Customer feedback is one of the crucial assets any MVP founder can use to better their product idea and business model. Different founders collect customer feedback in different manners.
Today, we’ll discuss the best ways to get customer feedback from your target audience, so you can improve the iterative process of building your MVP.
Why Should You Get Customer Feedback for Your MVP?
Once you launch your MVP, it’s all about learning about customers and learning from your mistakes and shortcomings. Customer feedback on your minimum viable product is the best way to know both.
When you release your full-fledged product for use within the target market, eager users want to see the app reach a better potential.
For that, they will always provide valuable feedback that you can incorporate into the development cycle.
Acting on initial customer feedback makes the customer feel important. When you validate your customers, there’s a higher chance of you pulling in a larger audience. You also keep improving the features of the current product to retain the newly gained audience.
Why Should You Focus on Customer Development?
Customer development starts by understanding the target market and determining the target audience and potential user base within the said market.
“We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”
–The Lean Startup, Entrepreneurial Guidebook
When you have a good estimate of both, start validating or invalidating your ideas to tailor your app to the current market trends the users follow with limited functionality.
Customer development is an unpredictable process. you cannot judge it by traditional metrics. You’ll only know who’s exactly looking for your product if you do your research.
Often, the customer base is entirely different from what you were expecting.
Failing to understand the market you will be catering to can result in a failed MVP, and that alone should tell you why you should focus on customer development for a viable product approach.
Types of Minimum Viable Product Customer Feedback
Are you planning to gather and depend on customer feedback for your development roadmap? The best way to do it is to ask the right questions at the right time. You can ask both pre-subscription and post-subscription questions about your product.
1. Pre-Subscription Questions
These questions come in when the user signs up for your product or you receive their email addresses through surveys. The questions reach the customers through a welcome email.
Remember, first impressions are always important. The tone of your welcome email, along with a warm message can open a door for conversations. Then, you can gather a few pieces of information by asking a simple question within the email:
- How did you get to know about our product?
- Why did you sign up for our product/ newsletter?
- What goals are you trying to achieve with our product/ app?
2. Post-Subscription Questions
Customers who subscribe to your service or product are paying you to solve their problems. When their problems are solved, the customers feel more compelled to answer questions.
The answer to these questions can be used to add extra product features or for future product developments and improvements.
These answers can work as valuable feedback, and the questions can be:
- What convinced you to buy our product?
- What would it be if you could add one feature to the product?
- What problems would be solved if the feature you mentioned was added?
How to Ask Customer Feedback for Your MVP
Customer feedback is the most important asset you can receive when you’re developing your MVP. There are several ways to ask for customer feedback that is completely non-invasive and professional.
1. In-App Surveys
As the name suggests, in-app surveys are where you collect feedback in the form of information and certain scores. The customer opinions can help you determine how satisfied the users are with the current product and what you can do to improve your MVP further.
These surveys can come in multiple forms, a few of them being:
- Customer Effort Score (CES): The survey reveals how smooth the user journey is when using the product. When used strategically, this survey can reveal the opinion of users on different new features that you introduce to the app.
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): This survey helps you determine the level of user satisfaction. You can monitor the CSAT score for different features to determine which to update further while discarding the lesser popular features to maximize financial success.
- Net-Promoter Score (NPS): NPS can be used to figure out the loyalty of active users utilizing the product. It can also reveal the likeliness of someone referring the product to their peers, i.e., colleagues, family, or friends. First, use NPS to determine the highly likely customers to promote your product. Then you can motivate them further by offering them discounts or other reward packages to increase your potential users.
2. Interviews
Interviews let you focus on an individual user and ask them key questions that can get you detailed answers rather than a simple yes or no. When conducting interviews, you ensure that your initial users’ voices are heard and that they provide better feedback.
Interviews are a time-consuming way to collect user feedback about your product, but interviews can also get you the best result by gaining the most detailed insights about the pain and each user’s points.
