Mobile app developers and product managers often struggle with collecting actionable feedback from beta testing. However, to derive useful feedback from beta tests, businesses must select relevant testers, engage them and attempt to extract precise and valuable feedback from them. Asking your testers the right questions can determine the success of beta tests.
Here in this article, we guide you on how to pick between open-ended and close-ended questions for beta testing.
Every beta testing survey questionnaire features a list of open-ended and close-ended questions. Before we jump onto learning how to draft beta testing survey questions, it’s best to know the difference between open-ended questions vs. Close-ended questions.
Close-ended questions come with pre-populated options for answers, allowing respondents a series of choices. They can be drafted in numerous forms like multiple choice, drop-down, checkboxes, and ranking questions. Such questions do not welcome unique and unprecedented answers and instead serve as a list of pre-selected options.
Only when you know your audience/testers will not be interested or dedicate the time to answer in long-form. These types of questions guarantee a more comfortable survey-taking experience and, in the process, provide businesses with a higher completion rate. This type of problem is a good idea even when app makers are looking for quantifiable data.
They provide statistically significant stats because of their conclusive nature and large sample size. Moreover, they help app businesses categorize respondents into groups based on the options they have selected. Quantifiable results help companies to follow action plans to serve their target user segments better or even break into other target demographics.
Drafting close-ended Questions require researchers to have a clear understanding of the topic in question, in the absence of in-depth knowledge, close-ended questions are curated to feature insufficient options for respondents to choose from. Such questions fail to reflect the actual purpose of beta testing and bring back erroneous information.
If you chose to include or entirely create a close-ended questionnaire for your testers, here are a few questions that will help you get close to actionable results.
On the other hand, open-ended questions allow respondents to share feedback as it comes to them. Such questions are exploratory and are ideal for collecting qualitative data. With open-ended questions, researchers can gain insights into the topic in question, even the perspectives they are formerly unfamiliar with.
Beta testing processes incorporate the use of open-ended questions when the interviewer seeks a well-thought-out answer with the uncut opinion of the respondent. Such questions help extract information from industry veterans. These questions are often featured in the kind of surveys that target small groups of people as they can garner valuable input from each of the respondents.
Open-ended questions reveal a wide variety of opinions and behaviors in a group. These questions are indispensable when it comes to gaining information to further quantitative research. Using some simple open-ended questions at the end of any survey that features closed-ended questions on attitudes, opinions, or behaviors. After asking closed-ended questions, respondents may be left with extra information or concerns that they want to share. Open-ended questions help them speak their mind.
If you chose to include some open-ended questions for your testers, here are a few questions that will help you get close to actionable results.
In conclusion, if you’re still confused about closed-ended or open-ended questions will give you a better result, you need to consider what are the results you’re looking for. Hope you found your answer here if you didn’t, feel free to drop a comment below or email us with your questions.