Feedback and Iteration make difference in App Development

“Empathizing with your customers should always be in the spotlight when you want your product to be successful”. Above mentioned is our key advice to our clients who are aiming at providing the best customer experience. Hello, I am Sanjay Kidecha, and welcome back to our mobile app development process series. I will be continuing with the eleventh blog of the series. If you have missed our previous blogs, please click the link in the index given below.

A Guide on Lean Canvas Model;
How to Prepare a Product Requirement Document and its importance;
Importance of Wireframe in Product development;
A complete guide on selection of technology stack for startups;
How prototyping helps businesses?
A handbook to select development company for startups;
A detailed guide on project management & delivery milestones;
Role of Quality assurance in product development;
Importance of User testing;
Know where you should deploy your project?
How Feedback and product iteration makes a difference in product development?
What is the variation in the cost? What factors affect the variation?
Why is a Good design the ultimate thing in the project?

An essential aspect of empathizing with your customers is to learn about their stories. The story that tells you about how they feel after interacting with your application. Did they have a seamless experience? How much do they trust your application over others? You can capture all these valuable insights if you start collecting responsible feedback from your trusted customers.

Feedbacks are crucial. The reason being, it lets you know that there is always room for improvement. Also, it is taxing to release a “perfect” product in the first go ever. Achieving perfection is a gradual and continuous process. By collecting the feedback, you can listen to the user’s concerns and iterate the application accordingly. This continuous iteration is the stepping stone towards a triumphant journey.

To prove my point, let me cite a realistic approach adopted by many big companies. You would have observed that Apple releases new versions every 1-4 months. They believe in spending sufficient time reviewing the application’s feedback and iterating it to release a satisfactory version. The same theory applies to Facebook, Instagram, and many other go-to applications lying on your mobile phones.

These companies, including many others, have managed to leverage the best of the collected insights. They choose to iterate the product rather than running behind perfection.

Hence, it is better to learn about the flaws, accept them, rework, and release frequent changes. It would help if you made yourself feel comfortable with small changes that improve the application’s quality.

User feedback collection and iteration go hand in hand. You closely observe the customer interaction, identify any negative spots, and work upon it.

To convince you more about the process, let me highlight the benefits of exercising customer feedback collection.

You get to know which aspects need improvement:

When you think that you are delivering it right, you receive feedback that notifies a major drawback, which could have ruined the brand reputation. You would have given a feature/functionality, hundreds of thoughts, but, yet, you may encounter imperfections. And this is why you need to pay attention to the feedback received from the customers.

Customers highlight their pain points, which you might not have even thought. You work upon these pain points, meet the customer’s expectations, and evolve with time.

Acknowledging feedbacks engages the customer:

You aim to satisfy every customer using your application. By addressing their feedback and making necessary changes makes them feel valued and appreciated. It shows that you trust their loyalty and sets up a connection with them. You satisfy their cravings, and they start having positive connotations with the application. And in return, the more you engage with them, the number of sales you can expect.

You can generate referrals and recommendations:

By collecting the feedback, you are asking your customers about their genuine opinion. These feedbacks help you shape your business and make the customers feel attached to the company. If you value them, you can expect value in return. These happy faces will be your marketing channel who would merrily spread the word about you.

The customers will advertise your product, which will level up your baseline. And as you know, word of mouth marketing still tops the list of marketing channels.

Lets you build brand loyalty and reduces the bounce rate:

The greatest power lies in listening to the honest feedback received from your customers. You know your aim to satisfy them, which in a way will help you build loyal customers. These customers will walk an extra mile in trusting your brand and refer it to the others.

Since you have addressed all the major concerns, you are near to perfection. And a well-structured and articulated application will have very little to negligible bounce rate.

Allows you to make more data-driven decisions:

By entertaining the feedback for mobile app development and iterating the app accordingly, you engage new and more customers. You can study the factors/functionalities that delighted them more, besides anything else in the app.

You will understand their needs and thereby can take more defined, strategized, and data-driven decisions.

You can improve customer experience and retention.

Many of you must be wondering about how to iterate a mobile app? Well, by engaging the customers over feedback, you can capture meaningful insights. These insights can be used to iterate the application. The customers giving feedbacks also thrive with you.

By continuously reviewing their feedback, you will know which areas in your application need improvement and which other areas perform their best.

