Sometimes, even without realizing it, consumers can significantly influence product development. Remember that review you wrote, complaining about the missing features or inconvenient UX decisions? It could have been snatched during the brand’s market research, aimed at improving products.
Additionally, competitors or upcoming products can also learn a lot from users’ feedback when shaping their creations. In this article, we observe how customers, either consciously or not, influence product development.
Consumers are not bystanders
Overlooking consumers’ preferences or even demands is a giant obstacle in product development and success. Of course, prioritizing feature development is crucial, but all your decisions should rely on data from customer and competitor analysis.
If one company fails to address users’ needs, the diverse market makes it easy to make the switch to competitors. Thus, companies have a solid incentive for aiming for a more co-design process, instead of crafting items without direct feedback from their users.
So, consumers have the power to change and influence, and their opinions can even delay product releases. For example, video games go through multiple stages of testing, such as crowdsourced beta testing, to prepare for the official release. With many digital products, similar testing opportunities are available. For example, people can even get paid to take surveys on the effectiveness or attractiveness of various products. These rewarding options also relate to joining focus groups or market research.
How can companies involve consumers more?
People are generally more inclined to leave bad reviews when they are dissatisfied with the service. Thus, it can be difficult to understand both aspects: the room for improvement, and which aspects of your app are worth retaining and polishing. To see the whole picture, multiple strategies can work:
Encourage user reviews
If you already offer an application or product, try to encourage your users to share their opinions. You can do so in several ways:
- Show a pop-up message in the application, urging users to rate it and provide a few sentences on their experiences.
- After a purchase, send email messages to customers urging them to leave a comment on the product.
- If consumers ignore both of these options, try to tempt users with rewards. It could be an extended time of the premium plan or freebies for their next purchase.
- In some cases, platforms boost customer reviews by introducing in-platform currencies. By leaving reviews, people can pay for their future purchases (like on Shein) or raise their credibility on the platform (such as on Steam).
Partner with get-paid-to services
Get-paid-to platforms focus on providing their users with brief and simple tasks and offering rewards for their completion. Businesses can consider partnering with these services to extend their reach. For example, you can provide surveys or product testing opportunities. Furthermore, GPT sites also allow you to specify your target audience, meaning only the people you view as your target clients will complete your research.
Public reviews and communities
You can also gain valuable insights into your products by visiting public review sites and communities. Additionally, don’t forget content creators who might do more extensive reviews on your products. If a creator is also a specialist in a related field (for example, a project manager reviewing a project management software), their opinion could have a bit more sway.
Organize focus groups
Focus groups are not a thing of the past: they still hold value during product development. Of course, you can organize physical events, inviting people to a controlled space for their feedback. However, online focus groups are also an option, especially if you’re targeting a more global market. Then, you can gather a more diverse group of judges to evaluate and analyze your product ideas.
Determining the value of feedback
Gathering feedback and user reviews, but making decisions regarding your product and its future takes a little more. For example, specific changes can face technical difficulties or be too resource-draining, meaning you might consider a different approach. In this instance, you could take user feedback for some SEO articles in your brand’s blog.
In other cases, one opinion cannot shape your product: you need as much feedback as possible to determine whether a particular development move is the right call. Thus, you need to synthesize and categorize the consumer feedback, rate their urgency, and the time necessary to complete them. Furthermore, consider the impact on current customers and the benefits it will bring in terms of conversion. In other words, will the changes motivate people to buy your product more?
Conclusion
Consumers have a role to play when it comes to the products they use. Repeated complaints about specific design, structure, or functionality choices should trigger a response from brands. If not, companies risk losing their current clientele and struggling to acquire new users. Thus, brands should be responsive to users’ feedback, and even better if they actively attempt to gain it. After all, given the number of similar products available, customer loyalty is a fickle matter.
