Go Test It Blog

Learning about our customers

2010-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

A startup’s purpose is not to make money (at least not initially). Nor is its purpose to build a product (although it won’t go far without a product). No, the real reason why a startup exists is to learn about potential customers and to define a market.

Compare this to big companies: they are really good at serving a known solution to a known market. They can reliably and consistently deliver lots of the same thing to many people. A large base of customers tells the vendor what they want, and as long as the vendor can build the product to satisfy those needs, everybody is happy.

Startups are different, and they require a radically different approach. At first, I found it strange too. But when you think about it, it makes sense.

A startup is disruptive. It does things which are bold and new, which the big companies would not dare to touch. It rewrites the rules. It sees things from a novel point of view. A good startup defines a new category, by creating a market which doesn’t yet exist, or by serving a specific market segment vastly better than the existing products do.

When a startup has an intimate understanding of its market (exactly who its customers are, how they think and work, and what they care about) then the rest is comparatively straightforward. Or so I think, at least. The team behind Go Test It is very strong in technology, and I know for sure that we can solve any technical challenge amazingly well. And Red Gate, who acquired Go Test It, is very strong commercially – if a product is useful, they will turn it into a solid business. So you see, building a product and selling it are hard, but we know how to do that, so that’s not a problem.

The most important things we need in a startup like Go Test It are therefore:

to have a deep understanding of our customers,
to use this understanding to figure out what we should be doing, and
to use this understanding to explain our vision to everybody involved.

Figuring this stuff out is actually a huge amount of work. It’s very easy to start with some sweeping assumptions (“we help everybody who makes web applications test across different browsers!”) until you realise that you need a much more detailed understanding of how people currently work, why things are done the way they are, what works and what doesn’t.

Having a product is important, because it gives us a good basis for conversations with customers: it allows them to see what is possible now, and sparks their imagination about what it might be in future and how it can solve their problems. But more important than the product are the conversations we have with our users, because what we learn from them determines what the product will be like in future.

This is our journey of discovery and learning, and it has been our main focus over the last two months. We have a product which works well, and although we have an immensely long list of things we want to do with Go Test It, we’ve deliberately been holding back, listening rather than talking.

Learning about your customers is not something you can do once and then you’re done; it has to be a continuous, ongoing conversation which helps both sides. We will therefore be keeping in touch with everyone we have spoken to and are always keen to hear back from you.

We’ll also use this blog to explain what we have learnt. Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing a series of posts on what we’re doing and what we’ve learnt, so please subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss any insights! And, as always, please email us or leave a comment below.

This post was written by Martin Kleppmann, founder of Go Test It.

Google Chrome support, and a bug in Apple's website exposed

2010-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

It has been an exciting start to the new year at Go Test It. We are currently making contact with many people who have used Go Test It or who are interested in it, and speaking to them on the phone or visiting them in person. Our goal is to learn how people in a range of different organisations work and what problems they face, and the things we are learning are determining our roadmap for 2010.

This means that at the moment our focus is on learning, not on building new features. Sorry if you have asked us to do something but it hasn’t happened yet: I’m sure you’ll understand that we don’t want to clutter Go Test It with complicated features which hardly anyone would use, hence our research into what people really need.

However, one of the things which we found we did need to support is Google Chrome, and I’m pleased to announce that Google Chrome on Windows is now available on Go Test It. Any tests you already have should work fine on Chrome – just tick the box and run them!

Of course, the tests will only work fine if your website actually works correctly on Chrome. And although Google have done a great job of making a standards-compliant browser and compatibility problems are rare, you can never be sure without testing it.

One example of a website which does not work at all in Chrome is Apple’s iPhone reservation site. It works fine on Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer – but on Chrome, you can’t get past the first page.

No matter what you choose from the two drop-down menus (store and plan type), the “choose your phone” section always stays dimmed. If you try to continue to the next page, you get an error, and you still can’t choose which type of phone you want to reserve. You are completely stuck, and the only way out is to go and find the same page in a different browser. You can’t even copy and paste the URL into a different browser.

(Incidentally, the error message is also wrong: it says “Please select a store” if I don’t select a phone.)

How many customers is Apple losing because of this problem? Who knows. Don’t let this happen to you. Go test your website now.

This post was written by Martin Kleppmann, founder of Go Test It.

