In a competitive market, building a brand that consumers can trust is a must. Having a trustworthy brand makes consumers at ease and feel more confident in purchasing your products and services.
No consumer wants to interact with a website or software that doesn’t deliver what it’s supposed to do. That is why product feedback and bug reporting are done before and after the website or software is launched. These two processes ensure that the whole client life cycle is seamless.
Understanding the Product Feedback and Bug Reporting Process
Before anything else, let us first define what is a bug. In this context, a bug refers to the flaws or errors in a system. Bugs cause the system to malfunction or deliver inaccurate results. In a website, bugs can result in broken images, slow loading time, incorrect web content, and more.
This is where product feedback and bug reporting come in. These two concepts come hand in hand to detect bugs and provide detailed and useful feedback to the developers. Feedback and reporting is a detailed report on what went wrong and what needs to be fixed on the system.
Bug detection reporting is usually done in the testing stage or before the software or website is launched. But some organizations want to improve the system better by asking real clients or consumers for their feedback.
Below are the two types of product feedback and bug reporting:
1. Internal Reporting: as the name suggests, feedback and reports come internally. This reporting mechanism is the one done in the QA or testing stage. Teams usually have a set of qualified website or software testers to provide detailed feedback and reporting.
Before, this was done manually. But as the demand for software and websites has increased, new tools have been introduced. Third-party tools such as Tether help teams conduct this stage more efficiently and provide a good bug report. These consolidate all tester feedback into one channel so that teams can provide better and faster solutions.
2. External Reporting: as mentioned, some organizations let their clients provide feedback as well. Through this, teams can detect errors that might have been missed in the testing stage. Improving a product based on client feedback helps improve customer experience.
After all, the feedback of the clients is the best representation of customer experience as the products are made for them. So, getting their thoughts on a product is also a helpful insight in improving it.
Effective Product Feedback and Bug Reporting
Comprehensive feedback and report are key components in making sure that the solutions applied are correct. That is why it is important to know how to write an effective report. Below are some of the components in a good bug report.
1. Title
The title of the found bug should serve as a short description of it. This part of the report should be kept short and simple. It should be straightforward to help the developers understand where the bug is and what kind of problem can be expected.
In some cases, adding a very brief summary is also advisable. This is when the title is not enough to describe the bug in the system.
2. Environment
The majority, if not all, of software and websites today can be accessed through different channels. In the context of testing, these channels are considered as different environments. These include the type of device and OS used in accessing the system.
In a bug report, stating which environment the bug was found in is important. There can be some cases in which a bug found in a Google Chrome browser may not be present in an iOS environment. Sometimes even the device used affects the appearance of the bug. So, this can be best stated by providing the following details:
- Device Type
- Operating System
- Software Version
3. Visual Proof
An image or a visual proof will always be one of the most effective ways of sending a message across. It provides a clearer picture of what is currently happening.
So, in bug reporting, testers can better provide a report with the help of images. With this, developers can identify, understand, and address the problem faster. In addition, this leaves little to no room for errors as developers won’t have to guess whether or not they are addressing the right problem.
4. Actual and Expected Results
Providing the developer with a comparative assessment of what is expected and what is happening also helps in addressing the bug better. This can be an opportunity for the tester to command what is expected from the system. Take this as an example:
Expected results: Products should be added to the ‘shopping cart’ when the ‘add’ button is clicked.
Actual results: The website proceeds to checkout.
5. Steps to Reproduce
Testers can also add a portion stating clear instructions on how to reproduce or find the bug. With the different features of a software or a website, it is best to assume that developers do not always know how to find these errors.
So, a good bug report should provide a detailed step-by-step guide on how this bug was found. These steps can be numbered or portioned.
6. Bug Severity and Priority
The testing or QA stage of the software or website development life cycle is composed of other components. So, labeling bugs based on severity and priority can help developers address these issues more efficiently.
This step involves stating the extent to which the bug affects the whole system. This will ultimately affect the whole testing and QA process.
Conclusion
Product feedback and bug reporting are essential parts of any development cycle. That is why intricate and comprehensive testing is done before and even after product launches. However, it is best to note that writing a report is not enough. Testers should always make sure that reports are detailed for them to be an effective resource for developers.
In this article, we have covered the things you need to know about this stage and how to effectively write a valuable report.