Pre-testing Your Product Before Launch

I'm curious what methods people use to pre-test their sites and products before launch. While I'm about to embark on my first info product launch, I've successfully launched websites before both for my own internet marketing needs as well as for a major beer brand while doing interactive strategy at Digitas.

The methods I utilized there and in my own work included sending out emails to a sample of our list to gauge response and tweak messaging all the way up to a silent soft launch that employed pop-up surveys to gauge interest.

Of course, all of your testing needs to be unique to the product but I thought this might be an interesting discussion to have.

Some pertinent questions that come to mind...

• Have you ever called off a product launch due to poor testing results?
• What was the most drastic thing you changed about a product due to testing results?
• What methods do you currently employ when testing products? (Obviously we might need to keep this one pretty generalized)

While I hope everybody can find this thread useful, I'm particularly interested in those who test products that sell on clickbank. How do you go about testing them up to and including testing different price points when you are trying to attract affiliates?

Anyway, I hope people can add some useful anecdotes here...I find myself to be a by-the-numbers guy and it amazes me sometimes when I'm presented with testing data that just does NOT make sense and then I suddenly determine the cause of it.