What is an In-App Survey?
In-app feedback surveys are better than traditional ways of extracting information from your users. These are a type of survey with questionnaires built into a mobile app.
Due to their nature of work, these surveys appear at a specific moment when users are interacting with the application. This type of survey is used for different purposes, including;
- Gathering user feedback
- Finding ways to improve user experience
- Make user-centric, informed decisions
When done correctly, in-app surveys can collect contextual information from customers. With the right survey tool, you can target user segments, which leads to improved decision-making.
A successful in-app survey has several constituents that come together to form a survey design that extracts the required information. Here they are;
- Survey Trigger: This represents the moment or action that triggers the survey. This could be any moment turning into a trigger that will launch the survey.
- Relevance: Another important aspect is the survey's relevance to the target audience. Surveys launched at the right moment can get better responses, which means better results.
- Clarity in Questions: Whether it’s an open-ended question or a close-ended one, clarity is essential. Ensure your questions are easy to understand, short, and won’t need a long answer.
- Mobile-Friendly Format: Build an optimized survey for all sorts of mobile screens and sizes.
Who Uses In-App Product Surveys?
With all this understanding, I want to share an important aspect of in-app surveys: survey launch time. Introducing a survey at the wrong time can become a nuisance for app users. So, choose the perfect time to launch the survey.
Why Conduct In-App Surveys?
To create in-app surveys for extracting the right information, you need to do it for the right reasons or purposes. Here are a few reasons to conduct in-app surveys;
- Real-time User Insights
In-app surveys capture user experience and feedback at the exact moment they are using the product. This means the users share feedback while the experience is fresh in their minds and provide precise feedback.
Early feedback is more likely to reflect genuine emotions, and you will get a more authentic review of the application. As the feedback is fresh and raw, it provides valuable insight into the user’s mindset, making the survey more actionable.
Slack’s High Response Rate: Slack uses a simple in-app survey to get real-time insights from its users. They have also added a direct method for their users to send feedback from the platform. Similar to an in-product survey, this also means the users won't have to switch channels or find Slack support emails to share their feedback.
- User-Centered Decision Making
You can use these surveys before and after launching a new feature. Here’s how;
- Use a survey to discover user’s pain points and understand what they truly value and the challenges they face while using the product.
- By understanding your users, it's easier to prioritize features that can have the biggest impact.
- Surveys are a great tool to test the waters before moving to full-scale development. The right questions can guide you towards building a user-centered product.
Netflix’s Implicit Feedback: The content streaming magnate Netflix uses a unique implicit feedback strategy to know their customer’s pulse. They constantly obtain feedback from the viewers and integrate it into their platform’s improvement. The Netflix team uses this data to prioritize which projects to follow up on.
- Discover Customer Pain Points
Surveys can pinpoint the exact instances where users are getting stuck or facing issues. Identifying these points is essential to make corrections. However, for this to work, you must work on the survey placement and launch.
Moreover, using survey results, you can identify the most common frustrations and struggles. With this, you can make targeted changes, correcting the issues quickly and combat churn.
Addressing the identified pain points increases user satisfaction and improves product quality while reducing development costs.
- Validating Product Hypothesis
Product teams and developers make assumptions about what the target audience will find engaging and interactive. In-app surveys have proven effective in validating these assumptions, and here’s how;
- Test Assumptions: You can create questions around new features, design patterns, functions, etc., that you think the users will like. Positive survey responses to these questions mean the users want to experience them in the product.
- Gather User Feedback: For validation purposes, you can go beyond simple Yes/No questions. Asking open-ended questions will help you understand user perspectives.
- Adapt Development Approach: It’s easier for the development team to adjust their approach according to the validation of the hypothesis. Making changes early on is more cost and time-efficient.
Consider these surveys are mini-experiments you can conduct with your product to find crucial information about the user’s experience. However, in these as well, the authenticity of the information you receive depends on asking the right questions.
- Improving Product Functionality and Features
Just as you can use in-app questionnaires to validate assumptions, they can also be used to enhance existing features according to the user’s experiences. Here’s how you can improve features and functionality with surveys;
- Identify Feature Usage: With surveys, you can ask your target audience how often they use the product features and functionalities. For best results, ask closed-ended questions to gauge the feature's overall popularity.
- Strategic Feature Enhancements: The feedback users provide is an effective tool to prioritize feature or functionality enhancements.
As the changes you make in the application are based on verified data, it leads to increased feature adoption, and you end up building a more valuable product. A quick analysis of the gathered data and its implementation means you will always stay ahead of the curve.
- Competitive Analysis
If you are like me, you want to stay ahead of the curve and always find ways to beat your competition. The first thing to beat your competition is to know them. Did you know that in-app surveys can help you with competitive analysis? Here’s how;
- Identify User Preferences: Well-crafted surveys while targeting your target audience will also help understand your competitor’s customer preferences. This is mostly because your and your competitor’s customers are the same. So, by asking your target audience about their experiences, you can discover where your competitors lack and build better products.
- Identify Product Strengths and Weaknesses: Survey-provided feedback can help identify your product’s strengths and weaknesses. Compare this with your competitor's strengths and weaknesses and move ahead accordingly.
