I spent five years as a part time and sometimes full time Beta Tester on a database program. One of the reasons I was eventually immersed into the online marketing world was because of the analytical skills I had obtained and honed during my years of beta testing. Now that I’ve worked in marketing for some time, I find myself reminiscing over the days of testing and finding problems to fix.

Even though I tested a software program, many of the same principles and guidelines apply to launching or relaunching a new site. I’ve seen lots of companies that do minimal testing on a website just to be overwhelmed as soon as the site goes live. So how do we find and fix these problems? Over the next few weeks I’ll be examining some basic guides and principles for web development and beta testing. Any feedback or ideas you might have would (as always) be welcome.

So with no further adieu, here’s the first installment.