3. Focus Groups
Focus groups can also be considered interviews. However, here you’re focusing your efforts on a specific user group that has experienced a similar user journey while using your product.
Focus groups are just as important as individual interviews. With focus group interviews, you can gather valuable insights and prioritize them according to their urgency and severity.
4. A/B Testing
A/B testing with users involves introducing multiple product versions to your future users. You then gather feedback on both versions to determine which version appeals to your user base the most.
This qualitative feedback comes in the form of campaign statistics that you can track when promoting both app versions. The one with the more CTR and impression is the version you should lean towards more in terms of future development plans.
A/B testing can be time- and resource-consuming since you need more development time and a bigger budget to create different product versions.
But adapting methods shows your dedication to high-quality user experience, bringing you more attention within the market.
5. Landing Pages
A simple landing page can go a long way, and Buffer is the greatest example of this phenomenon in the current market. They started with a simple landing page explaining their product, and the rest is history.
The goal of a landing page is to explain to the curious user base what the MVP is all about. If the landing page creates connections with customers, their curiosity will lead them to test the app and even become paying customers by subscribing to the services.
You can also promote so that the target customers subscribe to your newsletter for future updates. That way, you can keep track of future potential paying customers and real users.
6. Fundraising and Crowdfunding Campaigns
Crowdfunding is when the users fund your development to see the final product in an operational form. Crowdfunding can be a great source to determine paying customers.
The range of their funding can also point out how interested they are in the product, helping you determine your most valued future customers.
Your contributors in crowdfunding have the highest chance of becoming paid subscribers later down the line. It’ll also provide you with enough budget to fulfill the current business objectives.
7. Demo Explainer Videos
Whenever we talk about putting a demo explainer video to good use, there’s no better explanation than DropBox, which took over the internet with just one short video.
All the video did was explain the basic features of Dropbox, and the traffic to their product was insane.
When you create a visual media explaining what your product is about, show your product in action, and add details of the user flow, your goal becomes clear to your target users. They become paying customers if both your goals align.
What to Do After You’ve Collected Customer Feedback
Now that you’re done collecting all the customer feedback you can, the question arises: What now?
You can handle all the customer feedback in three stages.
The first stage is to organize all the feedback you receive and create different categories for feedback related to a particular product sector.
When all the feedback is organized, you get to prioritize the feedback that needs immediate attention.
Now that all the feedback is organized, move on to analyzing each feedback you received. Since this is the most time-consuming method, it’s better to gather a team to review all the feedback and re-evaluate their priorities.
Once you’ve reviewed all the feedback and set them apart according to priority, respond to them individually. This is another time-consuming process that can also be sped up with the help of your team.
By responding to and acting on all the received feedback, you increase the number of satisfied users and establish your integrity as an MVP developer.
To Wrap It All Up
Behind every successful MVP is the motivation of the founder to solve a particular problem their current target market is facing. The best way to determine the users’ inconveniences can be completed via collecting customer feedback through user interviews or any other viable methods.
When you’re constantly collecting MVP feedback and improving your product according to the feedback, you’re getting one step closer to becoming one of the best MVPs. Because remember, customers are kings.
FAQs
The three elements of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) are 1) Minimum: focusing on the smallest set of features required to validate a business hypothesis, 2) Viable: providing enough value to attract early adopters and generate feedback, and 3) Product: delivering a complete end-to-end solution, albeit with limited functionality.
Interacting with the user base directly with interviews and surveys is the most preferred method. That way, you connect with your audience, and their feedback is more detailed.
In a user interview, your questions should revolve around the convenience of the user. Ask about what suits them the most, what they want to see more in it, and how you can improve the current version that can serve them better.
Every product is based on its users. When you ask for user feedback, you get a clear idea about your target users and implement it within the MVP development cycle.
Yes, they are. To make the most of your MVP, you need to take both positive and negative feedback into account.
