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Test Types: Multi-Day (Longitudinal, Beta Testing, Journal studies)
Test Types: Multi-Day (Longitudinal, Beta Testing, Journal studies)

For beta tests, longitudinal tests, diary studies. Send multiple tasks and surveys and collect feedback over the course of days or weeks.

Updated over a week ago

The Multi-Day test allows you to design a test that spans multiple days or usage sessions. You have the option to provide Simple Instructions or use our Advanced Workflows to design a series of task and survey distributions with unique distribution/due date settings.

Use Cases for Multi-Day Tests

  • User journeys that naturally span multiple days, for example:

    • A physical product requires shipping a product to testers to use over time

    • An exercise app requires multiple sessions over days to really give valuable feedback

  • Live tests - When users must test at the same exact time

  • Group tests - When users need to be organized into groups to test together

  • Load testing - When you want to test a product for a large number of real users at the same time

  • Multiple usage sessions - When you need testers to engage with a product over multiple usage sessions (not just one single sitting)

Choose Product Usage + Survey as your test type when creating your test.


Test Details

Internal Test Title

The internal test title is shown only to your team within our platform.

Public Test Title

Your test title is shown publicly to potential applicants during recruiting. Make it something relevant to your test, for example: "Beta test a daily news app over 1 week".

Brief description of your test

In the description, you can describe a bit about what you're researching or who you're targeting. This is also shown to applicants during the recruiting phase

How are my test title and description shown during recruiting?

When you launch your test, testers will receive an email invite with your Test Title as the email subject and Test Description in the email body. It will look similar to the screenshot below and will ask testers to apply to participate.

In the below email "We want your feedback on a new packaging design" is the Test Title, and "Help us understand what resonates..." is the Brief Description of Your Test.


Choosing between Simple Instructions or Advanced Workflows

Choose Simple Instructions if...

  • You're OK with just one survey and you don't have a need to distribute multiple tasks/surveys during the test

  • You prefer to provide all your tasks in one simple text-box (with any optional attachments)

Choose Advanced Test Workflow if any of the following are true...

  • You want to distribute multiple tasks/surveys during the test, and you want to build them upfront

  • You want to build a workflow for your test (e.g. they get a specific task or survey after finishing a preceding task or survey, or they get a new task at a specific date/time)

  • You want to create a series tasks or test cases (one after the other) rather than putting everything in one text box

  • You need to collect emails in order to distribute your app

  • You have any advanced testing scenario, like:

    • Shipping any product

    • Connected products or other physical products

    • QA testing with test-cases

    • Live tests

    • Group tests

    • Load tests

    • Testing w/ children

Do you have a large/complex project, ongoing needs, or are you testing a physical product that requires shipment to testers? Get in touch with us and we're happy to put together a quote!

Simple Instructions Mode

When you create tests with Simple Instructions, you can share instructions to testers at the beginning of each test.

Be sure to include:

  • Link to access your product (e.g. link to your website, TestFlight public beta URL, Play Store, APK, Firebase, prototype URL, etc).

  • Details on what you'd like testers to do. This can be high level, or with step-by-step tasks.

  • Optionally attach any other document for instructions. Make sure it's clear and easy to understand, or you'll get poor results for your test.

Don't include:

  • Don't put questions directly in the instructions (except for a Usability Video test). Instead, you need to include any questions you want to have answered directly in a survey itself.

  • Don't expect a tester to purchase something or go through a process that requires sensitive personal or financial information

  • Don't use this test type for a live/group test that occurs at a specific day/time. Instead, use the Advanced Test Workflow option (see above for the scenarios where we recommend using Advanced Test Workflow).


Timing & Pricing

Test Duration - How much time do you want to give people to complete your test?

In this field, define your overall test duration. Keep in mind the following:

  • It normally takes 3-24 hours to recruit participants

  • If you choose Manual Review during the Screening survey setup, include any time you will need to screen and select testers (e.g. add at least 1 day)

  • Time for downloading, installing the product (if needed). For example, if you need to collect and manually add tester emails to your app distribution tool, this back-end-forth process can add 1 day to your test.

  • Time for actively testing your product

  • Time for surveys

  • Time for any bug triage and resolution

How long will it take people to complete your test?

Here, define how much active testing time will be required from testers. Be sure to include a reasonable estimate for time required to download/access your product, engage with your product, and complete any surveys.

Tests that are distributed with unreasonably low estimates are unfair to testers and will be stopped the offending company may be barred from using our self-service platform.

Pricing

On our Recruit plan (pay-as-you go), you'll see a price per day per tester, based on the time required, test duration, and targeting requirements. This price is inclusive of all costs and tester rewards, and there are no additional fees.

For our Professional plans (including subscription plans or custom plans), you can customize the incentives that you offer to testers. Our system automatically recommends average incentive amounts based on your test type, time expectations, and your target audience. You can learn more about choosing how much to incentivize in this article.


Recruiting & Screening

You can choose your recruitment criteria and screening questions like you normally would on any test. Learn how tester recruiting works here.


Survey Design for Simple Instructions Mode

First, decide if you'd like to distribute a survey at the start of the test.

You always have an option to distribute a survey on-demand at any time during the test (e.g. at the end of the test process). If you choose to distribute a survey at the start of the test, the expectation from testers will be that it's OK to complete the survey after they explore the product (not that they need to wait until the end of the test period).

The "No, decide later" option is only available for tests that run for 3 days or longer. Otherwise, given the short test duration, it's important to build and distribute the survey up-front.

You can choose between the following options:

Standard UX Survey

Our standard UX survey includes industry standard qualitative and quantitative questions. This is a safe bet for any UX test, and you can use as-is or edit as you desire!

Building your own survey

You can build your own survey by using any of our base question types, or our core question bank. Learn about the various survey question types here and how to use show/hide logic here.

Participation Verification Survey: Linking feedback to your database usage data

BetaTesting does not integrate directly with your product. A Participation Verification survey is useful in the following cases:

  1. If you want to cross reference your user feedback to exact usage data in your database

  2. If you want testers to prove they participated fully and completed your tasks and instructions

The Participant Verification Survey is a simple 3 question standalone survey that asks testers for the following info:

  • Username / email / or phone number used to access your product, so you can cross-reference the dat

  • Screenshot to validate that they used the product

  • A few sentences about the testing experience.

You also have the option to add "participation verification" questions directly to any survey that you create. Choose "Verify Participation" within the Core Question Bank, and it will add these 3 questions directly to any survey.

No, decide later

You can choose not to distribute any survey when the test launches but instead send a survey on-demand during the test. This option is only available for tests that run for 3 days or longer. Otherwise, given the short test duration, it's important to build and distribute the survey up-front.


Survey Design for Advanced Workflow Mode

Our Advanced Test Workflow mode lets you customize different tasks and surveys with different distribution times and deadlines to create specific studies that testers follow.

Advanced workflows are great for more complex instructions, or for tests where you want to send different surveys out at different times, such as more indepth testing for onboarding, specific features, and more.

It is also helpful for hardware tests, live events, fintech products, and tests that require testers to complete more targeted instructions.

Learn more about distribution times and deadlines to understand Advanced Workflows.


๐Ÿ’กWant to learn more? Book a call/demo with our team or get in touch through our contact form.

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