Perfecting Your Product for Consumers
Product testing is a crucial part to any successful product. The purpose of testing your product is to measure and test the performance, lifecycle, durability and safety of the invention to expose any flaws it may have and fix them.
You do not want your customers to be the ones to tell you that your product is flawed. At best, they will write poor reviews permanently damaging your company’s reputation. At worst, you could be liable for damages and get sued if the flaw ends up causing an injury.
Many products require certification from a laboratory or manufacturer that is approved to conduct tests. For example, many safety products have NIOSH certification (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) approved to make sure they comply with governmental OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards. The type of product will determine what tests it needs to go through to be certified.
Benefits of Product Testing
There are several reasons why you should have your product properly tested even if it may not be required.
Here are some testing reasons you may not have thought about:
Improves Communication to Customer
You aren’t going to know details like weight capacity, durability, years of life, and the temperature limits your product can handle without properly testing it. Having those details clearly measured and tested will allow you to communicate them on materials like instruction manuals, and you can use them as selling points to your customers to distinguish yourself from the competition. Hard data makes it easy for customers to compare products and see that yours is superior.
Passing Government Requirements
Many products will require some level of certification to be sold in the U.S. Imported products will need to be cleared by customs who will check to make sure your shipment is in compliance with the governmental regulations.
Catching Flaws Before Customers Do
There are few things that will destroy a company quicker than a bad reputation. In an age of social media where people can find what other people experienced with your product in seconds through Facebook, amazon, google, or yelp reviews, you need to do everything you can to minimize the negative reviews and maximize the positive ones. Product testing will help catch flaws in your design, and assure customers that your invention is safe to use.
Evidence in Legal Proceedings
Product testing will help you with any legal processes you may go through in court. Whether it’s getting a patent, handling a liability or product claim, the results of your product testing will be evidence that your product is safe to use and falls within normal or the regulated guidelines. Product flaws come from either the product design or the manufacturer of the product, so you’ll need to demonstrate that if made to spec, your product is safe to use if you’re on the defensive side of a court case.
Increased Profit Margins
The results of your tests can be used as a selling point to your customers, driving up your profit. Buyers in today’s era like to do research on their own to compare products and see which will work for them.
You also won’t have to replace as many defective parts through a warranty. It’s not a good idea to offer a lifetime warranty if your product will only last a few months. Knowing what the lifecycle of your product is will allow you to figure out a warranty or replacement time period that will best fit your products.
Product Testing for Quality Assurance Certifications
There are some organizations that offer optional product testing, like the UL (Underwriter Laboratories). Although these may not be necessary, they offer an extra layer of quality assurance for your product with consumers. Some companies won’t choose to buy products that don’t have optional certifications like UL.
How We Help With Product Testing
Once we help you get a prototype made, our engineering team can help you test it and make everything works like it’s supposed to. If any changes to the design need to be made, we can assist with that as well.
To get a product tested for the purposes of compliance and certification means that your product will need to go through testing from a laboratory or manufacturer approved by the corresponding agency to conduct those tests. The tests that will be conducted on the part may vary, but they can include material composition tests, vibratory/shock tests, impact and durability tests, weather tests, and more.
Our engineering team will help you find out what tests your product might need, and for which agency it needs to comply with so that your product will be ready to bring to the market.