What are some of the most effective ways to get user feedback for your app? Continue reading to learn more!
In today’s customer-centric world, collecting user feedback is no longer something that’s limited to your customer support team’s backlog – now, it is also an essential task for the whole company, especially the Sales and Marketing departments. In fact, it has become one of the most important factors for growing your company and truly understanding your customers so you can provide the best solutions to satisfy their needs.
And this is especially true when it comes to app development – imagine that you spend thousands of dollars to build an awesome app with features you thought users would like, just to see it fail without understanding why. The truth is, a lot of times what we think users would like is far away from what they would actually like. Of course, finding this out comes with a lot of trial and error – so today, we will see some effective ways to get user feedback for your app and deliver a product that really solves people’s problems.
Why is feedback so important?
Obtaining quality and honest feedback is essential for any business that wants to continue growing and upgrading their products in the right direction. Put simply, it:
- Helps you understand your customers and their needs;
- Gives you the the best insights to improve your products;
- Helps you engage with your customers the right way;
- It also gets you testimonials, referrals, and reviews;
- Allows you to benchmark your performance effectively.
And of course, there are some solid statistics to support why it’s so important to get user feedback. According to a study conducted by Barkleys, 85% of small and medium-sized companies confirm that online customer feedback has been highly beneficial for their business.
Additionally, this study has found out that optimizing for the Feedback Economy could yield the mind-blowing 3.2 billion dollar opportunity over the next decade just in UK alone.
But that’s not all. According to a SurveyMonkey Research:
91% of people believe that companies should fuel innovation by listening to buyers and customers, compared to only 31% who think they should hire a team of experts.
Put simply, feedback is what guides the improvements in customer experience and product development for any company that wants to drive positive change in their business.
So, without further ado, let’s jump right into our list of effective ways to get user feedback for your app:
1. Incorporate a rating component within your app
The first way to get user feedback for your app is to make it simple and easy for your customers to share their opinion and connect with you. One way in which you can do this by incorporating a rating system or component within the application itself.
Whether you just incorporated a new feature and want to find out if people are seeing value in it, or you just want to know if they enjoy your existing features (or the app itself), a simple rating can go a long way. For example, you can incorporate a non intrusive pop-up button on the page that you would like to get user feedback on.
However, we really want to highlight the word simple – the more complex you make something for users, the less they would be willing to do it. Whether we are talking about customer feedback or any Digital Marketing strategy in general, you should always try to avoid any extra unnecessary steps for that might stop users from converting further down the funnel.
For this reason, in order to make it easier for our customers to get user feedback for their app, we’ve added a rating component feature to our no-code Drag and Drop app builder. With this component, you will be able to gather ratings from your customers in all areas of the app. Our system works on a 5-star basis where each responder can choose between 1 and 5 stars to rate a feature – allowing you to obtain instant feedback in no time!
2. Leverage the power of Email Marketing
Another great way to get user feedback for your app is to leverage the power of Email Marketing combined with the efficiency and simplicity of well-done online surveys. Despite all the new tools and communication channels in 2021, email still remains one of the best ways to reach your audience and interact with them on a more personalized level.
According to Oberlo, the number of active email users is forecasted to reach 4.3 billion in 2023, with over 293.6 billion emails being sent and received every single day. Which is absolutely mind-blowing! Additionally, the average return on investment is about $42 for every $1 that you spend on email marketing, which means that it is a highly profitable channel for many businesses.
You can use email to get user feedback in multiple ways – for example, slipping in your questions between the conversation, including links to feedback forms and surveys, or embedding the whole form directly within the email.
If you are planning to collect this data through online forms and surveys, here are some tips to make sure that you do it the right way:
- Email copy – your email copy should be as clear and transparent as possible. Let the users know that you want their honest opinion on your app or certain features of it, and explain that this will allow you to create a better product for them.
- Make it simple – as we mentioned previously, simple is always key when it comes to becoming a customer-centric company and understanding the needs of your clients. Make your form or survey quick, simple, and easy to fill out – if possible, avoid having too many open answers because most users won’t be motivated to write whole paragraphs about your product. For example, you can make most of your questions multiple choice, and still leave a couple of questions open in case users want to share something extra.
