What are surveys?
Surveys are a tool to help collect data from users based on a significant sample to make decisions about the product and is mainly quantitative in nature. It will have a number of questions with structured answers to help understand opinion. They can be both online and offline, but collection and analysis of the survey is more easier online than it is offline.
How does it help PMs?
It helps in getting quantitative data to help in testing hypotheses, and help in understanding users’ preferences in subjective areas. It can also be used to understand what users like and dislike about a product and which features the users like the most, and how likely they are to recommend the product to others.
An example can be a product for ed tech where you are helping parents understand the progress of their child through an app.
The questions could be about what devices they use, whether they have a stable internet connection and the best mode for them to use the app. This will help in identifying which platform you need to build the product for.
Another set of questions could be on how often they check their kid’s progress in schools, their homework, and how involved they want to be in tracking the progress of their kid’s education.
When can we conduct surveys?
Surveys can be conducted in several stages:
- 0 to 1 phase, where in we can test the idea, the utility and see if the app will work. We must be careful here since users might be enthusiastic about saying they’ll use the app or product, but might not actually end up doing so.
- 1 to N stage: Feedback of the app - like Uber’s rating of the ride, Swiggy’s delivery rating and so on
Types of surveys
- Market Research - pricing, customer retention
- Customer satisfaction surveys - how to improve done over call or emails
- Net Promoter Score - used to understand if users would recommend your app or product to someone.