Knowing your customers is great, but knowing your competitors is even better. With the right in-app survey tool, you can improve your product and develop a winning strategy.
Methods to Conduct In-App Surveys
The convenience of collecting feedback from customers always boils down to how you approach the process. You can choose from different types of in-app surveys;
- Open-ended Feedback Widgets
One of the oldest methods for in-app surveys, the feedback widgets are akin to a ticket you can embed in a mobile application. These widgets allow you to extract free-form and qualitative feedback, which is not necessarily limited to the predefined options you provide to the target audience.
However, you can provide a few common prompts to get the ball rolling and ask for detailed responses on topics like new feature suggestions, issue or bug reporting, and personal experiences.
Since they are open-ended, they enable your users to share their thoughts and opinions about the applications in their own words. This means you will receive more nuanced and detailed feedback from the users.
From the answers, you can find areas of improvement and frustration for your users, enabling you to make relevant decisions and changes.
- User Satisfaction Surveys
In-app user satisfaction surveys can take different forms, including;
- General Survey
- Contextual In-App Survey
- Automatic Satisfaction Survey
These surveys pop up after certain trigger points and ask for the user’s experience while it is fresh in their minds. Built on the same structure as the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), this survey method asks users to quantify their satisfaction level on a scale of 1 to 5.
The analytical tool you use will help you get a clear picture of the ratings, describing the overall user experience and satisfaction levels. On Qwary, you can see the question-wise satisfaction score and check the trend by days, week, month, and year.
- NPS Survey
A Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey is often used to gauge how loyal are your customers and whether they will switch to another solution. Your customers can find all the reasons to switch to another application, provided you are not paying attention to their needs. An NPS is mostly used in the form of churn surveys as they provide an indication of users' potential to replace your product with another.
An NPS survey is similar to a satisfaction survey, with the difference every question in this method leads with a prefix, “On a Scale of 1 to 10”. Based on the ratings given by the users, you can make changes to the product and marketing campaigns.
For instance, users giving a rating between 1 to 6 are unhappy and disloyal to the extent that they may leave but also discourage others from using your application.
One way to address the issues detractors are facing and resolve them before they can discourage others is to ask for open-ended feedback. Ask them to share their experiences or their reason for giving a low rating on the NPS survey. Use these insights to address their issues and let them know that you have resolved the issue.
- Shake-to-Send Feedback
An innovative method of sending feedback, in shake-to-send users shake the phone to send feedback. Shaking the phone will pop up a host of feedback options. This method prevents users from leaving the application or losing progress on what they are working on during the feedback survey.
Google Maps uses this feature to extract users’ in-app experience and get insights on how to improve their product further. There is one issue with this app survey method: most people don’t know about this method.
So, if you want to use in-app surveys in this format, ensure to educate your users about the functionality first. Also, give your users the choice to opt out of this survey method, as an accidental shake can also trigger the feedback form pop-up.
- Rate-My-App Feedback
Application stores for Android and iOS allow you to get ratings from your users, which are meant for public display. These ratings are shared on your app page on the application store. These ratings are a great way to attract new users and increase downloads.
While these ratings are useful, be strategic when asking the users to share their opinions. App stores have a limit on calling the reviews API, which means you need to be careful and balance out the rate-my-app feedback.
As a best practice, don't ask for this rating from first-time users. Only ask for the ratings from qualified users who have been using the app for a long time or have bought a paid plan to use the application. As they are using your application for a longer time, the chances of them giving good ratings are higher.
Most Used In-App Survey Questions
The quality and authenticity of responses you receive from a simple survey depends on the questions you ask in the process. Although you will need detailed information about the target audience, product performance, and survey goals to set the right questions, here are a few most common ones;
Best Practices to Conduct In-App Surveys
As someone who has launched and analyzed hundreds of surveys, I have curated a list of the best practices. From how to choose the questions to collect information to using tools like Qwary to choosing the best types of survey, here’s what I have learned in all the years of experience.
- Gather Survey From Different Customer Segments
The core elements of in-app survey design are its respondents, who are also your customers. No two customers have the same behavior or perspective. For instance, two users using a fitness app will have the same exercise routine.
Where one user is a casual walker, the other one may be a hardcore runner, and the way both of them use his application will also be different. Segmenting users based on demographics, behavior, in-app activity, etc., can help identify specific pain points and that too, for each user group.
- Collect Feedback Survey Periodically
To build an agile product that aligns with changing user needs, make sure to collect feedback regularly. Surveys conducted at regular intervals will keep you updated on the new user preferences, allowing the design and development team to make the changes accordingly.
When you stay on top of a user's sentiments and preferences, it lets you implement ongoing improvements in the product and ensure it remains relevant and resilient.
- Make The In App Survey Discoverable
When it comes to in-app surveys, their discoverability can pose a challenge. You have to ensure your users can access and find the survey while enjoying the feedback experience. So, strategic placement of the survey in the app is essential.
To increase the chances of discoverability, trigger survey launch after they complete a task, complete a milestone, etc. In addition, clear cues about a survey can also make more people provide feedback.
