5 Reasons Your Mobile App Needs In-App Surveys

Surveys have proven to be incredibly powerful tools for market analysis and driving customer insight. Restaurants and auto shops have surveys asking “How did we do today?” and retail stores often have their cashiers ask “Did you find everything you were looking for?” These may seem like simple questions to the consumer, but to a business these questions are crucial for understanding how to improve.

For online businesses, surveys have quickly become the best way to get insight into a customer base to determine who their customers are, how their customer feel, and what their customers truly want. All of which is very useful information! Originally conducted with paper and pencil, surveys are now commonly found all over the internet, but rarely inside mobile apps. Mobile apps are like any other business and stand to benefit from surveying customer and potential customer bases.

5 Reasons Why Your Mobile App Needs to Use Surveys

1. Save Money

Mobile app development is expensive. Every new feature and functionality costs additional money. Playing guessing games about what to create next can be incredibly costly and end up sinking your app. Never assume you know what your customers want because you will often be surprised what they will write when given the chance. Using an in-app survey can cut costs and much of the guess work from mobile app development.

From the beginning, incorporate a survey in your minimum viable product to capture responses about what your developing and what your customers would like to see. It is never too late or too early to use surveys as a channel to better understand how your customers feel and think about your app.  Having these answers can help you save money as you create what your customers want instead of what you think they want.

2. Prioritize Features

Creating a mobile app can be extremely exciting, especially when you get caught up in the fervor of  “we can build this, and that, and oh we can do this too.” However, trying to do too much too fast or in the wrong order can hamper the success of your app. Spending time on a feature that really isn’t all that great can waste valuable time and resources. It’s important to be able to prioritize your features and plan a product roadmap with confidence.

Enter surveys. Surveys are perfect for figuring out not only what your customers want, but also what is most important to them. Give your customers a voice to aid you in your product roadmap and you can be confident that you are spending time on the correct path to grow your mobile app business.

3. Who Are Your Customers?

A few simple questions can provide a treasure trove of insight on your customer base. Collecting demographic information such as age and gender is important data for future app development and can even aid you in choosing the correct ad agency or in getting the right partnership.

Demographic surveys can also include questions about customer likes and dislikes, problems they have, and address areas not directly related to your app. The more you can understand about who your customers are, the easier it will be able to create something that they love to use.

4. Specific Customer Feedback

All customer feedback is valuable, but sometimes you need feedback about a specific item. If you’ve released a new feature or entirely overhauled your app design you may want to learn what your customers think of the updates. Do they hate it?  And if so, why? You may be curious why customers stopped watching an instructional video halfway through or why they abandoned their purchase partway through the check-out process.

Using a mobile survey can give you insight into how your app is faring, whether it is a game, retail, or entertainment. Getting specific feedback can tell you how a feature was received and why customers are abandoning their carts. If a new update results in unhappy customers it’s essential to find out quickly to help avoid an onslaught of negative reviews in the app store. These reviews seldom go away even when the problem is fixed as people rarely update their reviews.

5. Engage Your Customers

The amount of people who provide feedback in-app or in the app stores is a very small percentage of your entire audience. Encouraging the rest of your audience to share their thoughts is important to get the full perspective of your customer base and not just the vocal customers. Surveys are a proactive tool that can help you reach and get responses from a larger portion of your customer base.

Surveys tell your customers that you are dedicated to improving your app and provides them with specific questions to answer which is often easier for most people than creating their own feedback.

In-App Surveys for your Mobile App

As businesses increasingly use mobile apps to drive their futures, native optimized mobile surveys will be incredibly important for engaging and understanding a mobile customer base.

As with any app feature, it takes time and money to developer surveys that fit seamlessly into your mobile app. Apptentive’s in-app surveys are developed for native apps, optimized for mobile devices, and allow you to target segments of your customer base.

Whether you use a service or create your own, surveys are a powerful tool to drive your business and beat your competition. The app that is first to build what their customers want, knows who their customers are, and understands what their customers think is the app that will come out on top.