What are the best ways to gather user feedback for your product?

1 Define your goals and metrics

Before you start asking for user feedback, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to learn and how you'll measure it. Depending on your product stage and objectives, you might want to focus on different aspects, such as usability, satisfaction, retention, or conversion. You also need to define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you quantify and evaluate your feedback. For example, you might use metrics like task completion rate, net promoter score, or churn rate.

2 Choose your methods and tools

When gathering user feedback, you need to consider factors like budget, timeline, sample size, and level of detail. Surveys are a quick and easy way to collect quantitative and qualitative feedback from a large number of users. Tools like Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, or Typeform can be used to create and distribute surveys; however, they can suffer from low response rates, biased answers, and limited depth. Interviews are great for in-depth and contextual feedback from a small number of users. Tools like Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet can be used to conduct and record interviews; however, they can be time-consuming, expensive, and difficult to analyze. Usability tests are a way to observe and measure how users interact with your product in a controlled environment. UserTesting, Lookback, or Hotjar can be used to conduct and analyze usability tests; however, they can also be artificial, complex, and limited by your scenarios.

3 Recruit your participants

The quality of your user feedback is highly dependent on the quality of your participants. You should recruit individuals who reflect your target audience, have pertinent experience, and are willing to offer their honest opinions. Additionally, you must recruit enough participants to guarantee the validity and reliability of your feedback. To acquire participants, you can reach out to existing users via email, social media, or in-app messages; offer incentives such as discounts, rewards, or freebies; find potential users through online platforms, forums, or communities related to your product domain; or use tools like Respondent, UserInterviews, or UserTesting to access their databases. Expert users are also a valuable source of feedback as they have specialized knowledge, skills, or influence in your product domain. You can find them through referrals, networks, or events and leverage their credibility, reputation, or feedback to improve your product and marketing.

4 Prepare your questions and scripts

Once you have your participants, you need to prepare your questions and scripts to guide your feedback collection. Your questions should be clear, concise, and relevant to your goals and metrics, while avoiding leading, confusing, or irrelevant questions that may skew or limit the feedback. To do this, start with broad and open-ended questions that allow your participants to express their thoughts and feelings freely, such as "What are your main goals when using our product?" or "How do you feel about our product's design?". Then, follow up with specific and closed-ended questions that help you dig deeper into their behaviors and opinions, such as "How often do you use our product?" or "How satisfied are you with our product's features?". Additionally, use scenarios and tasks that simulate realistic and meaningful situations that your participants might encounter when using the product - for instance, asking them to "Sign up for a free trial" or "Find and book a hotel for your next trip". Finally, use rating scales, Likert scales, or multiple-choice questions to quantify and compare the feedback - like asking them to rate the product's usability on a scale of 1 to 5 or choose the most important feature for them.

5 Collect and analyze your feedback

The final step is to collect and analyze your feedback to draw insights and conclusions. To do this efficiently and effectively, you need to use the methods and tools you chose earlier to gather your feedback, as well as the metrics you defined to measure and evaluate your feedback in a consistent and objective way. To collect and analyze your feedback, you can record and transcribe it using tools like Otter, Rev, or Scribie. This will help capture and review your feedback in detail and accuracy. You can also organize and categorize your feedback using tools like Excel, Google Sheets, or Airtable. This will help sort and filter your feedback by different criteria and themes. Additionally, you can visualize and summarize your feedback using tools like Tableau, PowerBI, or Google Data Studio. This will help present and communicate your feedback in a clear and compelling way. Finally, you can interpret and synthesize your feedback using tools like NVivo, Dedoose, or MAXQDA. This will help identify patterns, trends, and insights from your feedback.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?