- Keep The Survey Design Short
To ensure more users respond to your surveys, keep them short. Limit the number of questions to not more than 6. It does not matter whether you are launching the survey on a mobile application, web app, or software; keep the survey length short.
Short surveys have a higher engagement rate, and users tend to give accurate answers. Short surveys will keep your users focused on providing valuable feedback.
- Create Follow-Up Surveys According To User Feedback
Showing your customers you care about is the best way to build a loyal customer base. When you follow up with additional surveys on top of one survey and with relevant questions, it shows your commitment to your users.
More importantly, trigger follow-up surveys at the right time and instance after addressing the issue. For users facing issues with social media log-in, ask them about the same after fixing the issue.
So, a question like “Are you still experiencing the social media login issue after the latest update?” will show your dedication to improving customer experience.
For instance, a welcome survey to determine the NPS or CES is not recommended. However, you can launch a separate CES survey to gain insights into the customers' experiences with your application.
- Always Close The Feedback Loop
After receiving the feedback, don’t let your user wonder whether their insights made any difference. Inform them about the changes you have made according to the feedback shared; in essence, close the feedback loop.
With this, also share how these changes have improved the application. Such measures will build trust and increase engagement with your customers.
- Use Smart Tools For Survey Analysis
Collecting data is not enough. You also need the right tools to analyze the data. Let me introduce Qwary as one of the best solutions for survey response analysis.
With Qwary, you can analyze user insights based on time, industry, company name, campaign name, subscription plan, and much more. You can go as deep into the data as you want to discover nuanced insights for effective analysis.
How Qwary In-Product Surveys Will Streamline User Feedback Collection?
Qwary excels at in-product surveys as we provide dedicated and test tools to help businesses get the most out of their survey efforts. With features like real-time insights and in-depth customer targeting, among others, we help businesses extract valuable and actionable insights. With Qwary, you can do the following;
- Get Feedback from Real Users: Ignoring hypothetical users and focus groups, we help you get feedback from the horse’s mouth, that is, directly from your users. With real user targeting, we help you capture genuine insights from a customized focus group, delivering authentic and fresh insights.
- App SDKs for Website and Mobile: You can integrate Qwary into your source code with our SDK and leverage all the features we have to offer. Leading with an effortless integration, you can seamlessly deploy surveys and gather user feedback. The SDKs ensure that you can effortlessly run surveys even if you don’t have any technical expertise.
- Conduct Video Interviews with Qwary: Going beyond the simple survey methods, you can now include video interviews as a part of the survey process. Video interviews mean you can get user feedback in short video recordings. Through these, you can also notice user’s facial expressions and deduce their sentiments.
- Converse AI: Discover the power of AI in building customized and dynamic surveys with Qwary. Adding the power of conversational AI to Qwary means your surveys will transform into conversations rather than plain questions and answers. This way, the surveys you will build will be less intrusive, and as they can conform to the user’s responses, the questions asked will be super relevant and personalized.
- Better Product Adoption: Qwary-driven in-app surveys are a goldmine of valuable information you can use to improve your product’s adoption rates. Go deep into the survey insights to know how your users are interacting with the application and how you can improve the engagement levels. Use a data driven analytics approach to ensure your product meets the user’s evolving needs.
Working with Qwary is a simple and fun experience, especially because you can get in-depth information about your users and their engagement levels. With Qwary, you are not just collecting insights, but have access to all the shared and hidden secrets of your customer interaction with your application.
Conclusion
In-app surveys are valuable to build better products and understand your customers. The insights you gather from well-thought-out questions are a treasure trove for marketers, product teams, developers, and customer success teams. The multiple-choice questions allow you to listen to the users and then implement strategies to deliver a better user experience.
Take your surveying experience one notch further with Qwary. Our feedback tool helps you launch surveys effortlessly and analyze insights to get valuable information. Book a demo today to learn more.
FAQs
- How to create a quick in-app product survey?
You can either create a survey manually by selecting the right questions based on user research or use Qwary’s survey templates to build goal-centric surveys. Qwary also provides an AI-enabled survey creation tool, which automates the entire process.
- How can an in-app feedback survey validate product development decisions?
As you use in-app surveys to collect insights, decipher them to identify user needs and pain points. You can also test new features and concepts only to measure their satisfaction levels. You can measure user satisfaction and loyalty and understand their preferences to make product development decisions.
- What is a good in-app survey response rate?
The average in-app survey response rate is 13%, which is more than email surveys and website surveys. But when using Qwary and Converse AI, you can record a higher response rate.
- How to get more customers to participate in the in-app survey?
To increase customer participation make sure your in-app surveys are short and are triggered at the right time or moments. Ensure the survey pop-ups don’t become a nuisance for our customers. Additionally, keep the survey short and use a targeted approach to increase participation.
- Is it effective to add humor in in-app feedback surveys?
Adding humor in a survey isn’t as effective as you want it to be. While studies have been done to check the effectiveness of humor in email survey participation, no such studies are available for in-app surveys. But you can always give it a try with Qwary’s Converse AI, where you can set the survey tone to be humorous and see the results for yourself.
