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I am nearly done with the development of a medium scale website and I want to do a bit of beta testing on the actual site. I am looking for some useful but somewhat generic questions that I should ask on a survey that I am sending with the beta testing link. Right now I have the following questions and am looking for some more although I don't want to ask many more because then I likely won't get many answers:

  • Would you use this website?
  • What was the best part?
  • What annoyed you or was difficult?
  • What would you add or change?
  • How many bugs did you run into?
  • Your email if you want to hear from us again:
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2 Answers

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Typically you would provide a little more direction. I don't think you could send someone a URL and then just ask them those questions. What you would normally do is give them a URL and ask them to perform a particular task.

Find a particular sweater and purchase it... Post a comment on your favorite article... Contact us through our website...

Then ask some questions around that. What's the best part, what's difficult, what would you change/add isn't probably going to be that valuable. Ideally you just have them perform some tasks, do screen recordings and see how the move through the site and have them do some dictation on what they are thinking. Then do some questions on certain things.

Your questions should be based around what your site is about and performing particular actions - otherwise you probably won't get very good feedback or people will just click around on a couple links and say "Yeah it looks nice" ehh... "It's kind of ugly"

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Technically, what you're describing is a usability test, not a beta test, but I think even the original poster has his terminology a little muddled. – rbwhitaker Nov 1 '12 at 2:34
thanks for the answer. Ryan, my site has one main function so I will just make it clear what I want them to do and then ask them about that. – clifgray Nov 1 '12 at 15:04
@rbwhitaker what would you say I have muddled or what would you call what I am describing? – clifgray Nov 1 '12 at 15:04
@clifgray: What you're doing is definitely worthwhile, but it's combining a lot of things into one. A beta test, strictly speaking, is when software is essentially done. You're not adding features, just eliminating any remaining bugs. Asking questions like, "What annoyed you?" or "What would you change?" is not a beta test. It's perhaps a usability test, or just trying to get user feedback, which are good things that you should be doing. Just not what I'd call a beta test, like your question states. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing, just perhaps mis-naming it. – rbwhitaker Nov 1 '12 at 18:08
Agreed. Beta is typically a name for a version of software you would send to friends and some select folks but not the world. So a 'beta tester' is one of those people. But there is no 'beta test' questionnaires. Typically you are testing usability of the system or how effective/persuasive marketing text is. Most companies wouldn't ask blanket questions like "what would you change." Then you would get "Homer's Car" : simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Homer – Ryan Doom Nov 1 '12 at 21:04
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You should first figure out what you want to test. Is it the look and feel? A feature set? Easy of use? etc...

Once you do that, then narrow the questions to give you the answers you were hoping for.

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