Customer Validation: How to Improve Your Product Using Focus Groups

2. Decide How to Incentivize  Participants

While offering gifts seems like a guaranteed way to motivate your test group, a lot of people may sign up only for the gift, and present nothing of value to the research.

Unless you think it’s ingenious that Paris Hilton shows up to premieres of movie’s she’s never been in, but still gets goody bags, don’t do this. Instead, look for other ways to add value.

3. Establish your Testing Method

You can conduct one of two types of tests: beta or split testing.

Beta testing is best for brand new products and services. Recruit a few people whose opinions you trust, and expand after you’ve incorporated their feedback. This wastes less of your testers’ time and keeps your reputation cleaner.

In comparison, with split testing (A/B testing) you can create a baseline sample to compare to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response rates. You’ll want to ensure that the single test items are what’s actually producing different results. Small changes can make a big difference. So don’t try to radically change everything at once.

The idea of split testing is that people don’t even realize you’re testing. For that reason, you can and should do split testing regularly. For example, your website pages can always be improved, particularly the checkout and registration pages using tools such as Google Website Optimizer (free) or Optimizely (paid).

4. Establish a Timeline

Ensure you’ve allotted sufficient time for testing. You don’t have to run it forever … people hate 20-week trials!  Instead make your sample size fairly large. Doing this will ensure your data is more accurate and ease the burden on your testers.