TryBeta.com

Who is going to use your software? What kind of experience will your users have? Will they read through your entire manual? Does your manual even make sense to your users?

There are lots of questions to consider in software development. The overall goal of software development is to get end users to use your software. As a software developer you’ve probably gotten emails from users along the lines of;

“Your software doesn’t work” or “Your product crashed my computer, fix it”

One of biggest problems in software development is not necessarily that it is impossible to fix all coding bugs, but that potentially millions of people will use your software the way they believe it should be used. They may have grown to expect that certain functionality works a certain way or they may have come from a different operating system where a certain feature worked differently. Your users will no doubt find a way to use your program in a way that you have not thought of before.

TryBeta aims to help you with both of these issues. It will link you up with your actual potential user base to find high quality, reliable beta testers. These users will know your software is in beta stage and will not expect anything more. Pending your approval, these users will actively test and report bugs, usability issues, feature requests and suggestions. You will be provided with real feedback by the very same people who will be using your software.

In order to find quality beta testers, TryBeta provides a two way feedback system between beta testers and developers. Without giving to much away, developers will easily be able to get a good idea about how testers have performed in the past.

TryBeta is targeted towards the small company and independent software vendor. It provides them with the resources to conduct their beta program with the added security of knowing they are getting reliable beta testers.

The beta process is not just about testing your code. It’s also about testing the viability of your product in the market. This is what TryBeta helps do for the software developer.

Integrity and security of the web site is very important to us. If you don’t want your product released to all beta testers on the web site, you don’t have to. We have included features in the web site which allow you to control how public you would like to make your software.

Some developers have asked how beta testers will be attracted to the web site. I’ll save what we’re going to do for beta testers for the next post…

Do features sell software? When you create products that can do more than your competitor’s products, does that give you the advantage?

David Pogue, the personal technology columnist for The New York Times, has an interesting, and very entertaining presentation on designing both hardware and software that is easy to use, not necessarily packed with features.

If you are a software developer, you should definitely check it out. Our hope is that with TryBeta you will get the feedback from your potential users before you release it to the public. This way changes that you have to make can be done earlier and before you leave a potential bad impression with the public.

This is also one thing we are trying to accomplish with the design of TryBeta. Recently we were working on some design issues with the Developer’s administrative area. We want to make sure it is real easy to use, even though the people who will be using this section will already be experienced computer users. We cut some features that did not fit into the design and will add them later on as we get feedback from developers.

We’ve added a few new enhancements today though. I’ll have a longer post over the next few days which will answer some common questions about the site.

Thanks for visiting TryBeta.com. Over the next few weeks I will post some more info on what exactly TryBeta is what it will do for software developers and software users.

Right now we are completing some final fixes on the web site. We are very close to finishing everything up. Afterwords we will be focusing on security and reliability of the web site. Its been a pretty big job, but everything is coming togethor nicely. Check back soon, and remember to sign up at TryBeta.com to be notified when the site launches. After the initial stage of testing, developers who sign up for the notification will be the first to get to logon to the site. We will be limiting sign ups, so remember to get listed as soon as possible.