Product Surveys: The Hows, Dos, and Don’ts
By Moradeke Owa
| Last updated:
Sep 05
|
12 min read
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When filling out a product survey, you may notice that some are too stiff; it’s almost like they are coercing you to give a review of the product. Sometimes it’s the way the questions are framed; they ask you questions that don’t allow you to express your feelings about the product.
Product surveys are an important part of market research because they help you understand how your customers feel about your products or services. So, it’s very important to go about it in the right way.
If your product survey is not properly structured, you will end up wasting time and resources conducting a survey that will not provide you with actionable insights. However, if your product survey is properly structured, it will enable you to modify your product based on meaningful insights, and boost customer satisfaction and retention.
This article will provide you with guidelines to help you create and structure effective product surveys.
The goal of product surveys is to gather user feedback on a product or service. Product surveys are the backbone of most organizations’ market research because they tell the company how users genuinely feel about their product.
Whether you’re launching a new product or trying to increase sales of an existing one, conducting a product survey provides a roadmap into your users’ minds about the product.
When you’re about to launch a product, a product survey will help you determine whether your target audience actually needs or wants your product. It also helps you find out what customers want to see in a product; the problem they expect your product to solve. Sometimes it even helps you find a target audience you never knew existed for your product.
Yes, you may have created a good product, but without product surveys, you may never learn what other features customers expect from your product. As a result, product surveys are a goldmine for product ideas and improvement.
No, product surveys aren’t always an effective method of market research, and it’s not the concept itself that’s flawed; it’s how people create them. So, creating an effective product survey isn’t a one-size-fits-all process; you must tailor it to your users and your products.
Before creating a survey, you should outline what you intend to achieve from it. This will help you structure your questionnaire in a way that allows you to collect the information you need.
Also, Having the right questions isn’t enough; how you articulate the question is also important. For example, you don’t want to create a survey that sounds like an FBI interview or NASA recruitment.
Product surveys are useful for organizations looking to develop a new product, revamp an existing product, or generate new product ideas.
Product surveys can even help you break into a new market by evaluating your target audience. As a result, almost every organization that wants to improve customer satisfaction utilizes product surveys.
If you are truly committed to growth as an organization, you will recognize that your product users’ opinions about your product should shape your product, not the other way around.
Product surveys help you to identify your users’ pain points, allowing you to solve their problems, and increase their satisfaction and brand loyalty. It also helps you boost your brand’s reputation and bottom line.
Product managers also use product surveys to map out product features and decide which parts should be kept, added, or removed.
The data collected from both product surveys and customer satisfaction are used for the identical purpose: measure how your product is performing with its users and how users feel about your product. However, they evaluate different things and use different techniques.
The type of questions asked is the primary distinction between a product survey and a customer satisfaction survey. Customer satisfaction surveys evaluate the customer’s experience with the company, but product surveys are more specific.
Product surveys ask customers how they perceive a product, what they like and dislike about it, and what they would change about it. They help you solve customer problems, while customer satisfaction surveys measure how satisfied customers are with the product you developed.
So, if you conducted a proper product survey and used the data to data or modify your product, the outcomes of your customer satisfaction survey will most likely be positive.
Briefing your respondents before they begin the survey gives them a head start in understanding your product survey. It helps them answer questions more accurately because they are now viewing your product in light of the introduction.
So, make sure your introduction is welcoming; it will help them warm up to your survey. The primary goal of your introduction should be to ensure that they understand the purpose of the survey; why their opinion is being collected, and how it will be used.
Also, assure them that their data is secure with you. When users are assured of their anonymity, they are more likely to answer questions honestly.
Build your question around the goal you want to achieve with this survey. Asking questions allows respondents to clearly evaluate the product. Keep your question free of grammatical errors and make them easy to read and comprehend.
Creating difficult-to-answer surveys increases your respondents’ cognitive load and eventually leads to survey fatigue because they are frustrated with their inability to answer the questions.
For example, if you notice a question that does not measure what you want to evaluate with a product survey, remove it. Product surveys don’t have to be river Nile long to provide you with the data you need.
Creating simple surveys, however, does not imply that your survey should be so short that it does not accurately communicate the question you want to ask. Ask all of the necessary questions, but structure them in a way that encourages your respondents to give honest answers without wearing them out.
Give your audience options that allow them to think outside the box. For example, don’t just ask users whether they like or dislike a product, ask them to rate the product on a scale; this will tell you how much they like or dislike it.
Asking questions like this will help your respondents reveal their sentiment, or lack of it, toward your product which is critical in determining whether your target market truly wants your product.
To collect honest data from your participants, always include a middle ground in your surveys, such as “I don’t know” or “indifferent.” If there are no options for them to express their indifference to your product, they will choose an option at random, which will skew the data’s accuracy.
Give your survey participants pointers when answering questions; this enables them to quickly understand the question and answer it.