You would be surprised to know that even a slightest improvement in the UX can expedite your sales to $823 million in 3 years. Hence, by slowing and gradually improving upon every aspect of your application helps you enhance customer engagement. You need to proactively participate with them, improve the customer experience, and thereby retain maximum customers.

You create a reference source for other customers:

It is a human tendency to read and engage with real customers’ feedback over shopping platforms. Similarly, an opinion shared by a fellow customer is trusted more, over every other form of marketing.

Hence, by asking your existing users for feedback, you create a reference information base for other outside customers. This is the source of information that they will really trust before having access to your application.

So what are the things that you can cover using the customer’s feedback?

You remain at the top of everything if you utilize customers’ feedback effectively. It gives you an upper hand over your competitors, and it makes it easy for you to sell your application. I have mentioned a few important changes that you can cover by utilizing the customer’s feedback.

You can improve upon your application:

Some corners might have been overlooked by the mobile app development company while developing your app. However, your loyal customers’ having a hawk eye catches the corner and leaves feedback.

You can assess how a customer is moving around in the application; you can implement the changes accordingly.

You can offer customized experience:

The key to a successful business is to offer a tailor-made experience to the customers. You must have observed how a particular eCommerce store sends you a push notification about your favorite product replenishment. Hence, by collecting feedback, you can actually customize the business offerings and show the audience what they want.

You can know how a customer’s find you:

Multiple tools help you in analyzing where your customers are coming from. But an easy and effective way is to invest in feedback research. Feedbacks let you know whether your customer’s have directly jumped on to your website or did they Google search about your offerings. By learning about the source, you can define your marketing campaigning strategy.

You can create meaningful content and validate your buyer’s persona.

It goes without saying, “Content” is the King. It is the driving force behind sales and search engine ranks. Feedback analysis makes you aware of the type of content your readers want to read. This analysis helps you in crafting content that entertains your readers and engages them over the application. Also, if you focus on creating articulated content, you can have better and improved search engine rankings.

This being said, if you collect feedback at the initial stages of release, you have a chance to validate your buyer’s persona.

Let me explain to you how? Suppose you have developed a book reading application for kids. You have iterated every feature considering that your target audience will be of a specific age group only. However, when you conduct a survey, you get to know that parents are the ones who also handle the application, which means your assumptions fall inaccurate. The application you have created will look less promising, and you would have to iterate the application again.

You can define your business niche and motivate the team:

It may tempt you to sell or release hundreds of products/services through your application. However, you can not afford to go and experiment with it. Feedbacks keep you focused and let you know which marketplace does your app really fits in. You can pick up your business niche and start understanding the audience.

Additionally, positive feedback and compliments can motivate the team and encourage them to perform better.

Hence, we can say, feedback collection and iteration in mobile app development is crucial in the entire app development process.

How to collect feedback for your mobile application?

You have plenty of options to choose from for getting feedback for your mobile app. Utilizing each of the methods effectively will help you in making actionable change.

Customer feedback survey form:

The aim of exercising feedback should not be to collect answers but to identify your audience’s satisfaction level and to iterate the application accordingly. This can become quite taxing because not every user is willing to fill up the survey.

To ensure that all the users willingly take up the survey, you need to decide on the smart questions that your feedback should include. Go for short sliders because people no longer opt for long surveys. Make a list of subjects you want to cover in your survey, frame your questions, and decide on the strategy.

While framing the survey, always remember to ask questions that help you in achieving your goal. It should be open-ended and clear. You should ask less, but with clarity and straightforwardness. Ensure that each question takes you a step closer to your end goal. You can offer them an incentive to engage with you over the survey. Another way to rule over feedback surveys is to identify your customer’s touchpoints.

You can take the assistance of online tools to frame and record your survey responses. Few tools to name here are Gizmo, Qualtrics, Survey King, Qualaroo.

Tip: You have only 8 seconds to convince your users to take up the survey. Hence, before they lose their interest and get diverted, create a good and engaging feedback survey.

Utilize social media platforms:

It is estimated that around 3.6 billion people use social media worldwide ( as of July ’20). This number will project upwards in the coming years. Hence consider utilizing social media campaigns as a golden opportunity for collecting feedback.

You can conduct a quick poll or ask service related questions to which people will happily engage. I assure you that you can receive natural engagement over social media if you study the user behavior rightly.

