Before you ship out any of your products, you should aim to test it properly. In today’s competitive market, flawed products don’t survive that long. They’ll be savaged by reviewers and customers. If you want to succeed with whatever product or service you are selling, then a rigid testing process must be implemented.
Get the Right Testing Equipment
The first step is getting the right equipment. For example, if you are selling a GPS device, you’ll need a GPS simulator to ensure that your product is working in top condition and is as accurate as possible. As the maker of the product or service, you should be familiar with what you’ll need in terms of testing. Get the best so that you can get the most accurate results.
Involve Your Employees
The first testers of your product should be the ones who made it: your employees. Give your employees some time to use the product in question. For example, you’ll give select employees samples of your product so that they can use it during the workday. Testing with your employees is actually a good move since it means you are starting inside your company.
To implement internal testing, you need to talk to your employees about how important the testing is. Emphasize that proper testing now would save the company millions later. Internal testing also allows you to improve your products more quickly.
Start Early
When scheduling your tests, you should begin as soon as possible. The first viable version of your product should be ready to go to the testers, either internally or externally. Beta testers are a great source of feedback so that you can refine your product and the final result would be more polished. Start early and continue testing until you have a completely finished product.
Aim to Break Your Product
When testing your product, tell your testers to not be gentle. The aim of testing is to find the flaws of the product, so if it breaks during testing, this means there is something wrong. Collect the data and try to examine what went wrong so that you can correct the problems in the final product. Pushing your product to the limit is the only way to know if it will hold up in the field.
Test in Phases
During testing, have metrics available for your tests. Set up benchmarks for what you think is a success. For example, one phase focuses on one aspect of the product. If the product passes, then another phase is started that will focus on another aspect. This allows you to better gauge whether the product is ready for the market.
Your product is facing a lot of competition in the market. If you want it to succeed, you need to make it the best it can be. Releasing it prematurely will only damage its reputation and hurt your revenue in case you’re forced to recall the products you released. It is best to implement a solid testing process for all of your products before selling them.