Would you Buy a Simple Feedback Tool?
We all know that listening to our users and understanding their needs is really important in any business. I have been exploring problems in this space for a little while now.
I'm wondering if there is a need for other indie hackers to have a way of asking specific questions right within their web app so that you can validate your ideas and understand why your customers are doing certain things.
My solution would be to make a survey widget that can be easily added to any website and triggered when you want. It would have an integration with Google Sheets where you could set the data for the survey questions and receive the answers coming in.
It would be a one time payment.
Would you buy this?
Formito.com does the job for me. For example, I made https://do.formito.com/e/1r4 to get feedback for my landing page builder.
Thanks for sharing this.
Like how you come up with the idea but can't agree with your second and third paragraphs. @noahwbragg
Seems like it's too early to think about the solution and monetize given that your problem statement and need findings aren't clearly identified. Not to mention many alternatives out there that offer a very friendly solution.
I agree there's always a need to listen to users, ask questions and iterate. I think you need to go through this process yourself first. Getting there :)
Thanks for the reply! I kind of landed on the advice you are saying. Plan to do a lot more customer interviews.
I have gone through the process as well because I did my own startup for two years.
I'd want something that is aligned with the actual development framework that I use. For example a react component, vue component, android, iOS etc. Doing the boring work to encapsulate things into the various frameworks has value. You would then also capture framework-specific information such as version information and package name without having the developer do it.
The most important widget might be to provide a simple way to measure NPS. I am not going to do any complex surveys until my NPS setup is up and running, as a minimum. Before NPS is part of the picture, surveys are done face to face or over the phone with customers.
Thanks for the feedback! NPS makes sense as a good starting place.
As a user, such surveys never worked for me...
When you used surveys for your own business? What were the results that you would get?
Not sure that I understand you.
I mean - when I play the role of the end user, I usually ignore such surveys, especially asking open questions.
As a founder, I used a couple of times surveys - the usual Google forms worked perfectly, as well as a Twitter poll. But it depends pretty much on the number of users. If I don't have some critical mass no survey would work.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Hey Noah,
This definitely sounds interesting but I would be curious to learn how much more effective this is going to be than something like emailing them with those questions or a link to a Google form. How would this be different from a tool like Hotjar https://www.hotjar.com/incoming-feedback? Other conversational/chat tools also come with NPS survey tools.
Is the problem you are solving here "How to get user feedback in-app while they are doing specific actions (configured based on routes or button clicks)"? If so, the solution sounds interesting but I would need to see some data around how much more effective this has been over the alternatives I mentioned above before I decide to pay for it.
Also, why are you charging a one-time fee? I assume it would be a larger upfront than a small recurring monthly fee. From a customer's perspective, how would you ensure the service lives on 5 years from now if you are going to be incurring on-going maintenance and support for your application?
Keep in mind that I am an uneducated buyer who may not see the benefits of your tool (yet). I would love to see a simple prototype/MVP to see how this works.
@basilkhan Thanks for the feedback about feedback :) . It would be pretty similar to the incoming-feedback tool from hotjar that you mentioned about. Where you can add any question you want.
The main differentiator as you mentioned, is being able to trigger the survey based on specific events. Its a lot better to trigger a question asking about how a uses a specific feature after they use that feature. Or its a lot better to trigger a survey after you know the user has been using your software for a minimum threshold. I don't necessarily have data to back this up, but it makes sense to me at least from a thought process standpoint.
The other differentiator would be simplicity and that it is made to target indie hackers. The price point is around that. Also why it's a one time payment. The backend would be supported completely from Google sheets. So there isn't up keep on my end. Thats why it wouldn't be a subscription model. The widget just has to work with google sheets so it should be supported for the foreseeable future.
I'll send a quick demo your way :)
@noahwbragg That's super fascinating! Also, thanks for sending over the demo and clarifying my questions. Very interesting to see how you are powering the backend with Google sheets. So would the JavaScript be self-hosted? I would be curious to see how it's implemented in production and how the triggers would be configured.
To answer your question, if I was looking for a simple feedback tool, this will be something I definitely would consider for my side projects over other subscription-based tools, depending on the features, price and how it would work for multiple projects. I would love to see some engagement data once you have users.
Great work! Signed up on your site! If you are looking for beta testers, let me know.
Awesome, I'll let you know. I'd host the javascript but think it would be a good idea to give the option for self-hosting at some point. Or make a npm package out of it that could be used.
Oh, and the advantage this would have over email and sending links to surveys is just being in-app. I forgot where I saw this data but conversions are way higher for survey in-app then from email. I should probably go find that data point :)
As a solo indiehacker with no funds. I would just put an email form or something.
But I think funded startups would pay for it I guess
I wouldn't be so sure... if a startup has funds it probably means they already gained some market fitting...
Interesting. thanks for sharing.
I wouldn't have a problem paying, but it would have to actually save me time. I'd say, don't compete on making "sending an email" easier. Compete on integrating with other measurements, i.e. automatically enriching your data with data from other sources or pushing data to other tools. For example automatically knowing the release number, integrating with A/B testing in firebase, doing an easy NPS widget, integrating with prometheus, datadog.
There's an endless number of integrations that are annoying and time-consuming to do for a developer where a ready-made tool can create value.