Obtaining MVP Feedback from Users

The term minimum viable product (MVP) is one that we are all familiar with. What we are not as familiar with is what exactly this term means. An MVP is the least amount of functionality a product can have, while still successfully performing its expected task. We have examined this in greater detail in our previous article - "A Practical Guide to Validating Product Ideas with MVPs". As we discussed, MVPs help organisations to get to the market faster. One reason for that is to collect feedback from actual users, before investing and developing the product even further. To facilitate this, MVPs must have enough features to be useful to those early adopters, and develop those features enough that not all feedback will be just about how difficult those features are to use.

Collecting feedback on your MVP

Once your MVP has hit the market, and hopefully been downloaded by many many users from your target market, the next step is to gather feedback from the users. But for this feedback to be useful it has to be gathered in a structured manner, that should be planned out from the start.

Different types of MVPCF

There are multiple methods of collecting user feedback. Depending on your needs, you may choose one or more of these methods.

Inbuilt feedback gathering

A great method to gather planned feedback is to build it in your app itself. If you can track what functions are used by your target market, where they spend time, and where, if anywhere, they abandon a task in progress, you can use this data to improve your product. Just make sure that any feedback you gather is above the board, anonymous, and also agreed to by the users.

Sign up questionnaires

As a part of the onboarding experience, send clients a short, easy to answer set of prepared questions. This can include things like:

• Where did you hear about our product?
• Why made you choose our product?
• What tasks are you hoping to complete?
• Have you used similar products before this?

Make sure that you provide multiple answers that are easy to pick up and don't make people type out long answers. If you really want people to answer you that is.

Customer satisfaction survey

Another proven method of collecting feedback is through customer satisfaction (CSAT) Surveys. These can be given after a few days or weeks or usage. To motivate customers to answer you should try to incentivise them, perhaps with a free monthly subscription to your product? These surveys are also easy on customers as questions are generally engineered to be answered on a scale of 1 - 10.

Post usage questionnaires

These can help you gather some pointed feedback from clients, both good and bad, about your product. Expect to see mostly negative feedback though, as clients with problems are more likely to let you know about it, hopefully rather than drop your product altogether. While you should do everything you can to provide scale questions, or multiple answer questions, you must also include open ended questions such as

• What other features would they like to see?
• What they loved or hated about your product?
• What was their main goal in using this product?
• Were they able to achieve their goal? (follow up with if not why)

Why do we need MVPCF?

Reaching out and asking questions from actual users helps you out in multiple ways. It helps users to feel valued, and build a better relationship with your brand, especially if they see you incorporating their feedback in later versions of your product. But more than that, it helps you to find really great ideas and ways to improve your product that you and your team may never even have thought of.

Closing words

Using your MVP to get really good feedback from clients is a great way to find out how relevant your product is, and finding new ways of improving your product. You can garner this feedback through multiple methods, while you can certainly reach out to clients through many different ways, it's as important to not badger them with a load of emails and questionnaires. Keep it simple, keep it short, and make sure they are incentivised to answer.