Red Gate acquires Go Test It

2009-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

For over two months now I’ve had to keep biting my lip in conversations, because of a very powerful development happening behind the scenes in the world of Go Test It. I could barely contain my excitement… And now, at last, the news is out: Red Gate Software have agreed to acquire Ept Computing, the company behind Go Test It!

We decided to tie the knot for several reasons. Red Gate make a range of tools for developers, DBAs and sysadmins, with a focus on simple use and powerful results – much the same philosophy as we carry for Go Test It. Whilst testing tools are not currently part of the palette, we expect that our product will complement Red Gate’s product range very well, and potentially pave the way for expansion into new market segments.

For customers and suppliers of Go Test It, all stays the same for now: our team is continuing to work in the same way, and I personally will definitely continue working on the product full-time for another 10 months at least (during which we will gradually hand over to people in Red Gate who are without doubt better than me). Over the next months you will also see a lot of progress: as a part of Red Gate we have access to many excellent people and resources, and together we will work towards being the undisputed leaders of cross-browser testing. Watch us make Go Test It so great that you’d be crazy not to use it!

As it happens, Red Gate is not new to web application testing: a few years ago, they had a load testing tool called ANTS Load, but it was discontinued for a variety of reasons. With the acquisition of Go Test It, Red Gate is re-entering this market with a fresh perspective and renewed inspiration.

We’ve also known each other for a while – in fact, some of the Go Test It developers, along with other startups, have been borrowing desks from Red Gate for more than 8 months already. Our unique arrangement is so cool that even Joel Spolsky wrote about it. Through the Springboard incubator, Red Gate were able to track Go Test It’s progress month by month, and were thus in a uniquely informed position when the possibility of an acquisition was considered.

Right now, Red Gate focusses on companies working on Microsoft platforms; maybe we will give a similar focus to Go Test It, maybe not. Where the market will lead us we do not know, but we are definitely listening. Tell us in the comments: what do you want from Go Test It? Or drop me an email – I look forward to hearing from you.

This post was written by Martin Kleppmann, founder of Go Test It.

Ending Browser Pain on the Startup Success Podcast

2009-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

I was lucky to get a chance to be interviewed by the great Bob Walsh, founder of StartupToDo, and author of the Web Startup Success Guide (review by Joel Spolsky, review by Neil Davidson).

The interview is for the Startup Success Podcast, a series of shows providing a wealth of useful information and inspiration for startups. In this episode, Patrick Foley talks about his visit to the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), and I talk about Go Test It – what it is, how it works, why we built it, where it is going in future. There’s even a special discount in there! :)

Head over now to the Startup Success Podcast and listen to the episode! (The interview with me starts at about 15 minutes in.)

This post was written by Martin Kleppmann, founder of Go Test It.

Testing web applications behind firewalls

2009-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

Go Test It is a hosted service: we provide all the test machines and web browsers through our test infrastructure. That’s incredibly convenient because you don’t need to waste precious hours of your life debugging test machine issues and installing system updates – we do that for you.

However, you still have to host the application you want to test yourself. If you’re testing a public-facing production website, that’s no problem – our test servers can access the site like any regular user. But chances are that you want to test development, staging and pre-production versions of your application, and you’ll typically be running them on a server inside your organisation’s network.

The good news is that this is normally not a problem. With the following 3 steps you can give us access to a specific testing server:

Identify the name of the test server on your internal network, and the port number on which the test version of your application is running. Then ask your IT department to forward a port on your organisation’s public IP address to this internal server and port. This is a standard feature supported by most routers, and should take your IT guys only a couple of seconds to set up. Note the public IP address and external port number which are set up.
Make it secure by locking down the source IP addresses which may access this service. That way only our test servers can see the test version of your site, but nobody else on the internet can. Ask your IT department to only allow access from the following IP addresses:
```
93.93.131.122
79.125.54.3
```
(More addresses may be added in future as we grow our infrastructure.) Restricting access by IP address is a standard feature of firewalls and should also take no more than a few seconds to set up.
In your Go Test It account, click “run test now” and choose the scripts and the browsers you want to use. At the bottom of the page, there is a box where you can enter your target server. For example, if your organisation’s public IP address is 12.34.56.78 and the external port set up by your IT department is 9999, you would enter http://12.34.56.78:9999 in this box.

You only need to enter these numbers once – the next time you want to run a test, you’ll see your internal test server as one of the choices.

