What should I ask users when I ask for feedback?

Why “any feedback?” doesn’t work

A vague question gets a vague answer, or none. People are kind to someone who built something: they say it looks great, suggest a feature they’ll never use, and move on. To get something useful, ask about a specific moment they lived through.

Questions that get facts

• What were you trying to do when you signed up? Tells you the job they hired the product for, in their words. Reuse those words on your homepage.
• What did you use before this? Tells you what you’re really competing with (often a spreadsheet, or nothing).
• What almost stopped you from getting started? Finds the step where others quietly left.
• What’s the last thing you did with it? Shows real use, not intended use.
• What would you miss if it disappeared tomorrow? Points at the part worth paying for. “Not much” is also an answer.

Questions that get guesses

• “Would you use a feature that…?” Nearly everyone says yes.
• “How much would you pay?” People guess low, or high to be nice. A real price gets a real answer.
• “What should I build next?” You get a list of wishes, not a priority.

If you need to know whether people will pay, ask for the payment, not the opinion.

When to ask

Right after something happened: the first time someone finishes the main task, the day they come back, the moment they hit a limit, the day they cancel. A small feedback button that’s always there catches the moments you’d never time well, and the person’s own words at that moment beat any survey sent a week later.

What to do with the answers

Keep every answer attached to the person who gave it, with where they came from and whether they pay. “Three people asked for exports” means little; “three paying customers from the same community asked for exports” is a decision. Reply to everyone, and when you ship something they asked for, tell them.

With Nordva Launch

The feedback widget adds a button to your app; messages arrive in one inbox, sorted into bugs, feature requests, praise, billing and support, and tied to the user id or email you pass. Free takes 50 messages a month per project, sorted by keywords; on Indie, AI sorts up to 500 a month. On Indie, contacts put a person’s feedback next to their waitlist signup and Stripe payments. When you link a message to a changelog entry and publish it, Launch emails the person once to say it shipped, if they left an email.