How to make only certain parts of a site beta?

Question

Most sites are either fully released, or in beta.

But what happens if you have a large site, and some of the parts are still in Beta, and other parts aren't.

How do you effectively communicate this to the customer?

Answer 1

If there's a certain way you enter the part of the beta site, maybe you can have a modal that pops up that they have to agree to every time. I wouldn't have it on every page since it gets annoying, so I would only use this approach if there is a definitive way to get into that part of the site (e.g. people won't be coming to random parts of the beta section through Google or something).

Answer 2

One way I've used for non-web software is a change to background. So for example if your normal site tended to have a plain white background, you could have the beta site have a repeating beta text in a background image. You want to make it fairly faint so it is present but doesn't detract from the overall experience.

Another subtle but present option would just be to change the title bar.

Or you could do what google does, which is a large site with some of it in beta. Check out Google experimental search. Basically the site is no different, but it is hard to get to accidentally.

Answer 3

There are a few ways.

1) Provide access to the site via two domains (e.g. www.domain.com and beta.domain.com) and only allow access to beta parts of the site when going in via beta.domain.com.

People will be accessing the same code base, but will only get access to the beta sections if they've specified the beta subdomain. Trying to access beta sections of the site will explain this & tell them how to access the beta.

2) Strongly Flag the beta sections of the application as being beta, and force the user to acknowledge that they're OK using beta features with some kind of agreement screen. The first time they try to use the beta feature, they'll be shown the agreement screen. Subsequent uses of the feature will prominently deisplay that "thios part of the site is in beta and is used at your own peril."

Answer 4

Maybe take a look at how Facebook, Bloglines, Gmail did it?

Like "We have this beta thing going on, come on over and see the same site with new stuff, but if it doesnt work, use the old parts"

Maybe gmail labs where you can sign up for "beta features"