And that’s it! From now on you can take advantage of the Go Test It infrastructure, even if your server is behind your corporate firewall.

This post was written by Martin Kleppmann, founder of Go Test It.

Introducing Go Test It – Our new screencast

2009-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

Go Test It is really easy to get started with. However, saying that is one thing; showing it in action is another matter!

When we launched at Future of Web Apps in London two weeks ago, we had prepared a screencast showing off how quickly you can record, edit and play back a cross-browser test script in Go Test It. We used the screencast at our exhibition stand and for the demo on stage.

Several of you have asked us for the screencast. So I have now made a new version which is expanded (it includes a demo of our Ruby scripting feature) and narrated with an explanation. It’s just over two minutes, a whirlwind tour of our features. Watch it now:

If you can’t see the video, please view it on Vzaar or on YouTube.

Here’s a transcription in case you’re not able to hear the audio.

Hello, this is Martin Kleppmann. I’d like to show you how you can use Go Test It to make sure that your website works correctly in various different browsers.

With Go Test It you can record a script of a user interacting with your site. In this example we’ll use Wikipedia, but you would type the address of your site, or your testing server.

We want to check that when you type in the Wikipedia search box, the drop-down suggestions work correctly. So we’ll open up the front page, type something in the box, click on the first suggestion. The test recorder picks up all those things. Then we can check whether a certain text appears in the page, to make sure the right one was loaded.

And there’s your first test script!

Now test whether the drop-down suggestions work in other browsers. Fortunately, Go Test It has a range of browsers already set up, so it doesn’t matter what’s installed on your own computers. Just click “run now”; we’ll fire up the browsers and point them at your server.

This takes a few minutes, and when it’s done, we send you an email with the results. The email includes a summary of what succeeded and what failed, and even includes screenshots. You can click through to the details for each test run, where you can see step-by-step what happened. We automatically take full-size screenshots along the way so that you can also check that everything looks correct.

Let’s have a look at another example.

In this one, I have pre-recorded a longer script. When you edit it in the test recorder, you can see how we identify the parts of the page to interact with. You can use IDs, CSS selectors, XPath and more, so it doesn’t matter if your page layout changes.

You can also convert a recorded script to Ruby or Python with one click, and run it directly on Go Test It. To prove it, let’s just insert “Hello world” at the top of this script. You can use whatever language features you need. Choose your browsers and run the script as usual.

You can follow its progress on the dashboard, or wait for the test results to come in by email. The script’s output is included. If a test fails, you have all the information to find and fix the problem in no time.

I hope that gives you a good idea of how Go Test It can make your life easier.

Please sign up now for a free trial and find out how much time you can save and how much better you can make your application by running automated tests on Go Test It. And thanks for listening!

This post was written by Martin Kleppmann, founder of Go Test It.

Go Test It launches at Future of Web Apps

2009-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

Hooray, we’ve launched! Last week at Future of Web Apps the gates to testing paradise opened for everyone attending the conference… You laugh? Then you’ve not seen yet how Go Test It takes the pain of testing away.

When the audience was asked “who would use Go Test It?”, about 70% of the hands went up. That’s seriously good.

I stood on stage, gave a demo of Go Test It, was grilled by Dave McClure, Saul Klein, Mike Butcher and Ryan Carson in front of an audience of 700 people. Rahul Vohra helped me out at the exhibition stand, and together we handed out hundreds of nice geeky postcards and spoke to many lovely people.

If you have not yet signed up and claimed your special FOWA discount, go and get it soon – it’s only valid until 30 October!

This post was written by Martin Kleppmann, founder of Go Test It.

Go Test It website redesign

2009-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

Does this sound like you? When I visit a product’s website I am always terribly impatient. I have my fingers already positioned to press ⌘W (that’s Ctrl–W for the Linux and Windows users), ready to close that browser tab at any moment. Basically I am looking for any reason to close that tab and get back to something more interesting.

With that in mind, I’ve been redesigning the Go Test It website from ground up over the last week. The new design is a lot more open and friendly, it has real screenshots of the product, and it has much less text.

I think the new design draws you in much better, and makes it a lot less likely that you immediately close that tab again.

There are more pages behind that front page, giving more detail for those who want to know. But the initial message is very clear and to-the-point in our new design.

What do you think? Leave your comments below.

This post was written by Martin Kleppmann, founder of Go Test It.

