Benefits of beta testing an iOS app on the Apple Store

Our latest two apps “Eye Colour Changer Photo Booth” and “Perfect Smile: Teeth Whitening” have just been launched after completing extensive beta testing. Beta testing allows you to access a wider range of real users and devices under real conditions that developers do not otherwise have access to.

Beta testing is an integral part of the app development journey providing valuable feedback that facilitates enhancements to the product before release allowing opportunity to address the user’s needs. It is also a big milestone that marks many iterations and hours of hard work coming together.
 
Ongoing testing during the build is crucial for the quality of the product, however beta testing is like the cherry on top. This phase does not need to be complex and cumbersome. Keeping the process simple and having a defined set of outcomes and acceptance criteria is key to the success.
 
In our experience there are 3 key benefits in beta testing mobile apps.

1. Identifying issues with devices and configurations

• ​Older phones - Apple allows older phones to run the latest iOS software. Testing on these devices quickly highlights issues with performance of slower devices that cannot be achieved through the emulator tools that Apple provides.
• Settings and accessibility – for example, some users use Dark Mode or perhaps have a unique combination of settings enabled that may influence the way the app may function.
• Screen sizes - whilst emulator tools are great for testing different screen sizes, there is no match for a real device. Beta testing provides a more comprehensive set of tests. This is especially important if the app’s core functionality revolves around the camera. Apple emulators do not work with the camera and thus need to be tested on a physical device.

 
2. Perspective from third party​ 

• Insights and problem solving - Often developers and product owners get so focused on the problem that they are solving and get tunnel vision. When you open a product to beta testers and users, you get a wide variety of users that are not close to the project. They experience things differently and provide amazing insights that the development team may have overlooked.
• Customer satisfaction - The development team quickly becomes experts in the product they are delivering and tend to focus on the advanced features. It is great to step back and see how a beginner would use the software and highlight any issues you may have.
• Ease of uptake - In mobile, especially with a free app, you have about 30 seconds to convince the customer that your app is worth the download.  The cost of the download is almost nothing to a user of a free app, so value needs to be shown almost immediately to convince the user to keep using your app and not just try the next free app available. Ensuring that the product that is easily understandable to a first-time user is massively key to it being successful. Beta testing allows you to keep testing with fresh users to ensure that your on-boarding is engaging and connects with the customer in the first crucial minutes of using your product.

 
3. Cost reduction

• Development vs. Production - The cost of fixing a bug in production is FAR greater than fixing a bug in development, or even testing. Finding as many bugs before releasing to production is a massive cost saving.  
• For example: Data issues – The cost to fix a data problem can be grossly underestimated. If a bug creates bad data in the local development environment, once identified it can quickly be fixed and the local environment recreated. If that same bug is identified during beta testing the path to remediation is a little more onerous, but still simple enough to quickly fix the test environments and continue testing. Finding the bug in production can easily be a hundred times more costly than during testing. The reason for this is because remediation often requires scripts and additional work just to fix the bad data before you can even fix the bug, whilst maintaining the customer experience.  

 
We highly recommend that all new apps be beta tested through the App Store. This way it is mandatory that all components need to be ready and the users can experience the app in its entirety.

Apple offers comprehensive “Test Flight" software for beta testing of applications. “Test Flight" allows easy installation of multiple copies of the app to both internal users without having to submit a binary to Apple for rapid testing. Before release, “Test Flight" facilitates external users to download the app by simply submitting a binary to Apple for a less thorough review for beta testing. Most importantly “Test Flight" provides beta users simple and effective ways to submit feedback through screenshots and comments.  ​

Our goal for beta testing is to avoid negative reviews and have better customer satisfaction.  Hope this blog provides some insights. Drop us a note if you have any comments or questions. Happy beat testing.

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