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Woman & Home

Lifestyle

Laura Honey

Introducing the Woman&Home Tester Network

A collage six items being tested by our Tester Network alongside the words Woman&Home Tester Network.

You might spot that some of our reviews come from our dedicated Woman&Home Tester Network, where products are tried and tested by real people. We've created a wonderful community of women who get hands-on with products, put them through their paces, and share their honest feedback with you.

Think of it like a written version of a chat with friends over coffee. Wondering if that pricey coffee machine is really worth it? Whether that lipstick will last all day? Or if a cooling mattress can genuinely help during the menopause? We're here to share our network's honest answers. It's real recommendations from real women for real life. And of course, the Woman&Home expert editorial team brings their insights as well.

At its heart, the tester network is about authority, reliability, and relevance. Our goal is to give you the best of both worlds. The expertise of our in-house reviewers, plus the lived experience of women who know exactly what challenges you're facing. That way, when you read one of our reviews, you can trust that it's been tested for real life - not just the lab.

Want to join our Tester Network? It couldn’t be easier. All you have to do is email our Ecommerce Editor, Heidi Scrimgeour. Let her know what kind of products you have a genuine need for and why, and she’ll be in touch when a test opportunity comes up that might suit you. You can also leave us a comment at the end of this article, and one of the team will follow up.

How does the Woman&Home Tester Network work?

The Tester Network is really simple. Our in-house experts put a call-out for testers in different categories, looking for specific niches. We’ve asked for hot sleepers for duvets, menopausal women for fans, women with mature skin for fake tans, and short eyelashes for mascaras.

Once we’ve had our testers write in, we select the people who we think will be the most appropriate for testing a range of the products. Then, each tester received the product to put to test in their own home. We ask each tester to fill out the same detailed brief that we use for our professional review, which means answering lots of questions. This results in pages upon pages of detail, but we like to make sure that no detail is missed.

Each review is completely imperial and measured on the same parameters as competing products, so you can be confident that you’re getting the full picture: the good, the bad, and the “this looked better on Instagram…”

Why join the Woman&Home Tester Network work?

The Tester Network isn’t just about free products landing on your doorstep (though, let’s be honest, it’s a nice perk). It’s about sharing experiences, helping each other, and shaping future reviews. If you have an opinion on anything from mascaras to mattresses, this is your chance to put it to good use. We want honest feedback that helps readers to make an informed decision before they part with their hard-earned cash.

And you can also highlight the things that our in-house experience might sometimes miss, like how a mattress feels during a hot flush, or how well your pillow helps with neck pain. That’s not to say our experts don’t know their stuff (I’ve literally taken a saw to a mattress to see what’s inside), but we also know that real life brings different challenges, so we look for testers who know these difficulties. We want their voices to be heard so that other people can learn from them.

Carly Hall-Simms
Woman&Home Tester Network member

Carly's application to join the Tester Network captured our attention because she called herself "the sweatiest peri-peri-meno-monster" and pleaded with us to let her test some of the best cooling mattresses out of pure frustration.

"I'm a red-hot Yorkshirewoman - and not in a good way."

Dealing with intense night sweats that left her washing her sheets every morning, along with joint pain, she told us: "I'm a red-hot Yorkshirewoman and not in a good way." After trying a so-called cooling mattress that only made things worse, Carly was searching for products that genuinely help to easy the many symptoms of menopause. You can read her Silentnight Lift Breathe Mattress review to see what she had to say about its "wizardry" and whether it's deserving of its reputation as the 'menopause mattress'.

The Tester Network In Action

Curious to see what our testers have been up to? Here are a few of the latest reviews we've been working on over the last few months - with lots more to come.