End-user feedback is crucial for building new products as it enables teams to ensure product market fit, identify areas of improvement, and enhance customer satisfaction levels.
You can also validate assumptions and hypotheses while reducing the risks associated with rework that often comes when developing products without input from the intended user base.
Keep these figures in mind when building your product. 70% of customers may not complete the sales cycle due to poor user experience. And how can you ascertain that you have built a user-centric product? Well, one of the ways is product testing survey questions.
Let’s learn more about the testing survey and the importance of product feedback in the sections ahead.
What is a Product Testing Survey?
Product testing is the cornerstone of crafting exceptional user experiences in a fast-paced environment where consumer behavior changes unannounced.
“Product testing is the systematic process of evaluating a product’s desirability, functionality, and usability before its launch.”
The testing phase evaluates a potential product’s features, functionalities, and its concepts through various methods. A product testing survey is one of the ways to get customer feedback on a new product.
Why Test the Product Before Launch?
Product and concept testing is important for the following reasons;
- Uncover Hidden Flaws: Testing the product before release helps expose usability, functionality, and desirability issues. It highlights technical glitches that might have escaped the design and development team.
- Gauge Customer Sentiment: Check for user interface intuitiveness to know whether it resonates with the target audience or not. Get valuable insights and feedback about user interactions with the interface and identify their pain points.
- Design and Concept Validation: When you create a product survey for testing, design-related questions are added to confirm assumptions and validate ideas. You can also use this process to identify areas of improvement in the design.
Established companies have set up robust product testing systems and demonstrate the importance of following the due process to ensure product viability.
While there are several ways to test products, a product survey is one of the ways we have used extensively while building Qwary. A testing survey helps gather crucial user feedback when they use your product. You can tailor the product testing or research survey to fit your product development stage and goals.
A successful survey template can only bear results if you are asking the right questions from the target audience.
Product Testing Survey Questions to Ask
A product survey arms the design and development teams with insights and data, leading to proactive decision-making and reducing resource waste. The right questions will get your authentic product feedback from the people who may use your product.
Let me share the four types of questions my team asked from the target audience while building Qwary product survey template.
Screening Questions You Should Be Asking
These are qualifier questions and need a strategic placement at the beginning of the survey to filter respondents. You can either use a template from Qwary to find the relevant questions or conduct research and tailor the questionnaire accordingly. Here are some questions to include in your product satisfaction survey for screening;
- Can you envision our product fitting seamlessly into your daily routine?
It's a product market fit question evaluating the potential user base by determining whether the product you have built aligns with their daily needs.
You can use a Likert scale with answer choices ranging from “Absolutely Not to Absolutely Yes” to determine the product or feature integration level. One of the best practices is to offer an open-ended follow-up question asking the respondents to elaborate on their answers.
This will give you specific answers and cues to the product teams for further development and improvements.
- How does our product concept compare to similar products in the market?
Gather intelligence on your competitive differentiation and identify your product’s unique value proposition with this product survey question. The customer insights you receive from here will highlight how they perceive your product in comparison to existing alternatives.
Use an MCQ answers approach with the options varying between “more appealing” to “less appealing” and “no significant difference.” The responses will give a fair comparison between your product and competitors.
Even the negative responses can guide you about the viability of features in your product and help you reveal crucial insights into competitive advantage. Use this understanding to improve and analyze the price of the product.
- How often could you use this product?
Identify the product usage frequency, which helps identify purchase intent and potential market demand. Using the responses, you can anticipate how customers use your product, which can facilitate changes in production planning, marketing strategies, and pricing decisions.
Here again, use the MCQ answers with options like “Daily,” “Weekly,” “Monthly,” or “Less Frequently.” You can also add a condition-based follow-up question asking what can be done to influence the usage frequency. Use the information to identify barriers inhibiting usage and triggers promoting regular usage.
Concept Validation Survey Questions with Examples
Concept validation is crucial and enables you to tailor your product according to the preliminary concepts. Use it at the prototyping stage of product development and understand how the potential user base resonates with the core concept.
- What was your first reaction after seeing the product?
Tap into the initial first impression and discover the product’s emotional as well as intellectual appeal. Check how your target audience instinctively responds to the product's visual design and overall concept.
Use the open ended question format here to get an unfiltered product experience. When doing the same for Qwary, we created a word association, which I really liked and would recommend you do as well.
Ask the respondents to list one or few words that come to mind when they see the product, experience the functions for the first time, etc. This will reveal valuable insights you can use to build upon the initial perception.
- What did you like the most about the product?
The target audience shares the most appealing aspects of the product, which also shows their satisfaction with your product. You will know what components throughout the product users resonate with, hence validating your design and concept ideas while giving you enough information to make better functionality choices.
Use the open ended question format to encourage detailed responses and combine it with MCQ responses to know more about the most liked product attributes like the design, functionality, and ease of use.
- What do you like least about the Product?
Know all the potential weaknesses and how users perceive your product. Forward the least liked components for improvements and modifications, and use the closed feedback loop function on Qwary to inform your users that you have fixed the issue.
Use the same measurement method of the previous question and work on the parts that need improvement. This is critical feedback. Don’t consider it a failure; use it to identify opportunities for improvement and growth.
- Below is a list of product features. How important is each feature to you?