Respondents spending too much time on a question in the survey mostly results in one thing: frustration. When this happens, they either lose interest in the survey and answer questions mindlessly, or they abandon the study entirely.
When creating your product survey, make sure it is user-centric. Allow it to portray your brand as an organization seeking solutions to customer problems and improving their experience.
Creating user-centric product surveys enables you to ask questions that highlight your customers’ pain points while also allowing them to express their feelings and how you can meet their needs.
A one-sided or leading question suggests how the participant should answer the question or assume how they feel.
For example, how bad was the drop-down menu before the v2 update? Asking questions like this implies that the previous drop-down menu was flawed.
One-sided questions give room for bias, and when your survey is biased, your results will not help you effectively improve your product.
A combination question is made up of two or more different questions. For example, do you want to renew your current plan or upgrade to a different plan?
If your participants say yes, you have no idea what they mean. The combination question renders the data unactionable.
A non-specific option is a vague choice that does not reveal the nature of the response. For example, options such as mostly, frequently, it depends, and others.
The survey response with ambiguous options does not provide you with insights that will help you improve or develop your product. If a participant says it depends, the response does not specify what conditions their answer is dependent on.
But if you used a 1-10 scale system, it would be more specific and reveal respondents’ sentiments.
Regardless of how well-structured your product survey appears to be, you should test it with a small audience before fully launching it. The truth is that if you don’t conduct market research with a real audience, you may never know if a question is unclear or your options are vague.
Keep in mind that you created the questionnaire, so, it’s simple to understand the questions and how to respond to them. So, testing it with a real audience allows you to identify and close any gaps in your survey before it goes live.
Product surveys allow you to determine whether your target audience finds your product easy or difficult to use.
Another upside to conducting product surveys is that it allows you to identify product gaps and eliminate them from user feedback.
The primary goal of product surveys is to learn how customers perceive your product; whether they like it, dislike it, want improvements, and so on. So, unbiased product surveys give you information about who your customers are and what they want from your product.
The data collected from product surveys is good to know the products users will most likely purchase.
Let’s say your product surveys reveal that users with a specific persona are more likely to buy aromatic oils when purchasing humidifiers. When they add humidifiers to their cart, it’s only natural to recommend aromatic oils.
In this case, the main benefit of personal recommendations is that it streamlines the shopping experience for customers, thus increasing customer satisfaction.
The most ideal strategy for growing your company is to keep your customers happy and to make your target audience desire your product.
Product surveys enable you to gather data that will provide you with a mind map of your target audience, allowing you to tailor your product to them. So, an effective product survey paves the two-way street between customer satisfaction and sales
Other benefits include:
A typical survey asks customers what they want to see improved in a product; these information guides organizations in adding new features. It prevents companies from adding features that they believe customers want rather than features that customers actually want.
Rather than creating a design and hoping that your customers like it or that it accurately represents your brand image, product surveys can help you identify the logos that your users connect with the most, saving you the headache of designing and redesigning.
One way to engage users or potential users when designing your website is to ask for their feedback on the design. This strategy makes your customer feel heard, especially when you implement their suggestions.
There is no point in creating a website that your users dislike; the product and features should be designed with the users in mind, not the other way around.
Before deciding on a brand or product name, survey to figure out which one resonates with your target audience and best represents your brand image.
Of course, you want to ensure that your name aligns with your brand values, but what if your target audience has negative sentiments towards the name? You’ll never know unless you ask them.
You can have the best product and still fail to attract a significant number of customers if your target audience dislikes the way your product looks. Creating a product survey is one of the best ways to find out if your product will appeal to your target audience.
Companies conduct price tests to avoid underpricing or overpricing products. You’re trying to figure out how much customers think your product is worth; how much customers are willing to pay for the value of your product.
Getting your product price right allows you to set a price that customers find acceptable and allows you to stay consistent with prices rather than giving discounts now and then.
Before releasing your product, you should conduct a product development survey. These survey questions help you determine your target audience’s perception of your product, and what they like and dislike about the concept.
It can also provide you with useful insights into how to shape your product to what your customers are interested in and willing to pay for.
The following are the key questions to ask during a product development survey:
Create questions to assist you in identifying the target audience who requires or desires your product. You can collect demographic information such as age, location, gender, and more.
Collecting customer opinions about how they intend to use your product helps you find out what your customers need. It also helps you improve your product to perform better than your competitors.
Sample questions:
Doing market research as a product survey helps you understand the services your competitors have and how you can provide your users with better features or new features, your competitors don’t have.
Sample Questions:
Product surveys are an excellent way to develop your product to match the preferences of your customers, increase their satisfaction, and increase revenue. However, not all product surveys are effective.
So, to create an effective product survey, follow the guidelines in this article; it will help you identify what to include and avoid in your survey questions.
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