Feb 28 2019
Why Leveraging Product Tester Communities to Identify Problems Early Leads to Greater Success in the Market
Your products have problems customers can identify, and that’s exciting.
Yes, you read that correctly. It’s exciting that your products have problems. Pain points, issues, design flaws, etc. Things that your customers can help you identify before you go to market.
Collecting product testing feedback from your target audience early in the product design and development process allows you to identify and fix problems. Through this, you can bring a product to market that delivers an exceptional customer experience.
Identifying Problems is a Critical Product Research and Testing Objective
It’s important to note that the problem may not just be with your product. It could be an inherent design flaw in every product of this type within your brand. It could also be a problem within the market. Identifying flaws that customers may be sick and tired of dealing with, is a critical step in the product testing process. It could increase sales, decrease return rates, and bolster customer satisfaction.
The best way to identify these flaws is to leverage a group of actual users who will put your product to the test the way it is meant to be used, in the environments it’s supposed to be used in. It’s far more valuable to test the durability of your hiking boot with a user doing a multi-day hike with varied terrain than a user who is casually walking a flat path.
You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression once your product hits the shelves. You need to allow your target customers to tell you what the problems are at a point when you can fix them before impacting sales or the brand. The result will be increased consumer goodwill and decreased user dissatisfaction (think: fewer returns and less markdown inventory).
Three Relevant Advantages of Identifying Problems Through Testing
- Avoid Future Problems and Fix Current Ones, Too
Informing the design and development of your products through product testing allows your team to catch and correct issues that will come at a cost once your product is in the market. For your products that are already in the market – from plateaued styles to new products receiving poor reviews – testing current products will generate the feedback details necessary to improve the style holistically. It can also provide the opportunity for a style update or new style for greater success. These approaches may be daunting when considering the time and effort that might go into generating quality feedback. This is why a platform and community purpose-built for this use is critical.
- Tell the Right Story, with Confidence, at the Product Level
Identifying potential problems through product testing with a specific tester community can present myriad marketing opportunities. Attacking the various pain points identified through pre-market testing creates feedback and data collection opportunities. This information can inform your product team, as well as your marketing organization. Being able to respond to major pain points or questions your testing community raises and address them in the product is a win. One that can arm your marketing team with a sharp edge over your competition when speaking directly to the consumer.
- Tackling Product Problems Shows Your Brand Cares
At the brand level, reacting to problems identified in the product research and testing phase shows your brand respects its customers. It tells them you are listening. Customers, now more than ever, are constantly connected to the world around them. They understand that they are marketed to based on their interests, lifestyle, and social media behavior. Actively listening to the people you want to purchase your products and services proves to customers that you find them to be a valuable asset. Your customers are intelligent and well-informed. If you design products around what they need, you will build lasting brand loyalty.
The biggest mistake a brand can make is telling its customers what they want without listening to them first. With so much competition for customer attention, be the brand that understands your customers better than the rest. Product testing doesn’t start with a solution – it starts with a problem. If you leverage a product tester community of relevant and reliable users to tell you what those problems might be, the solution will follow.