- Call to Action – having a clear CTA is an absolute must to make sure that your users know what is expected from them after receiving the email. However, avoid putting too many links or Call to Action buttons, especially if they entice to different actions – this might confuse your audience, and they might end up not doing anything at all.
3. Live chat questions
Another effective way to get user feedback for your app is through implementing live chat into the customer strategy of your business. Live chat is not only an excellent tool to improve support experience for customers and help them with their app onboarding, but it can also be highly beneficial for collecting valuable feedback and insights to help with product development.
One way to take advantage of live chats is to engage with users directly by asking simple questions, such as how are they enjoying their app experience so far, or whether they liked a certain feature. You can also automate collecting feedback by incorporating chatbots that will guide the user through different questions, and respond accordingly as the user answers.
However, even if you don’t implement chatbots, one of the major perks to providing customer support via live chats is all of the data that you are able to collect along the way. Depending on the live chat software that you are using, you should be able to store, organize, and tag chats so you can come back to them later and analyze all of the collected data.
4. Involuntary feedback
Another way in which you can get user feedback for your app is by leveraging the power of analytical tools and session recorders so you can gather valuable insights on user behavior. These insights will help you get a better understanding of how users engage with your app, which features they are using the most, and what are the most visited pages.
For example, if you see that a certain page has a really high abandonment rate, this would indicate that users aren’t particularly enjoying their experience on it, and you might need to introduce some improvements.
Sessions recorders such as CrazyEgg and Hotjar are also a great way to get insights for improving product development. If you have a progressive web app, you can easily install a session recorder – since PWAs are essentially websites with the look and feel of a native app, and can be accessed with a single URL, you can implement your session recording tag at the blink of an eye. And, if you don’t have a progressive web app yet – just click here!
They will show you heatmaps of the most clicked and viewed segments within your app, which in turn will help you determine the level of engagement for each feature.
For example, if you notice that people are clicking a lot on an image or a logo that doesn’t really take to another page, you might take the opportunity to include a link on it.
You may also notice that people aren’t clicking at all on something that was supposed to be clicked on – in this case, you may consider making it more clear to the user, whether this means being more descriptive in your messages, or simply including more visual components.
The point is, leveraging the power of analytics tools is key when it comes to collecting involuntary feedback and understanding user behavior on your app. Other app analytics benefits include:
- They help you improve the return on investment of your app;
- They help you understand how interested and invested are users with your app;
- You can also use them to create individually targeted experience that adapts to each particular user;
- They also help you to measure your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) efficiently;
- Analytics tools allow you to collect accurate data so you can enhance app experience;
- And, on top of that, they are a great tool to help you optimize your Marketing strategy.
Of course, keep in mind that analytics tools and session recorders should be complementary, and not a substitute to getting actual feedback from customers. After all, nobody can tell you better how they feel about a product than its actual users, and there are things that can’t be captured by analytics tools alone. However, they can be a powerful ally when it comes to improving your app in the long run, so you should definitely take advantage of the feedback they provide.
5. Offer incentives
And last but not least, another effective way to get user feedback for your app is to offer rewards and incentives to users who are willing to share their opinion about it. For example, you can give them a small discount, or the option to try a premium feature for free if they fill out your online survey – in this case, you can “afford” to make it a little bit longer and more complex. If the incentive is good, users won’t mind taking their time to fill it out.
You can also combine feedback incentives with your loyalty card system. For example, if users fill out your survey or agree to have a brief interview with your team to share their experience with your app, you can add an additional stamp on their loyalty card so they can get faster to their next incentive. This is a great way to get user feedback in a way that feels rewarding to the customer.
Wrap-up
Now that we’ve seen some of the most effective ways to get user feedback for your app, the next step is to start implementing them in your customer-centric business strategy. Remember – understanding your customers and delivering the product that they need will be key to leading your company to success. After all, no matter how awesome your app is, if it’s not able to deliver a solution to an existing problem, it won’t be able to stand out.
And, if you don’t have an app yet, make sure to hop over to Beezer and create your no-code progressive web app today! Try Beezer 30 days for free!
