Product feedback surveys can provide you with vital information to help you build a better product and determine the level of satisfaction your customers are experiencing from your product. Whether you’re launching a new product or want to monitor quality, it’s essential to build a user feedback survey to get the most from customer responses. Below I will review how to create an effective product survey
68% of marketers surveyed say their company uses customer feedback to make business decisions.
Hubspot Research, Global Survey, Nov – Dec 2019
Why are Product Feedback Surveys Important
Building the best product and making the right changes for the right set of users is critical for continued success. Taking guesses or making assumptions about your users puts you at a higher risk for project failure.
Product surveys can provide your development plan focus and direction, giving you a competitive edge and help you grown your business. Obtaining quality data and leveraging insights can help you improve your product and create a loyal relationship with your users.
How to Build a Product Survey
Define The Objective
Every project journey begins with an objective or goal; the same goes for creating the right survey. By identifying the questions you want to be answered or establishing what your team is trying to achieve, you can build the correct survey for the job.
- Do you want to learn about specific new products for features?
- Is this survey to obtain mid-production information to help steer product development?
- Do you want to track product quality or pinpoint design flaws?
- For software applications, are you needing usability testing to understand better how the product is being used?
- Is the business team wanting to test out a new idea or looking to expand a product into a new market?
- Are there concerns with pricing, or has there been a sudden drop in demand? Do you want to poll pricing or store locations to learn about customer shopping habits?
Identify Your Audience
Meet with your team and decide who the correct audience is and the best way to connect with them. Use existing product personas or develop new ones to help determine the best form of communication, messaging, and frequency.
Determine how many people you will need to send surveys to that will be sufficient to make a confident decision or action. Choosing a sample size that is a proportional representation of your real customer population will give you the best results.
Build Your Questions
Engage product owners and stakeholders to determine what data will be needed to draw the best conclusions. Consider reporting KPIs and business objectives as well as technology and product goals.
Next, interview a small portion of your target audience to gain their perspective, deep dive into questions, and ask open-ended questions. Doing this will help you guide your questionnaire design and the best ways to administer it.
Tips for writing survey questions
- Decide what type of data you are looking to extract. Will this be a qualitative, exploratory, or quantitative question? Should the answers be free form or predetermined?
- Keep questions short, simple, specific, and direct.
- Use simple language, phrase your questions using words that your audience will understand, and be relevant to them. Will your audience care about what you are asking?
- Avoid survey fatigue and eliminate bias by changing leaning questions, removing sensitive topics, technical jargon, and keeping things brief.
Format Your Survey
Surveys are a direct form of communication of your brand; they should be kept clean, easy to understand, and well branded. Elements like question sequence, survey length, and usability can significantly impact result quality and completion. Organize your survey questions by topic and outline them in a logical order providing clear directions. Before launch, test for accuracy and usability.
Survey Launch
Identify the best communication channels for your audience and decide on the frequency. Remember to test functionality before distributing your surveys.
Analyze and Report
Now that you have launched your survey, you are excited to start analyzing your valuable data! Many survey software services include easy to read dashboards and will allow you to filter your data to sort through responses and export reports to share your findings.
There are many survey tools, like Survey Monkey and Proprofs that can help you measure and analyze your data to help you build the best product possible.