⚡ How To Ask Users For Feedback. Practical alternatives to feedback widgets, survey prompts and NPS emails ↓ ✅ Feedback widgets help teams gather feedback at scale. ✅ E.g. in-app surveys, pop-ups, hints, panels, sidebar buttons. ✅ In-app surveys typically have response rates of 15-30%. 🤔 Side “feedback” buttons often have very low response rates. 🤔 Pop-ups perform better, but always (!) come at a wrong time. ✅ Ask for feedback only once a customer succeeded or failed. ✅ E.g. confirmation pages, finished transaction, failed import. ✅ Succeed → ask for improvements, user sentiment, slowdowns. ✅ Failures → ask to submit a problem, leave email, get a reward. 🚫 Instead of NPS, ask: “How easy was it to complete your task?” 🚫 Generic widgets → low response rates, low quality feedback. ✅ Ask specific questions about a process a user just finished. ✅ Ask to choose 5 tags (e.g. good price, noisy) that describe UX. ✅ Suggest to add details, tags, severity level, images, screenshots. ✅ Start with closed-ended questions (ratings, multiple-choice). Personally, I find in-person usability sessions infinitely more insightful as we can see people completing tasks and ask for feedback directly. But: it doesn’t work at scale. On the other hand, general feedback, such as NPS score, is rarely actionable, and simple thumbs up/down aren’t very insightful. And it’s very difficult to get actionable feedback when users experience severe failures. The best way to gather feedback is to ask for help and to be helpful. Ask for very specific feedback about a very specific feature that a user has just interacted with. Suggest a way out when a user experienced failures or failed transactions. Tailor questions to their context. For example, on a product page, ask about product clarity or ease of finding information there. But keep in mind that users who engage with feedback widgets may not represent the entire user base. First visitors are unlikely to provide any meaningful feedback, and annoyed customers often exaggerate their troubles. And depending on when and how the feedback is asked, the outcome can be remarkably biased, flawed and drive to wrong conclusions. So don’t draw big conclusions from surveys alone. Getting them right is very challenging, so whenever possible, complement them with user interviews, observations and UX research. Useful resources: UX Guidelines For User-Feedback Requests, by Anna Kaley https://lnkd.in/ehK3bAKm How To Set Up In-App Feedback, by Daniela Nguyen Trong https://lnkd.in/e3pByE5W A Guide to In-app Surveys for SaaS, by Moritz Dausinger Guide: https://lnkd.in/ertVRKmv Data: https://lnkd.in/eAJHK7tT Microsurveys Database (Notion) https://lnkd.in/e9-hAH7Z #ux #research
Adam Fard
3w
Pop-ups always seem to catch me at the worst times. 😂
I love it. What is your opinion on having an "Other" option on the right where users can leave their own feedback? I often find that the feedback I want to leave is not on a pre-selected list.
Very interesting although I wouldn’t compare them but they could be one the evolution of the other. To have my 4/5 areas of improvement as data I can: - make assumptions (but I won’t easily find out what I really need) - ask for feedback similar to the one on the left (more streamlined for the open answer) I find them both very useful. Of course, our effort is to lighten as much as possible the user’s commitment to respond and encourage him in the response.
Golden advice as usual. I'm not sure when this is appropriate to mention, but I've always struggled with the lack of understanding between experience research and customer feedback. Both are absolutely essential, of course, but it's not semantics. Feedback is a different animal. And you laid it out beautifully. And may have inspired my next article topic!!
Bui Ngoc
3w
Users usually skip feedback if they find it doesn't bring value. Getting a reward after the survey is an effective way. Thank for sharing :D
Thanks a lot for the insightful post and the mention Vitaly Friedman! 🙏 I agree on the in-person usability sessions. They give you so much insights! I actually think surveys and in-person sessions go very well along together. You can use microsurveys to recruit interview candidates, validate findings from your interviews with surveys, etc.
Ameer Hamza
3w
Thank you Vitaly Friedman for consistently sharing your invaluable expertise with us. Your insights are truly enlightening.
Thanks! Any good ready-made widgets for quick in-app feedback?
Useful tips
Ah, totally forgotten: Don’t rely on growing numbers alone; data can be ambiguous and misleading, and it needs to be contextualized to be useful. For example, shorter or higher session duration doesn’t represent success. Increased traffic doesn’t represent the quality of traffic. Increased newsletter list doesn’t represent the quality of leads. And here are a few helpful resources all around surveys: How To Design Effective And Reliable Surveys https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vitalyfriedman_how-to-design-effective-and-reliable-surveys-activity-7148589421741711360-3bxe UX Research Sample Size Calculators https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vitalyfriedman_ux-design-research-activity-7164173642887606274-rEqq How To Write Effective UX Research Invite Emails, by Rosie Hoggmascall https://uxdesign.cc/6-great-examples-of-ux-research-emails-9dd7bd8ff8d5 Happy designing, everyone!