I’d like to get people’s opinions on what annoys them the most about faulty beta launches for products. For instance, do landing pages with email signups really annoy you, and would you rather not hear about a product until it is ready to launch? What about a lack of proper FAQs? Lack of firefox or safari support? Etc. Let me know what really pisses you off.
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the thing that annoys me most are betas that i sign up for but never notify me…
Well, i think you hit my hot-buttons in your post.
If I get a vague landing page only taking email signups and no useful faq; it is a safe bet I will
not take the time to come back.
If all that’s there is the above, in monstrous fonts? Definitely won’t be back.
A FAQ that says a lot and doesn’t tell me anything about the product? See above.
Only works in 1 out of the holy trinity of browsers? Not interested. Sure, I’m a Firefox fan, but I still may be using Opera or (eep) IE when I get to the site depending on what else is going on.
Tell me all about the product, let me know it is in beta and now tell me there’s no way I can get involved? I’ll be a a bit miffed. Not quite pissed off as I can understand… but definitely will feel as if I’ve been teased over much.
http://www.pageflakes.com/UnsupportedBrowser.aspx
Now if they think Firefox is such a good browser why are they developing on an IE platform.
This is simply insulting to both the IE and Firefox community.
First of all, great blog. This one’s definetly one of my favorites.
What I hate most about beta launches would be the hype. I read many web 2.0 blogs and see them all raving about a new site, and then I go to it, already thinking up a username and password, and…private beta. That is so annoying. I don’t mind signing up for them, but usually they don’t even say when I should expect to hear from them (if ever, that is).
For this reason, whether or not the service supports Firefox or not is often irrelevant, because I never get to try it anyway. However, if it doesn’t, I just wait for the product to be upgraded rather than use IE and be bombarded with popups.
1. no roadmap of when it will come out of beta. I am presuming here that once it is out of beta, it will be something that one can use for business/personal use in a reliable way
2. In good old days i.e netscape betas, betas had a bounty for finding critical bugs. now it is put out something, get it digg’ed and wait for hordes to come and test and it and presumably show traffic to raise venture capital
You mentioned pretty much all the problems…
1) Beta…no thanks. Private beta…absolutely not.
2) Registration…not likely if I’m just trying something.
3) No Firefox or Safari support…Forget it, I’m not switching to IE period.
———-
I don’t mind a short mention of things in beta but would prefer you wait until launch. Way too many thing in the pre-cooked stage these days. Beta has become a crutch.
Windows-only betas. Yes, I understand the rationale but I don’t like it any less.
As a startup I have limited resources, so I focus on largest distribution channel, in this case Windows & IE. I would love to support Firefox but dollars and resources dictate my decisions. I piss off certain segment of market so be it. I rather have fully tested and clean product on a single browser rather a buggy one on multiple browsers.
More complex a web application more chances you have lot of browser specific code. Browser religion is great when you don’t have anything at stake.
Hype is not reason most startup have closed beta, it comes down to resources and focus. In closed beta lots of times we do roll outs almost every day. Sometimes we scrub entire database to start all over. You don’t want to cause that kind of pain to open beta customers.
Ramana, I understand your line of thought and I also understand the compromise you’re making if you’re only targetting Windows/IE and ignoring what’s now over 12% (45% if I’m talking about my blog visitors and app users) of marketshare.
The problem with that line of thought, though, is that it is NOT a big change to support firefox. In fact, you should support Firefox first (because it complies with web standards), and then support IE by introducing fixes to its rendering bugs. Supporting all 3 main browsers (unless you’re using complex JS) – IE, FF, Safari – is extremely easy. You just need to put your mind to it.
A landing page with nothing more than an e-mail signup really annoys me the most. At least some demo or something like that is a must IMO.
The 2nd place gets the incompatibility with Safari or Opera. If you build an online service and make an at least semi-public beta, then browser support should be a top priority since it’s way too easy to scare people of that way.
I don’t mind the private betas, or the big fonts, but I do wonder what percentage of the sites I put my email address into actually launch.
I think they should put some info on the site, I remember 24hourlaundry/Ning were in complete stealth mode and I thought it would be something great but it was a complete anticlimax.
I understand the reasons for only supporting Windows/IE, but it is a bit short-sighted, as the influencers are probably going to be on Firefox and are more likely than the rest to be on Macs.
The velvet rope attitude irks me the most.
Beta is appropiate for shrinkwrap products like Xbox 360 games
Beta programs are an oxymoron for web sites since one should be able to respond to change and growth almost instantly. I decided to follow Guy Kawasaki advice from his book and go straight to market.
We already had a user beta program among a select group of “everyday” people during development phase. When we launched last October, it was really the beta program for business operations (creating partnerships, testing scalability, networking with people).
Since we decided to go live instead of going beta last October, our company is now comfortable for 2006 to know who to deal with, how to scale and how to start attracting users and partnerships.
Fred,
I develop for platforms which has maximum distribution channel. I rather see Firefox team spend time on making Firefox browser IE compatiable rather than standards compatiable, that way Firefox will get biggest distribution channel.
