User feedback is a vital part of any mobile app development process that many people overlook or take for granted. The problem with user feedback, however, always seems to be either having too much user feedback or not enough, which is why it’s extremely important to know the best and most effective ways to collect user feedback. And how do you use it effectively? Once you have it, you’ll want to check out our detailed six-chapter guide to powerful feedback analysis.

Below, we’ve gathered some of the best practices to gather user feedback based on our experiences as well as various studies to help you save time, money, and effort.

Best Practices to Gather User Feedback

Ask The Right Questions

A major part of getting valuable feedback is defining your objectives and knowing what questions to ask your users. It’s not always a good idea to just let your users roam aimlessly through your app and have them provide you with random feedback because you might end up finding that most of it is useless and not what you’re looking for. Make sure that your questions are clear, to the point, and are as specific as possible about what you need to know. If you’re looking for something specific, you need to explicitly ask your users about it.

You also want to utilize the right type of questions depending on your needs, like numerical ratings, multiple choice answers, or open-ended text fields. Each of these might be more useful for a specific kind of feedback that you’re looking for. For example, if you want to know about how good your user experience is, you might have your users rate it on a scale from 1 to 10 so that you have a general consensus, and then give them the option to leave any comments if they’d like to. Also, users are more likely to answer an NPS question or a survey than an open-ended question, so you need to choose wisely.

Make sure to also check out What to Ask Your Beta Testers to Get Better Feedback for more information about the different types of questions you should be asking during beta testing for better user feedback.

At The Right Time

Aside from asking the right questions, you need to make sure to ask them at the right time to get the most value. The best thing is to trigger your app to prompt for user feedback about a specific action or flow using an in-app tool or SDK, which allows you to target users at the right time.

For example, to get the best mobile app ratings, it’s recommended that you only ask users to rate your app after they’ve been using the mobile app for a few weeks because they’ll be more familiar with it and they are at the best point of the app experience that they can possibly have. A good case practice for this is how Tinder immediately asks users to rate the app once you’ve matched with someone because that’s when they’re most likely to give a good rating and review.

Target Your Users

While feedback in general is good, some feedback might not be useful. This is why it is important to understand your users or testers who are submitting feedback and target the ones who will give you feedback that will be most relevant to what you’re looking for.

“For a while our marketing team worked really hard to develop who the main demographics of Kik users were before we actually started figuring out who do we want in [the Kik beta program].

As we worked with some of these users, we started to realize that some of them were more power users than the average user. So they volunteered for this because they love our product more than the average user or they use our product more than the average user.

Their opinion is super valuable and you get great insights, but you also have to understand that when you’re testing your products that you might also want to go to a different person in your beta community or do a user test with someone that’s new to your app to see if the opinions are still the same as your power users.

Get to know the users you add to your beta program. If you are going to build and iterate on products with their feedback in mind you need to understand who they are and if they represent your target audience.” Ashton Rankin, Kik Product Manager

Utilize Your Channels

In this time and age, there is definitely no shortage of social networks and communication channels so it would seem obvious that you should utilize those channels as much as you can to communicate with your users. Now, of course, depending on your industry, your users will exist in different places. That’s why you need to understand where they are and be present in those places with open communication channels to receive their feedback.

Some of the communication channels that you can consider include:

Social media platforms

Support tools

Emails and contact forms

Product reviews

Forums and communitites

User interviews

Iterative Feedback

A great way to ensure more feedback is by creating a feedback loop. When users or testers provide you with useful feedback and you end up applying it, don’t let this be the end of it. Get back to them, inform them about the changes you have made, and ask them for further feedback.

This method has two benefits. First, you will have a higher chance of getting immediate feedback from those users, whether the changes you made have been satisfactory and lived up to their expectations or if they didn’t. These users might point out things that you would have never noticed. Another benefit of creating a feedback loop is building a strong relationship with your users and turning them into advocates and promoters for your product, as it gives them a sense of being heard. Not only is their feedback taken into consideration and applied, but they have a say in how the app’s user experiences are shaped, which would also encourage them to participate more and send more feedback in the future.

In-App User Feedback

Speaking of in-app user feedback tools, your app is definitely the best place to collect feedback as you don’t want to interrupt your user’s experience by having them leave the app to go to a website or to send an email. In-app user feedback tools allow you to strategically obtain user feedback through different methods by requesting it right there on the spot. This sort of feedback is specifically great because it’s coming from users who are already using your mobile app and the feedback you receive is based on their actual real-world usage.

Using our in-app user feedback tool has been proven to result in up to 80% less negative reviews for mobile apps, as you provide a private channel for users to leave their feedback, including negative comments, instead of on the app stores.

In-App Chats

On many apps and websites, you might notice a chat icon in the bottom corner. This allows your users to have a chat with you and gives you the opportunity to hear from them as well as have a back and forth to ask them for any further inquiries or clarification.

In-app chats also allow you to trigger specific and customized messages to users. Targeted messages tend to get higher engagement and conversion rates.

Shake-to-Send User Feedback

Instabug’s in-app feedback SDK provides developers with the option to allow users to submit feedback simply by shaking their phones. This is the best way to have as little friction for the user as possible to prompt or trigger a feedback form. This allows users to submit feedback in the easiest way possible, allowing them to provide you with more feedback.

We found that implementing our in-app user feedback tool can result in a 750% increase in user response. That’s more data you can use to improve your app, better chances of identifying problems, and since you’re using a third-party bug reporting tool, you have more time to fix errors.

In-App Surveys

In-app surveys make it easier and more likely that users will reply to your questions. With more responses, you’ll gain more insights to enhance your app and better understand your users and their behavior, make your app more engaging, and understand what improvements your users would like to see. When you integrate an SDK for in-app surveys to your app, you’ll be able to create and deploy surveys right away. And whenever you want to edit your survey, the adjustments update instantly in your app, with no need to release a brand new version.

Feature Requests

Adding an option for users to submit feature requests gives you a single channel where all your users’ ideas are collected from inside your app. You can add your ideas to the list and let your users vote for them to gauge the popularity of items in your product roadmap. This allows you to give your users a voice, understand their needs, and determine their most common pain points. You can see the top voted ideas, measure the urgency of each feature and prioritize your backlog.

How can Instabug help?

Instabug is the top beta testing tool for bug reporting and user feedback in mobile apps. It provides the most useful metadata on the market, exceptional customer support, and an in-app communication channel to chat with your beta testers.

Bug and Crash Reporting

With each report, you automatically receive comprehensive data to help fix issues faster, including steps to reproduce errors, network request and console logs, and environment details. For bug reporting, your beta testers can also send screen recordings and annotatable screenshots to provide further context.

In-App Surveys and Feature Request Management

Collect user feedback from your beta testers right inside your app to minimize interruptions and boost participation rates. Get powerful insights to enhance your product roadmap with surveys that you can target to specific tester segments and feature request voting to understand user pain points and desires.