Beta testing is your opportunity to help shape the future of Square products. It’s a crucial step in making sure everything runs smoothly for sellers like you. With your input, we want to ensure every new feature we launch not only meets but exceeds your expectations. That’s why we rely on you, our amazing beta testers. You help us build smarter, more reliable solutions that serve the needs of the entire Square community.
There are a few ways in which you can continue to help us build these reliable products and solutions. Ready to learn how? Let’s get started!
Building best practices through our history
Understanding the history of our team is crucial to appreciating the development of best practices for beta testing. The Square beta team’s journey began in June 2014 with the launch of the Square Preview Program, which was formerly hosted as a Facebook group. From its beginning as a small group in our San Francisco office, it evolved into a global program, growing in scope and scale as we tested a wide range of products. What started as a Facebook group turned into a global beta community. We had to learn how to scale, how to recruit testers efficiently, and how to ask for feedback in ways that made sense for both our team and testers alike. Along the way each challenge and milestone taught us valuable lessons that shaped the efficient tools and strategies we use today.
Join the beta community
If you’re interested in testing new and exciting features, first you need to join the beta community. When you navigate to the beta community, you’ll be asked to agree virtually to an NDA. Signing our NDA is necessary for beta testing because it ensures the confidentiality of the product and protects the interests of both the company and its customers.
Once you’ve signed, you’re in. You can explore different test groups that are open for participation, strike up conversation about products or features in the General Discussion board, and check out our Beta Weekly Roundup posts to see what’s happening currently in our beta world.
Which groups can I join?
Each test group has a status to let you know where it stands in the testing process. Knowing what each status means will help you decide which groups you’re able to join.
Beta best practices
1. Join the feature’s test group.
Every beta program you participate in will have a test group. We recommend all testers to join these groups, as they are an amazing tool for our testers, our beta team, and our product team to collaborate in. Through these test groups the beta team will post updates on changes or identified bugs. As a beta member you can use these test groups to share your experience with the feature, ask questions, provide feature requests, or share bugs you have experienced. Once you share your thoughts in the corresponding test group, the beta team will record and share your feedback directly with our product team.
2. Use and test the feature.
As a beta tester your first and most important role is to use and test the feature you’ve signed up for. Space in beta testing is limited, so we count on every participant to give the feature a real-world trial. At a minimum using the feature is expected from all beta participants. We need usage during beta testing in order to ensure the feature is ready for the general public.
3. Share your insights.
We want to hear from you! Your insights are invaluable, and we’ve created multiple ways for you to share your experience.
Beta community groups: As mentioned above, groups are a great tool to discuss your feedback and ask us questions. The beta team uses the community to gather feedback and to share out announcements and surveys.
Email: Throughout the duration of the beta program, you can expect feedback emails. Some of these emails will either contain a survey, a quick request for written feedback, or an opportunity to book time to chat with the beta team over the phone.
Survey: We will send out at least two surveys during the beta program. In these surveys we will have specific questions that our product team wants insights on, and we will ask for your Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). We like to send a survey at the beginning of the program then again at the end. The hope is that your CSAT score increases based on the improvements we’ve made to the feature, based on your feedback, by the end of the beta program.
Group feedback session: With some of our beta programs, we will offer the opportunity to participate in a group feedback session. These sessions are a ton of fun, as you will be able to meet virtually with the beta team, product team, and other beta sellers who are participating in the same program. Sellers often share best practices or they piggyback off of each other’s ideas and help formulate great feature requests for future iterations of the feature. Space is limited in these sessions, as we want to allow enough room to account for time and still allow sellers to dive deep into their feedback.
One-on-one phone calls: These phone call sessions are offered with every beta program. We love these sessions, as sellers have a full 30 minutes with the beta team and the product team to share their experiences. We can really dig deeper into topics and get granular with feature requests and use case scenarios.
Whether it’s through email, community forums, surveys, group sessions, or one-on-one calls, your voice helps bring the data to life. While we can see numbers and patterns on our end, hearing your direct feedback gives us a much deeper understanding of what’s working, what’s not working, and how we can improve. There are countless instances in which a beta feature has been given a major update prior to general release due to the feedback we shared from our beta testers.
As an example, here are some pre-GA improvements implemented based on feedback heard during the Square Dashboard App beta: ability to view clocked-in employees and item sale count; iOS 18 support; and elimination of landscape orientation. All these would have been missing in our public release had it not been for feedback received during the beta test.
4. Contact us.
You don’t have to wait to receive our feedback or survey outreaches to share your thoughts. We love when sellers reach out proactively to share their experiences. Our inbox is always open to feedback: [email protected]
Beta testing comes with a unique opportunity. You’re among the first to use a new feature or product at Square. Many of these features began as requests from sellers like you, and now you get to shape how they work.
Your role as a beta tester is crucial, and we can’t thank you enough for your participation. Together we’re building tools that help Square sellers succeed, and your contributions make all the difference.
Phil is a senior beta manager at Square. He’s been helping sellers with their businesses through Square for 11 years. His current focus is on beta projects related to Square Staff. When not at work, he enjoys raising his two teenage girls.