How to Get Useful User Feedback

Michele Hansen

Co-Founder @Geocodio. Co-Organizer DC #JTBD Meetup. Wife of @MathiasHansen. Previously product @themotleyfool @engagedc

Arlington, VA

How can you get people to say useful things to you? Even without a huge team or a ton of time, you can get very useful information.

Getting useful feedback is all about how you act. Set up an environment where they feel comfortable telling you about their pain. Allow them to be open with you.

If your user says the name of your product wrong, just go with it! Defending or explaining stops the flow of information.

How? Half-hour interviews once or twice a week learning about your users' pain points in their overall process. You can do this with an existing customer, potential customer, or a formal customer.

Neilson says you can get 85% of feedback from just 5 interviews.

You can also directly observe the person using your product. Ask to share screens with your users as they talk through looking at whatever you wnt feedback on, like a landing page, or a part of your product. You can do this step with either existing or potential customers.

Here are some great questions to ask when a user is looking at a page:

• Take a look at this page and tell me what you're looking at. What do you think this product does?
• Looking at ${button}, what do you think will happen if you click it?
• Is that what you expected would happen?
• What would your next step be?

To get someone talking, wait an uncomfortable amount of time to create space for them to talk more.