IMHO engineering is one time small expense. Testing and support is a large recurring expense. At the end day all decisions must be balenced with sound financial decisions. Unless somebody underwrites my development, support and QA costs, expect IE to be the browser of choice atleast in the begining stage.
1) No faqs (and when they have faqs you still don’t know what the product is going to do)
2) no Firefox support
3) Asking for my email when 1) and 2) are true
Hmm, let me see… I would say that I generally am very excited by betas. The numerous comments here that included veiled attacks at Flock (huge fonts, etc.) just remind me that there’s no accounting for taste.
The lack of support on any Mac-based browser is definitely the biggest problem in my book. A while back when there were a ton of conferences going on, everyone from Steve Gillmor to Doc Searls to (eventually, Dave Winer) was talking about the idiocy of companies ignoring the fact that the exact population of early adopters and technology influencers that you’d want exposed to your beta seem to be disproportionately using Macs. All I can say is that if you’re ignoring all of them you’re probably not the smartest of entrepreneurs. Yes, the majority of the world will not care, but unless the biggies of the blogosphere wake up to your product, none of the lowly masses will ever have a clue!
So yeah, no mac browser support is definitely my issue.
I hate betas where they give absolutely no clue as to what the product is. Just a couple of buzzwords and an email signup. At this point, it’s getting out of control.
Also, betas that only work in IE? That’s absolutely ridiculous in this day and age. I tried to sign up for Pageflakes and I was immediately turned off because of the lack of Firefox support.
The most annoying is the lack of time line for the public beta. I will add my email address in on the request page but if I do ever get issued a beta, by the time they email me back I have entirely forgotten about the product.
The thing that bugs me about betas and prelaunch pages is the lack of a developement blog. If they are taking e-mails it would be nice to at least have a blog so you can see progress moving or at least that they are still there. Personally I am very very curious about what edgeio is. I signed up for the beta back when Michael talked about it in October on TechCrunch about it launching soon. I haven’t heard or seen anything about them since then.
What really annoys me about a Beta, is when feedback on particular functions and/or defects is asked for, and then ignored.
A full product launch follows, containing defects identified during Beta, none of which are classified as “known issues”.
There’s no point doing Beta testing if you don’t acknowledge or fix any bugs.
It’s cool to read some of these comments because I am working on a public beta site at the moment that was only released a short time ago.
Nowadays, I design and develop with Firefox, then eventually get around to testing in IE.
Sorry, what was the question?
Oh yeah, here’s my list:
1) I don’t like beta sites that are really, really cool that I didn’t think of first.
2) flickr still claims to be a beta site. Hey dudes, you were acquired by Yahoo and you have 6 million photos?!
3) I paid for gameneverending. Well, guess what? It ended!
4) Shameless plugs for beta sites in blog comments.
http://www.tnook.com/ – trade anything with anyone
problem in my book. A while back when there were a ton of conferences going on, everyone from Steve Gillmor to Doc Searls to (eventually, Dave Winer) was talking about the idiocy of companies ignoring the fact that the exact population of early adopters and technology influencers that you’d want exposed to your beta seem to be disproportionately using
It’s cool to read some of these comments because I am working on a public beta site at the moment that was only released a short time ago.
Nowadays, I design and develop with Firefox, then eventually get around to testing in IE.
I enjoyed reading your blog, and this because you’ve wrote interesting stuff. The way you managed to expose them was also great!
The lack of support on any Mac-based browser is definitely the biggest problem in my book. A while back when there were a ton of conferences going on, everyone from Steve Gillmor to Doc Searls to (eventually, Dave Winer) was talking about the idiocy of companies ignoring the fact that the exact population of early adopters and technology influencers that you’d want exposed to your beta seem to be disproportionately using Macs. All I can say is that if you’re ignoring all of them you’re probably not the smartest of entrepreneurs. Yes, the majority of the world will not care, but unless the biggies of the blogosphere wake up to your product, none of the lowly masses will ever have a clue!
Personally I am very very curious about what edgeio is. I signed up for the beta back when Michael talked about it in October on TechCrunch about it launching soon. I haven’t heard or seen anything about them since then.
(eventually, Dave Winer) was talking about the idiocy of companies ignoring the fact that the exact population of early adopters and technology influencers that you’d want exposed to your beta seem to be disproportionately using Macs. All I can say is that if you’re ignoring all of them you’re probably not the smartest of entrepreneurs. Yes, the majority of the world will not care, but unless the biggies of the blogosphere wake up to your product, none of the lowly masses will ever have a clue!
exposed to your beta seem to be disproportionately using Macs. All I can say is that if you’re ignoring all of them you’re probably not the smartest of entrepreneurs. Yes, the majority of the world will not care, but unless the biggies of the blogosphere wake up to your product, none of the lowly masses will ever have a clue!
2) flickr still claims to be a beta site. Hey dudes, you were acquired by Yahoo and you have 6 million photos?!
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