I’m pretty certain I’m speaking for most developers, but we hate testing. Like proof reading your own paper, not only can you never find your own errors, but the more you look at it, the less excited you get about your creation.
So some people choose to automate the testing process, through the solve it all word of the IT word (to managers at least), “Scripts”. There are now programmers who make a living designing testing scripts, and plenty of consultants out there who would gladly take your money to help you with some testing scripts.
Testing scripts are designed to mimic user behavior, and truly excels at stress testing. It can also successfully find many bugs that a user would encounter as he navigates your software or website. However, while a script might be able to find a 404 error, it wouldn’t know if a link is pointing to the wrong area, or that Chrome is rendering your image a few pixels off from where Firefox does it.
This is where human testing comes into play. Fact is, most of us never report bugs and glitches to the webmaster. For every time someone finds a glitch that actually report it, you know thousands have seen it. This is a huge loss of confidence for your product, unless you are Google or eBay, people seldom forgive glitches and continue with a purchase.
Pay4Bugs is a system designed to solve this problem. Our global team of testers use a wide variety of platforms, and each behave differently from the other. The key is our testers will report everything they see, so you can fix it before your real paying customers see the inevitable error.
The best part? Pay4Bugs is free to use.
Everyone has run into a broken link on the internet before, but how many of you actually bothered to notify the webmaster? During my day job, I do occasionally do get an email from a sharp eyed customer informing me of typos or broken links, for which I’m incredibly thankful. However for every one that’s found and reported, I bet there are a good handful that isn’t. The problem, no incentive. Why write an email for no reward when you can just hit the back link.
And that’s from the relative convenience of a desktop computer. Now imagine errors and broken links on your mobile applications. If a user finds an error, there’s an even lower chance of getting it reported. Esp for the iPhone, since there are no running simultaneous apps. To send an email, they need to temporarily leave the app.
Solution? again it comes down to basic economics. Provide incentives for the user’s troubles. The Pay4Bugs Software Debugging Marketplace does just that. Setup a project and assign different bounties for different types of errors. When users see that your application is protected by Pay4Bugs, they will have the incentive to report them, simple.
Pay4Bugs is currently working on a system for one click bug reporting, coming in Q1. In the meantime, try it out, the service is free! Plus I assume some will buy your app just to test it, if it’s good enough, of course.
Here’s a tip for you future dotcom start-ups with a ground breaking product. Unless your target audience simply throws money at you without thinking, I would stay away from B2B.
The logic is very simple, really. In the interconnected world in which we live today, if your product is truly innovative, the quickest way to promote it is to get it in front of people, and have the highest number of consumers judge for themselves whether this presents them with value. However when you work with other businesses, your innovation faces several challenges.
- With the same amount of effort, you simply cannot get in touch with as many businesses than you can individual consumers.
- When dealing with a business, a single person is usually trying to interpret whether your product creates value for the eventual users. The users sometimes don’t even get a voice.
- Another issue is, even if the decision maker likes it, that person is often not involved with finances.
- Businesses are seldom price takers.
All of the above difficulties are simply not present when dealing with a end consumer. This person knows what he wants or needs, has control over the budget, and is usually a price taker.
(Now if your product is simply something businesses are already familiar with, and your innovation is in the process, not the product, then differentiating by price will work for B2B)
Like the stories in the great books “The Innovator’s Dilemma” and “Blue Ocean Theory”, businesses, both as suppliers and consumers, usually do not adapt, or is slow to move forward with technological progress. End consumers, however, move at a much faster pace and keeps up with the true innovators.
Perhaps this post will signal a change in direction of my start-ups. Pay4Bugs was our first attempt at B2C (it’s a bit of both), and now we’re about to introduce a series of B2C software that will showcase what we can do, not what purchase managers think of our software.
