What does their website look like? How do they communicate, if at all, on their social media accounts? You will get a good understanding of their customer service by how they communicate with their customers and how they handle their complaints. It is the customer who determines how successful a business is, so customer service should be one of the most integral focuses for a business.
Find some reviews of the company online. This may be on Google, Trustpilot, or on their social media. Engage with what is being said negatively about the company and the products that they offer so that you can improve your game in these areas. Your competitors’ shortcomings could be an excellent opportunity for you to thrive.
Use a prototype for product testing
Once you’ve done your market research and you understand the mind of your target audience, you can get ready for the product testing phase of your business launch.
Use a prototype to gather feedback from potential customers so that you can hone in on your ideas, create newer, more different versions of your product and have people assess which version will be the best.
Of course, your prototypes will differ based on what they are. If they are baked goods, for example, you’ll need to think about how you are going to test your products on customers and how you are going to get the product to them. For non-tangible products like apps and websites, your prototype for the testing stage could be an app or website in a beta version.
Be selective when it comes to choosing the people you trust enough to test your product. You should, ideally, choose a group of people from your target audience so that if they like the product, they can recommend it in the future.
You can gather their opinions on the product or service by conducting post-use surveys asking your testers their opinions on how the product works, what they think of the visuals, whether they’d find it useful, and their overall feelings about the product.
Product testing on the market
One final stage prior to a full launch is market testing. Market testing is also known as a soft launch but is not the same thing as product testing.
While product testing involves asking testers about your product, a soft launch is when you launch your product in a limited area for a limited time only. Here is where you’ll begin to see and understand how the product performed in the sales.
A market testing launch is not about getting specific feedback about how your product can improve, you will see how well it received by the number of sales you get as a result of the launch. The information you get here will help you to improve both your product and the strategy you use in which to market it.
You may think that you have a truly awesome idea, but it will always need polishing a little before being launched online. Test your product and your ideas with people, using the information and feedback you get to constantly improve your business.
All the effort you put in at the beginning will pay off as your business skyrockets!
