

13,402 unhappy users and no lessons learned–so we built this - thomaspun
https://medium.com/@polljoy/13-402-unhappy-users-and-no-lessons-learned-so-we-built-this-a9653ce4be4e

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splitforce
Qualitative data is OK, but without a really strong understanding of social
theory and stuff like desirability bias there's a big risk of not asking the
right questions and making misinformed decisions.

One way we've found to limit this risk is by supplementing hypotheses
developed through qualitative research with a quantitative approach.

So, ask users what they like/dislike about an experience to formulate an idea
of what changes to your app may better the experience, BUT make sure to then
TEST those changes using a rigorous method (i.e.: experimentation or A/B
testing) to validate that the feedback you're hearing is not just noise...

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hkyeti
Agree on the premise. I think theres a spectrum of questions, from those that
work great in short simple polls:

"What's frustrating you most right now? Level is boring, level is too
difficult, loading time is too slow etc

vs ones that require detail framing and context - for example How would you
approach building your army.

The former can work very well, but you need to be careful to get good results
out of those less concrete with many factors at play.

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robbertj
As long as the message is nog pushed in people's faces and they can
voluntarily give their input this could be interesting for us.

We need to ask our users for which stocks they like to trade in our gamified
trading app. And it could also help us learn more about our users (have they
trade before? Where?).

You need to know very specifically what you want to find out.

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iosnoob
Good to see real numbers in these sort of articles..

But let’s face it - users are never going to tell you what they need...or what
you should build.

Shouldn’t they have spent more time building a great product first - before
launching it? Those retention numbers to me say the product wasn’t working.

I doubt Apple asked any users for input when coming up with the iPhone.

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hkyeti
Well we tried hard to build a great app, going through lots of mockups, user
testing, research into how grandparents currently communicate with remote
relatives etc.. and genuinely thought it could work based on the feedback.

Maybe there was never a product market fit in the first place, but the early
feedback was that there was.

But maybe the product wasn't executed well and that's why it failed. Or there
was an audience but it was far too niche.

That's the point, we just didn't even know why it failed.

We wouldn't use it to ask the users what to build necessarily (thought there
are use cases for that) but more understanding why they DON'T like it...

even that would have given us a clear idea of what to change first and ignore
the rest...

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JoeAltmaier
Sometimes its as simple as getting lost the 1st time into the app - what
button do I press next?

"Onboarding" is critical, and every single step not only Can lose customers
but Will lose a certain percentage. Too many steps and your failure rate is
compounded. Even losing 10% at each step means losing half after 6 steps.

In an app that requires at least 2 people to work (I work on one of those for
a living), I'd guess that the 1st person tries it, finds nobody else online to
interact with, and gives up instantly. We solve that by putting an Invite
feature prominently in our onboard process. New users connect with someone
almost immediately.

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hkyeti
Hey Joe agree about onboarding..

Actually our flow included invite by SMS, email etc really early on and was
pretty simple (we did a bunch of early usability testing)...but still we got
very little connect rate, less than 10% of users. Never really figured out the
main reason why, just speculation.

I'd be curious what you are seeing in your case... maybe we could have
improved it in other ways.

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JoeAltmaier
Actually we get phenomenal conversion. But we vet our customers (Enterprise)
and they're already 'converted' when their boss says "We're trying this
collaboration tool" so its fish-in-a-barrel.

I work at Sococo. You can try a trial - its free - and see how it works better
than I can describe :)

~~~
hkyeti
Thanks Joe - I guess when it's top down it's going to get pretty good
conversion rates.. appreciate the share :)

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wmock
Looking at the site it’s basically using popups in your app or website and we
all know how much we like them.

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hoi
We built something similar for a photo app and our fashion app. Worked great
to get details such as what types of content people were looking for. We also
headed towards a slightly different path. We had simple polls, but also built
in 1 to 1 communications. Essentially like a built in messaging service on top
of the polls. Never pushed it to anyone else and only ever used it for our own
apps.

~~~
hkyeti
That's pretty cool, especially the 1 to 1 communications.

We're thinking about adding that reply and inbox so you can keep it on the
conversation going and help users out with problem or ask for more info..

I think Intercom just added something like that for iOS too..

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rgdlee98
So I checked out the code on github and and it looks pretty simple, especially
the integration part. But to integrate requires developers to clone the codes
in our projects. Might be a hassle if updates and fixes roll out after the
integration.

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hkyeti
Hey - parts of the updates will be done on our server side, so no extra effort
for you guys.

For the SDK we’ll only push out new versions with major updates (bunch of new
stuff planned!). We’ll keep the community updated and keep backward
compatibility. We are also developers and know the pain..

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hkyeti
Hey Simon here, one of the co-founders.. Antony and I would love your
feedback, especially the areas for improvement

direct link: [https://polljoy.com](https://polljoy.com)

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epaga
At the very least, make the popups non-modal and optional.

There is literally NOTHING I hate more in an app than intrusive modal popups
stopping me from getting done what I actually WANT to get done. Unless I
_really_ love the app otherwise, they usually generate an urge to insta-delete
the app.

~~~
hkyeti
Yup, the polls default to optional and if you're a game dev you can give some
coins or virtual currency to sweeten the deal for the players.

Badly written multiple choice polls can get as low as a 10% response rate, but
well written one (which are optional) can get as high as 70%- to the user it
can be fun if written well.

What we're learning is that length (brevity is king) plays a bit part of it,
as well as speed to load the question.. we had to change our loading order to
get better response rates for our users.

Also we recommend to put questions at the points that makes sense... eg while
waiting for a game level to load, or after a big activity is complete and it's
a natural break point...

Other point is - we typically recommend questions only go to a small subset of
the audience - enough to answer the question you're trying to ask. So most
users never see a question...

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beato
I could have used the type of feedback you're talking about at my failed
startup. We found it very difficult to get an honest answer about why we had
no traction. Keen to see where this goes.

~~~
hkyeti
Yeah, know the feeling. All the early feedback seemed to be really positive
talking one on one to people but then in reality people votes with their feets
and never returned.

It's funny, we're getting a lot of really useful feedback ourselves (we're a
customer of it ourselves) - why they are interested, where they drop out etc

eg- is it pricing, technical issue, perceived lack of value etc

also why they deploy and what value they see out of it

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chiwaili
I like the idea but then the challenge becomes how do i know what questions to
ask?

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dowye
How do you avoid the bias of people saying one thing but doing another? I’m
sceptical.

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hkyeti
Good question but same thing goes for focus groups but they have a lot of
value - if run well.

There is skill to asking questions that are not leading and can deliver useful
findings.

Something like this is just a tool - whether it helps or hinders is up to the
person using it after all.

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geekwannabe
brilliant. such a head-slapper idea!

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hkyeti
Thanks, we actually looked for a tool like this at the time.. couldn't find
something that fit (lots on the web but nothing really for mobile that we
could customize etc)

