Incentivising Users To Give Feedback

We know now that user feedback is essential when building web experiences that people will use. We know we can conduct user testing sessions, use analytics tools and do surveys. But what I am conscious of is measuring and getting feedback without spamming the user — that’s not the aim here.

Test the experience

Bit of a no-brainer, but I always consider what the user experience is when giving feedback. Essentially “if I was in your position, how would I feel?”.

Choose the right feedback tools

I class tools in two groups — visible and invisible. Visible would be a survey, invisible would be your Google Analytics.

For visible feedback tools, you have to make giving feedback fun, otherwise, you may not getting the most comprehensive feedback you can. I’ve been testing out Temper.io, where a users chooses a red, amber or green smiley face to answer a very short set question. So a user reads the question and clicks a face — how simple is that?!

Use Temper.io to add a little enjoyment to gaining feedback

Think about what you are getting out of it

The data you collect has to be usable, or rather, you have to be able to use the data your collecting. That has a lot to do with asking the right questions at the beginning, such as:

• Why are people not getting to page X?
• Why are we losing people in the checkout process?
• Why are people not downloading the free ebook?

So the answers we seek to gain could possibly be:

• Page X isn’t visible enough
• We are forcing them to login
• The copy doesn’t provide benefits to the user

Thinking about how to answer the question will demonstrate what data you need to collect.

Say thank you

When you’re asking for feedback, what you’re really asking for a user to volunteer their time to help make your product better. Be gracious, say thank you. Maybe offer them a discount at your store, or send them a funny thank you message (with lolcatz). I’ve found that pizza works for user testing sessions!