Great apps are never finished. Instead, they constantly evolve and adapt to the needs of the people who use them. Aligning the features that your app offers with the real-world interests and requirements of your target audience is essential to keeping it relevant and ensuring it’s successful over the long term. Of course, this is far easier said than done.
Improving your app over time is certainly a noble objective to have at the heart of your development efforts. However, taking shots in the dark in terms of the features you choose to deliver is unlikely to satisfy all of your users. In fact, it could even alienate the most important and profitable members of your audience by missing the mark and muddying the perceived value of your app in their eyes.
Instead of simply guessing what might matter to your users, you should aim to affirm what their interests actually are through user feedback. By leveraging a powerful user feedback-based development loop, you can ensure your goals and milestones always match those of the people your app is intended to serve. Here are a few ways that you can go about improving your app with plenty of user feedback.
Build surveys into your software for more user feedback
Surveys are an incredibly powerful option for development teams of all types to take advantage of. By pushing surveys out to your app’s users, you can quickly get to the bottom of deep-rooted design flaws and even find promising new features to develop that are guaranteed to be a hit with your audience. In-app surveys effectively open the floodgates for actionable customer data to pour in, allowing you and your team to turn what your users are actually telling you into real-world objectives and milestones to be met.
In-app surveys show up for customers as they go about using your app. These surveys are designed to be a seamless part of the customer journey and general user experience, making them less conspicuous and invasive than external alternatives. In-app surveys are essentially designed to be as painless as possible for users to complete, upping your chances of receiving priceless intel about bettering your app from the very same people who use it the most.
Leverage remote user testing techniques
The usefulness of allowing users to test your product’s design and features before it launches in full is impossible to deny. Users can help guide your team to the right feature set and keep your project from pursuing the wrong interests if they’re able to get their hands on it and give it a try. However, gathering members of your target audience to test out your product in person can be more than a minor nuisance—it can often be impossible. Given the costs and scheduling constraints associated with conducting regular user testing sessions, it should come as little surprise that more cost-effective, convenient approaches leveraging remote user data have grown immensely in popularity.
Remote user testing works by pulling in data from users as they interact with your product. For apps, this is a great way to learn what problems are currently being solved for your users and what they think of the product overall. Improving usability and navigation of your app becomes much simpler through the use of such remote testing, all while avoiding the overhead associated with traditional testing strategies.
Simplify your design
Simplicity can serve a higher purpose in app design by allowing for the best features on offer to shine through. As users interact with your app and attempt to accomplish certain things with it, the last thing you would want them to experience is frustration with its inherent complexity. Providing users with an app that creates as short a path to achieving their goals as possible is especially important. Unnecessary functionality not only hinders users from getting things done, but also impedes your development team. Developers can quickly end up spreading themselves too thin in an attempt to maintain a plethora of otherwise unnecessary and, ultimately, distracting features.
Leaving features out that your users have shown little interest in can prove to be a winning strategy for your app, especially over the long term.
Get great guidance
Having an amazing app comes down to designing with care and making your users a cornerstone in the development process. User feedback can be especially powerful in informing your development decisions, but you’ll do best at harnessing user suggestions with the assistance of an expert partner that knows your industry inside and out.
VeryCreatives can be that partner. Our team of developers and digital product designers has seen it all and can help you to master your product-market fit without falling into the many pitfalls that plague other would-be successful app developers. Book a call with us today to learn what we can do for you.