Conduct in-app surveys:

In-app surveys help you identify a broken line in the application. You first need to identify the user-base who would be eligible for the survey and frame a survey form accordingly. In-app surveys are highly effective in determining the exact needs of the customers. Since the user is already on the app, you can ask them relevant questions and collect the insights.

Customer calls:

Phone calls get you connected with the user in real-time. You can actually sense how a user is feeling about the product and what they expect from you. Their voice tone and way of talking confirms a lot about their experience.

Also, healthy conversations make the users proactively participate in the survey.

You can initiate feedback collection in multiple ways, then the ones mentioned above. However, how you handle each of the feedback is more important.

I want to refer to some other methods of collecting feedback.

Email feedback survey;
Usability tests;
Customer interviews;
Analytics analyzing;
Live chat session;
Heatmap tools;
Monitor support requests;
Instant feedback at checkout.

Takeaway:

Your feedback form should not be referred to like one another spam message. You should project it through the right channels and optimize it for getting a higher response.

I would now like to answer to a meaningful and relevant question,

Is feedback the same as Review? Or is there a difference?

Feedback and review are commonly mistaken to be the same. But let me tell you, both of these terms are completely different. You receive a review of a specific product you sell. In comparison, you receive feedback for the services/application UX irrespective of the sale, by a customer.

Feedbacks are like a report card that lets you know where you should improve and what you should ignore from a user’s perspective.

Feedback includes everything about customer service experience from the packaging/work quality/ professionalism/ repeat purchase and more.

So, now you know that feedback rings an alarm and keeps you focused. It gives you a visionary outlook of the features and the functionalities you need to improve/include in your application. This analysis further leads you to application iteration. Iteration for mobile app design and development shows how potentially you have utilized the customer’s feedback.

But, I have something important to share with you before you initiate the iteration of the application.

Tip 1: Do not entertain every Feature suggestion feedback:

You receive feature suggestions as feedback probably because you have framed your feedback question in that manner. Therefore, form feedback questions in a way that helps you manage the application.

Keep feature suggestion questions for the last. Even if you receive one, do not think that you are lagging. You can keep the suggestion in your collection and work upon it when it’s the right time.

Every passionate application user wishes to provide a constructive feature suggestion that meets their convenience. However, the decision is upon you, which one should you focus on and when.

Tip 2: Filter out user’s feedback written on someone else’s behalf:

An important tip to successful iteration is to consider the feedback given by the user himself/herself. Hence, be cautious when you spread out the feedback form. It would be better to know beforehand if the user is legit and speaking on their behalf. You should not listen to anything else but their own experience.

Tip 3: Analyse the longevity of every iteration you do:

During the feedback collection process, you would have sent hundreds of survey forms to your loyal customers. And in return, you would have received hundreds of feedback. But does it mean that you should invest hefty amounts behind each iteration?

Well, in my opinion, iteration too should be strategized; otherwise, the entire process will break your bank. You should know in advance how much you can afford and how much your development partner/ hired mobile app developers would charge for functionality iteration. You need to validate your opinion before you put it forward in the iteration process.

Tip 4: Go for small releases and learn to experiment:

It is difficult for anyone to release a successful product at the first go. Iteration is a slow and evolving process. With every feedback you receive, you are improving the overall experience for the user. However, it is not a sprint.

You should make yourself comfortable with the small, frequent releases. Also, you should not copy someone else’s situation into yours. You need to analyze if the iteration idea works for your benefit. Hence, it is advisable to make a slow and steady movement in the iteration journey.

Conclusion:

In the end, I would like to say; you can find customer feedback anywhere. You just need the right eye to analyze if this feedback falls under your application’s goal. Once you start receiving insights, inputs from the user about the product/app/service, you can empower the app with improved user experience.

The feedback collection can serve as a guide that lets you know where and when to make necessary app adjustments.

Your feedback form should sound as specific as you can. It should also cover every single detailed question for which you need an answer from your audience. The key aspect of feedback collection is, you make your users feel that they are being listed. It shows that you are up for any changes that work best in their favor.

Hence, stop waiting for the right time; instead, start asking your customers for genuine feedback that will contribute to making the brand’s image.

We are moving towards the end of the mobile app development process series. In the next article, I will discuss factors affecting cost variation.