The secret to building a successful product–especially a web or mobile app–is to constantly keep your finger on the pulse of your users. What’s working? What do they like? What do they want to see more of? What features are giving them grief?
As an app developer, you must understand the people who use your product, whether you’re building a new one or upgrading an existing one. What is the purpose of it? What are they going to do with it? Where are the touchpoints for engagement, and where is there unnecessary friction?
Simply said, you must see the product through the eyes of the consumer. And the simplest way to accomplish this is to obtain information directly from those individuals.
User feedback is an important aspect of the product development process and of user research in general. This is particularly true in the case of a lean startup, which is an increasingly popular methodology in the tech space.
It’s difficult to tell what works and what doesn’t for your users without direct feedback. Here are some tried-and-true methods for gathering relevant and helpful customer feedback.
1. Set Some Objectives
Getting feedback is well and good…but why are you doing it? There should be a purpose and a direction to your user feedback efforts. There is no point in getting feedback for the sake of feedback. So sit down and define how gaining user responses is relevant to your business goals:
- What are your objectives for this product?
- What characteristics are required?
- What kind of feedback do you require in order to reach your objectives?
- What challenges may you be able to tackle if you have the correct feedback?
You should also think about how feedback relates to user goals as well:
- What do you think people will strive to accomplish with your product?
- What makes them want to use your product in the first place?
- What features will provide users with the most value?
- What kind of input do you require in order to gain a better understanding of your users and what they require?
2. Choose Your Questions
Once you’ve settled on the objectives behind your feedback request, it’s time to set about making your questions. It’s best to approach this phase with scope and variety in mind. First, aim to have different types of questions:
Open-ended: “What do you think about this feature?”
Closed-ended: “Have you used this feature in the past 5 days?”
Numeric: “How would you rate the usability of this app from 1 to 10?”
To get an extensive scope of feedback from users, include both broad questions about overall experience and highly specific questions about exact features or aspects of the app. You’ll get a good idea of how your product rates in general and also a clear picture of what particular features need improvement.
Other useful considerations when choosing your questions include avoiding leading questions and carefully evaluating your queries so they are efficient without overwhelming the user with a flurry of similar, redundant questions.
3. Outline Your Metrics
Once you’ve collected the data, how can you interpret it? There are some valuable ways to measure incoming feedback and extract some solid data to guide product development of your mobile app design.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS categorizes your customers into three groups: promoters (those who would suggest your product), neutrals (those who would not recommend your product), and detractors (those who would not recommend your product). Their one and only question is a familiar one: On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to suggest our product to someone else?
The purpose of NPS is to help you figure out whether or not your users will genuinely advocate your product—and, if they won’t, why.
Customer Effort Score (CES): On a scale of 1 to 5, the CES evaluates how much effort it takes a user to execute a job. This metric will tell you how easy (or difficult) it is for users to use your product. If your product has a low CES score, you should make changes to your UX design.
Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT): This metric, as the name implies, can assist you in determining overall customer satisfaction and identifying areas of your product that want development. This measure will reveal the obstacles and blockages that users encounter when utilizing your product.
4. Consider your communication channels
In recent years, the number of methods available to product teams to engage with their users and collect feedback has considerably increased. Keep in mind, however, that different channels have very varied functions.
Here are a few typical ways to solicit feedback:
- One-to-one interviews
- In-app or on-site feedback
- Emails
- Usability testing
- Social media feedback
- On-demand feedback
Using a variety of feedback channels will provide you with a broad view of feedback from a wide portion of users that you can use as valuable data.
Collecting user input is no longer optional in today’s customer-centric society; it’s essential to inform your app development product throughout all the stages of development. Dedication to staying close to your users is critical to the success of your product. User feedback can help you figure out what you’re doing correctly, what you’re doing poorly, and where you need to improve in your product.
Are you looking to validate your product design decisions? Gathering feedback on how your app is working will enable you to quickly see whether the changes you introduce work for your users or not. Techmate Labs is your ally to get the feedback you need to go from where you are to where you want to be: profitable and growing. Give us a call and let’s put together a plan that gets the best version of your app on the map–fast.