Why gathering in-app feedback in beta is essential for your app’s success
The Beta stage is one of the most challenging and thought-provoking stages that your app will go through. You’ll validate your idea, gather insightful feedback and — you’ll end up with a to-do list as long as your arm. Gathering feedback from your early adopters is essential to creating short feedback cycles and, ultimately, creating a product that everyone enjoys.
But why is in-app feedback so important, and why should you start using it before your app has even been released?
1. It will organise the feedback loop
Before you’ve released your app to the general public, you should be collecting feedback from your initial testing team (even if that is just you and your long suffering partner/bff/mum initially). In small startups, the chances are that you’re sitting next to each other as you alpha test, so it can be tempting to commentate your thoughts as you go. This is not helpful — there’s no record of what’s been said, your developer is in the middle of fixing something else and everyone just ends up frustrated.
By starting off your testing phase with an in-app feedback tool, you’re giving the process order and starting as you mean to go on — turning user comments into actionable tasks. Once you’ve got the process working with your internal team, rolling it out to your beta testers will be quick and easy.
2. It will make your product better
Every startup thinks they have come up with the best idea since sliced bread (and if you don’t, it might be time for a rethink…). Although this positive outlook is essential, it means that our view is often clouded. It can be tempting to assume that your target audience is in total agreement with absolutely every feature on the app, but this is likely not the case. By getting feedback from those very first users, you identify issues immediately, and can iterate and make changes to improve your app.
3. You will get a higher user response
By allowing your beta testers give feedback without even leaving the app, you can expect to see a much higher user response rate. By making suggestions in the moment, users aren’t distracted and are more inclined to report things that they may have forgotten to include in an email or ready-made form. Your testers will be more inclined to send off a quick bug report than if they were having to collate their thoughts externally and then send them off.
4. It will give insight into your target audience
Even in the beta testing stage, you should be testing with people who you believe fall into your target audience segment. An in-app feedback tool will provide vital insight to demographics and your future audience. You can analyse the devices people use, how long they spend in the app and their activity. This information will prove vital when continuously developing personas and audience segments.
5. Testers will give higher quality feedback
In-app feedback is higher quality simply because it becomes part of the user journey and happens in the instant. This means they don’t have to break the flow as much as they would by opening an email, writing a text message or grabbing a pen and paper. Their feedback is therefore more likely to be reflective of their experience. Even better, many in-app feedback tools allow users to attach screenshots, take videos and highlight exactly what they’re referring to — meaning you spend less time deciphering comments like “the thingy button isn’t working” and more time improving your app.