Use the responses from this question to prioritize the development of features in your product. This allows you to understand which features are most essential when customers use your product.
Use the Likert Scale ranging from “Not important at all” to “Extremely important” for each feature listed within the question. Customers using your product will share the relative importance of each feature. You can also interpret to identify the customer expectations and purchasing decisions.
Purchase Intent Questions to Ask
The realization “It’s a good idea” is not enough to start investing your time and resources. Use the purchase intent questions to help gauge the likelihood of your target audience whether the product can attract sales, which translates to whether the customers will pay.
The questions you ask in this survey distribution help figure out user sentiment and help you formulate pricing strategies and its market potential.
- Can you specify any concerns or reservations that might impact your purchase intent?
Ask this question while in the beta testing stage to identify potential barriers to purchase and uncover specific concerns. Use the MCQ format and list the potential reasons like price, lack of functionality, lack of trust, etc. However, don’t add more than 5 options.
You can also ask a follow-up question, especially if the users need to share a different reason other than the listed options.
- How likely would you be to purchase our product?
Don’t hesitate from asking different questions like this one to know about the target audience’s purchase intent. You will get one or two-word answers on whether the users will pay, giving you a baseline to identify the product’s market potential.
Use the Likert scale with options ranging from “Not likely at all” to “Extremely likely” and establish a user base who is ready to pay.
- How does our product concept compare to similar products in the market?
This question is asked to evaluate your product’s competitive advantage and to set its pricing strategies. You can understand how users perceive your product to work on pricing strategies.
The results will convey how your product differentiates itself from similar ones. You must use an MCQ-based approach here to analyze the results and then choose things like essential features, functionality, and design to launch a better version in the market.
For unfavorable responses, you can trigger a follow-up question asking what you can do to influence a change in feedback.
Market Research
Questions framed to conduct market research are meant to unlock valuable insights concerning user behavior and preferences. If you want to create a product that achieves mass adoption, questions related to market research are essential. Here are some market research-related questions for your evaluation survey;
- Which of the following have you purchased in the last 12 months?
This question will have alternatives to what you are offering to identify the existing purchase patterns. Knowing that your target audience is paying to use a certain product or solution, you can get valuable information on what influences their purchase decision.
Furthermore, it reveals what types of products your users engage with and how these products are delivering value. Share an MCQ list of your competitors and use the responses to build the product roadmap.
- From which brands would you consider making your next purchase?
Another important question for the market evaluation survey, you can identify the levels of competitor’s brand awareness vis-a-vis your brand recognition. The answers will let you know which brands your competitors are associated shining light on the extent of your competition.
Similar to the previous questions, present a list of possible brand names in the MCQ format. Use the answers to identify your key competitors. At the end of the survey question, give a column with “Other” and let the users write the name of the brand.
- How likely are you to replace your current product with this one?
A direct question where you are asking whether the potential customers will substitute the product they are using right now with yours. It will let you know whether the target audience is ready to switch to another product. If they want to switch, it allows you to promote your product as a viable alternative proactively.
If the users are not ready to switch, you can use other questions to identify their pain points with the existing solutions and use that information to build better products. Use the Likert scale with responses like “not likely at all” to “extremely likely” added with a follow up question asking the respondents to elaborate on their selection.
How to Conduct Successful Product Testing Surveys?
Conducting surveys is easier said than done. From selecting the right product feedback survey questions to choosing the right platform for deploying, you must do everything right to get valuable insights.
Since I don't want you to make the same mistakes we did, here are a few suggestions to successfully deploy a product testing survey template.
- Define Your Objectives
Know what you wish to achieve from the survey. Every type of customer will bring customer insights, but what sort of information is required will influence the selection of questions, survey tools, and deployment method.
- Categorize Your Audience
Once you know what to ask, identify the target audience for the survey. Choose your audience based on the goal, demographics, usage patterns, and customized criteria according to the desirable results.
Asking questions from the right audience will empower your efforts with actionable insights.
- Include Engaging Survey Questions
Ask clear and concise questions to conduct a successful product testing survey. Use mixed questions type to make the survey interesting for the new user. Frame your questions according to the context to encourage detailed responses.
- Maintain Optimal Survey Length
Let me make one thing clear: nobody has time to scan through multiple questions just so that you can build a better product. While you can choose the kind of survey questions, you cannot force the target audience to take the survey. Elongated surveys won’t bear results. Instead, keep 3-7 questions in one survey.
- Use Surveys At The Right Time
Figure out an appropriate time to launch your product testing survey. Consider factors like product development timeline, user engagement patterns, and the impact of external factors on user participation.
For Qwary, we used a four-point criteria:
- Project Timeline
- Development stage
- Available features
- User availability
Based on these, we were able to get a good response rate from the target audience.
Conclusion
Conducting a product testing survey is easier when you have all the required information. A product testing online survey is pivotal for building user-centric products. Using the information and responses, it will be easier to enhance product experience and foster a loyal customer base.
You can use a testing survey to finalize the product design, select features, set pricing, and do a lot more than this. While you can do all the hard work to create and share a survey, Qwary makes it easier for you to significantly cut down the efforts and time while providing a viable solution to get effective results.
My team is waiting to help you build your first survey and extract valuable information from the target audience. Get in touch.
