What are people doing these days to get actual…
What are people doing these days to get actual, honest feedback from users (even if it's saying certain things suck, I'd take that at this point), or should I assume that analytics and tracking will be the best — and potentially only — way to get feedback about where & why users are dropping off?
I really can't wait for my "I've got 10 paying users!" post... and rest assured, I will make a post for that seeing how hard it is :)
I'm having a really fun time trying to get user feedback from people about why they have decided to build their landing page for applight.io almost entirely and never publishing it (and seemingly abandoning it).
People are leaving at various stages, just after entering some basic info all the way until having a site ready to go (and honestly, looking great) but never putting it live!
I've noticed some issues on my end that I'm working on in the flow as far as letting people know what their site could look like with the pro version, and I'm working on that (slowly, but surely) haha but I'm still left the above burning question about how to get good (or any!) feedback.
For reference, I've added Drift for immediate-ish support, Hotjar feedback tab to make it as easy as possible, and integrated ConvertKit to send out some "let me know how things are going/welcome" type emails... to no avail :)
Hi Mike - I actually built an app to automate the process of collecting feedback and testimonials for my various online courses. The way it works is that it automatically emails users after completing certain actions inside the course. The email simply asks the user to rate their experience as positive or negative. If they give a positive rating, the app then asks them are asked to provide a testimonial. If they give a negative rating, the app invites them to leave private feedback.
I created it with the main goal of collecting more testimonials, but a significant side benefit has been that i have also begun to receive a lot more feedback. I have Hotjar installed inside our courses too, but I rarely receive more than one or two sentence answers from Hotjar. Whereas using this app I often receive much more detailed and complete (multi-paragraph) feedback.
I think the reason why it works it because of a combination of (1) email outreach actually works better than an in-app widget for collecting detailed responses (2) starting with a simple micro-step of asking for a rating increases the rate of response (3) sending the emails right after users have recently logged in or engaged with the course makes a big difference because any frustrations they experienced are still top of mind. Its probably a lot harder to get people to respond if you are emailing them days after the last time they used the app.
The caveat of course is that the feedback mainly comes from people who are still actively using the product and not those who drop off. For me this is okay because im more interested in understanding the frustrations experienced by those who are motivated to continue to use the product,rather than those those who are dropping off (which can happen for a lot of idiosyncratic reasons). YMMV.
You might try to fashion an approach along these lines. Or if you want to try out my app (bearing in mind that it a bit more focused on the testimonial process), you can check it out here: https://uservoxapp.com and let me know.
In general, I know from my users that they are being inundated to give feedback, by all sorts of companies. A few tips that I have found useful:
@mikefogg Cool tool but I've got a few questions here, if I may! :)
Who are you targeting, exactly? Someone who has built a mobile app but doesn't want to build a landing page? Why use your platform over: building it themselves, or using Wordpress/Mailchimp/Wix/Unbounce/Lander/Carrd, etc.?
How many mobile app developers have released an app but also don't have a website to back it up, provide support, talk about the company, capture leads, etc.?
I guess I'm confused by the unique value prop & target audience.
All great questions!
The target market is existing (and new) mobile app developers who build a mobile app and want a landing page for various reasons (web-based ads, SEO, contact, privacy policy, etc.).
In order to submit your app to the app store, for example, you have to add a link to your privacy policy, and they also allow links to your landing page and support.
The question of "how many" is obviously tough, but tons of mobile apps don't have a website to back it up (and growing every day of course)! I'm currently creating a list of a few hundred to start reaching out to manually and it's not difficult to put the list together (and I'm going through top paid apps in certain categories).
So the market exists, in an ideal world eventually Applight becomes the "thing to do" when preparing to launch your app to the store, vs using one of the many competitors that aren't built specifically for mobile. Making it more mobile-niche-specific is the plan.
It seems to be (from the limited feedback I've got, and from my own experience as a contract mobile developer haha) users look to building their landing page in the days (or even the same day) as they're launching to the app store. It's usually a last-thought :)
Just replied to your email with that kind of honest feedback you’re looking for :P There are some ideas why people are dropping off.
I'll add emailing people in the IndieHackers community directly to the list of successful attempts :) I really appreciate the great feedback from someone who would be the ideal customer. Very very helpful! I owe ya one.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/79/c9/2a/79c92a2fc1152e45348b8aac405ecafb.jpg
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
Thank you! Technically, I've been working on the backend for about 4 months :) But, I've had it live for about 3 months in various forms! Always evolving though haha, so the current version has been up there for about 3 weeks :)