Flyers for the Go Test It FOWA launch

2009-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

In two weeks today, we will be launching Go Test It at the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) conference in London. We’ve been on TechCrunch, I’ll be speaking/demoing on stage for 5 minutes, will be grilled by ‘dragons’ Reshma Sohoni and Mike Butcher, and we’re going to have an exhibition stand. The excitement is building up!

Of course we’re getting flyers, business cards, T-shirts and a poster printed. But if you’ve ever been to an event like this, you’ll know the information overload which overwhelms visitors there. How do you increase your chances that someone will remember the awe-inspiring demo at your stand, or remember the good helpful conversation with a friendly member of your team?

I was discussing this with Rahul Vohra, who will be joining me at the Go Test It stand at FOWA. Rahul pointed out that maybe not everybody realises just quite how many functional differences there are between web browsers, and thus how valuable Go Test It is by allowing you to test a range of browsers automatically.

So Rahul came up with a great creative idea: give people a practical example of a page which behaves differently in different browsers! And with the help of the excellent QuirksMode and a presentation by John Resig, I selected twelve different cross-browser issues, and created a short JavaScript snippet which illustrates each one.

Each code sample is 100% valid HTML, and pops up an alert; the alert shows a different text in different browsers, and a comment at the bottom of the file tells you the result you will get. Thus we get twelve different flyer designs; see this one for example.

I love the geek appeal of this design: we want you to take it back to work, show your coder friends, ask “hey, did you know that…?”, have a good laugh, and pin it to your wall.

The other side of the flyer is a straightforward overview of Go Test It’s main features and benefits. So if you’re sitting in the back of a session which turned out to be less interesting than anticipated, you have something nice to read.

We’ll be in the exhibition area of Future of Web Apps on 1st and 2nd October, and I’d love you to come around and have a look at our cross-browser difference challenges. I bet that amongst the 12 we’ve got at least one or two weird issues that you didn’t know about!

This post was written by Martin Kleppmann, founder of Go Test It.

Go Test It launches private beta

2009-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

Hello world!

Go Test It, the answer to your web testing worries, has now been launched into private beta. It is about six months since we wrote the first line of code, and now it is wonderfully exciting to give our first users access to the system, to see that our approach is confirmed and validated by lots of positive feedback, and to learn which additional features our customers want most.

So what is Go Test It actually? Well, in effect, it’s not one product, but three products which work together and support each other:

A solid, hosted, scalable cross-browser testing infrastructure. We think that you have better things to do than to maintain virtual machines for testing, install Windows updates and track the latest browser versions. That’s why Go Test It provides this all for you: we maintain a variety of browsers on a variety of operating systems for you, and we make them available for you to use whenever you need them. And because we’ve built the infrastructure in a scalable way from day one, you can be sure that Go Test It will provide a great level of service even as we grow.
A simple but powerful test management system. We let you write test scripts in your favourite language – choose between Ruby, Python and the Selenium HTML format (Selenese), or mix and match. You can even run your Selenium existing scripts on Go Test It without a change. We let you run them when you like, as often as you like, on all the platforms you choose. We take screenshots along the way, and we email you the results. You can collaborate with the rest of your team, edit scripts online and share results. We make all of this super-easy for you, and then we get out of the way to let you get on with your work.
The most awesome test recorder ever. Yes, I left the best one till last. We wanted to allow you to record your tests simply by clicking through your site as usual, so that you can get started with Go Test It in no time at all. But none of the test recorders out there was anywhere near good enough for us. So we wrote our own, and everyone who’s seen it agrees that it is magic. It’s much friendlier to use and gets better results than anything you’ve seen before, and with every Go Test It account you get unlimited use of the test recorder for free!

Nobody else offers such a remarkable service all in one. So what can I say? Visit the Go Test It website now and let us know you’re interested, and we’ll get back to you with an invitation code. If you have already given us your email address but not heard from us, please be patient for just another few days – we have had a lot of interest already so it’s taking a bit of time to get everybody set up comfortably!

Over the next weeks and months we will use this blog to post news about Go Test It, suggestions on how to make the most of the service, techniques for creating great tests, and more. So please subscribe to our news feed and follow us on Twitter to keep in touch. And we’d love to hear from you – leave us a comment below or contact us directly.

This post was written by Martin Kleppmann, founder of Go Test It.