Bug tests in the broadcasting & media industry mean testing on different devices, screen resolutions, browsers and more. Therefore, you need resources and time. Find out why in-house testing might not be the best decision you can make.
Let’s imagine you’re developing a new video-on-demand platform or media centre. You’re heading towards the end of your development lifecycle and “only” need to test your brand-new product. So, you hand it over to your employees, ask them to use it and report bugs they find. You get quite a bit of feedback which helps you to fix the bugs and then you release your product. Not without a bit of pride, if we’re honest.
You’re watching the visitor and conversion numbers. And while the visitor numbers look quite promising during the first days you notice that people are not converting. You’re looking into Google Analytics and finally can find out where people leave your site, but you still have no idea why. Also, your developers can’t reproduce the problem although it is obvious that there must be a bug you have missed during your testing phase. The longer the problem persists, the fewer visitors come to your platform.
Sounds like a stressful scenario, doesn’t it? The good news is, it doesn’t have to be like that because there are better testing methods than testing with your own employees.
But first things first. Let us have a quick look at most common bugs in the broadcasting and digital media industry.
Most Common Bugs in the Digital Media and Broadcasting Industry
Most issues occur due to the immense device variety we see today. Digital products in general – and streaming or media–offers in particular – have to work seamlessly on laptops, tablets and mobile devices. All of those come with different screen sizes, browsers, operating systems, software versions and more.
So it isn’t surprising that browser compatibility and handling different screen resolutions cause most problems when interacting with a digital platform.
Buttons are another major problem area. Especially buttons that aren’t clicked that often and are therefore likely to be overlooked during tests. But it’s these very buttons that regularly cause app crashes and make people leave.
To protect your product from such bugs and problems testing is inevitable. But in-house testing isn’t the best solution in most cases. Why? Well, let’s find out.
Why in-house testing isn’t enough
Depending on the size of your company how many people will you have for testing your new platform? 5? 10? 1,000?
How many of them are matching your desired target group in terms of age, gender, income, interests and so on? Even if you said 1,000 before – how many of them are left now?
How many browsers do those few people use? How many software versions? On how many different screen sizes can you test?
To go even further, how much time will those employees have to test your platform? Can you give them advice in detailed test cases? How much experience do your in-house testers have? Have they tested before so they might know the tricks to even find unexpected bugs – as app crashes caused by a hidden button?
I guess most of the time the answer might be “no” and you are likely to find yourself in the scenario above.
That’s why it makes sense to outsource your testing to professionals that help you create a digital product which is tailored to your users’ needs and bug-free on every device.
Let me show you how this could work with a real example from one of our customers.
Example: How to Secure a bug-free Media Centre
The goal from nexx.tv was to create a multi-screen video-on-demand platform that enables publishing houses, media companies and TV stations to create their own media centres – hassle-free and on all kinds of devices and platforms.
The Challenge
Obviously, this needs to work without errors when playing the videos and can’t have long loading times or app crashes because that would lead to an immediate deletion of the app.
The biggest challenge to achieve this, – as we saw before, was the enormous variety of devices, operating systems, browser versions and last but not least screen sizes nexx.tv had to deal with. All that leads to an immense need for resources if they wanted to test it in-house.
The Solution
That’s why nexx.tv decided to test their platform with real people from their target group that have all the devices they needed on hand.
Crowdtesting allowed them to get exactly what they needed most: unbiased testers that represent their target group and hunt for bugs on their own devices under real–world conditions.
“We could choose exactly the testers from the Testbirds crowd, who possessed the devices that we required. Internally, it wouldn’t have been possible for us to test the media centre on so many different devices,” says Urszula Styrczula, Customer Care Manager at nexx.tv.
Find out more about how we helped nexx.tv to find 6 critical and 23 highly severe bugs during an exploratory bug test.
Are you interested in learning more about Crowdtesting and how it could help you create better digital products in the broadcasting and media industry? Leave us a message, we’re happy to talk about your goals and how we can support you in reaching them.
