Feedback: The Secret Weapon for Startups
Thomas Edison once said “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. If that’s true, then out of the 99%, 45% of that time should be spent talking and listening to your customers.
As a startup (or any stage of business for that matter) here’s some ideas on how to build a feedback loop into your business.
Feedback Loops
- Site Feedback
- Surveys
- Meetups
- Usability Testing
- Listening Online
Site Feedback
Give your visitors a way to “tell” you what they want. Here’s three tactics that work quite well.
Search Box
Monitoring the keywords people use to search your site is invaluable. Review these weekly, and adjust your sites content and information accordingly. If you don’t have a search bar, you can use Google or Yahoo to build one for free.
User Feedback Widgets
Depending on what your website does, you could use Kampyle for any site; UserVoice for online applications; or GetSatisfaction for general customer support. The key is to pick one, and review the feedback weekly (if not daily).
Surveys
People love to give advice, all you need to do is just ask. There’s many different questions you could ask, but the goal is to keep it simple, short and focused. I’m a fan of using the Net Promoter Score question, as well as customer development.
Administrating the Surveys
- SurveyMonkey - super fast, super simple.
- Survey.io - great for product companies
- Phone Survey - using call centers (or automate using Twilio)
Meetups
You should meet with your customers in person, and best to do it over dinner (break bread!) and ask them for ideas on how you can improve what you do (product & company). Just listen, always say thanks, and bring the ideas back to the team.
Managing the Events
- TwtVite - Create a tweetup, invite your tweeple!
- Eventbrite - Event managment.
Usability Testing
Website usability is the super fun, and scary at the same time. Watching people try and accomplish certain tasks you “thought” were obvious and self evident can be a crush on the ego. That being said, its invaluable. Its worth the investment.
Usability Tools & Approaches
- Loop11 - web-based user experience tool
- Silver Back - guerilla usability testing
- UserTesting - Low cost usability testing
- In Person: Craigslist + $20 iTunes or Starbucks Card = Cheap / Simple
Listening Online
There’s many, many ways to find out how people are “describing” your company. Some of this information is noise, some of it’s invaluable insight - but it’s definitely worth a look.
Tags on Social Bookmarks
Using sites like delicious - you can lookup your site and see what tags people are using to define you. Try it out: http://delicious.com/url/
Search Twitter
Simple, search twitter for your product name, subscribe to the RSS feed and review it weekly.
Other Resources (must follow blogs)
Eric Ries - Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction
Steve Blank - Author of Four Steps to the Epiphany
Sean Ellis - Creating & Implementing a Web 2.0 Marketing Plan
Andrew Chen - Talk to your target customer in 4 easy steps
If you have any other suggestions, links, or resources - I would truly appreciate a comment below with your feedback.
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11 Responses for "Feedback: The Secret Weapon for Startups"
Hi Dan,
That’s some good stuff for startups, but also any organization that want to improve themselves.
I think the first quote comes from Edison, but I’m sure Einstein repeated it as nothing comes that easy for anyone that you can get anywhere without putting some effort into it.
Serge
@Serge - you were right, it was Edison. Just updated, Thx.
Hey Dan –
Thank you for including UserVoice on your post, I must point out however that UserVoice is not exclusive to online applications. Feedback can be ideas, suggestions & innovation — because of that, our service is being used in a number of different verticals including education, government, ecommerce, desktop apps, twitter apps, hardware, entertainment, content/blogs, and events.
UserVoice is an idea platform you can use anywhere!
Dan, honored to return your follow. This is a really great idea: feedback! I’ve noticed that the feedback I’m getting from my Twitter pals is extremely helpful. Fresh eyes are always good! You point out that people want to give their opinion and that the job of a good interactive site is to encourage that dialogue.
I appreciate your fresh perspective on this, Dan.
Your sage advice gives me the confidence to go ahead and give it a try on my website and to be more conscious of this valuable opportunity in general.
Thanks!
A few more thoughts -
Don’t wait until you have a site to get feedback! While you’re still in the idea and prototype stages, you can:
- Run user testing, search Twitter, set up Google Alerts against a competitor’s site
- Use the Craig’s List method to run user testing on static mockups or prototypes
Task-based usability testing is great for web applications and e-commerce sites, but it can be hard to pinpoint “what to test” on informational sites. A great help for those is a heatmapping tool such as CrazyEgg or ClickTale.
Great tips and list Dan . . . and comments by others. I encourage folks to get these critical efforts on their calendars at regular intervals and follow through.
- -
And don’t forget to act on the feedback you are getting and communicate it to your entire team. Awareness can be a real game changer for your business and be a true competitive advantage to position you to lead rather than follow (following is okay, leading is better).
This is a great roundup of tips - thanks.
Great advice Dan! I’ll make sure to apply these strategies.
As for feedback, we developed a way for customers and merchants to share feedback. Think of it as yelp meets getsatisfaction.
[...] had recently come across this article by Dan Martell where he talks about how feedback is “the secret weapon for startups”. The truth is [...]
[...] about it and listening to him is a long time accepted practice. The lack of an effective way to get feedback online is a phantom problem for a lot of Web sites keeping them far from real [...]
Many startups use Justinmind Prototyper (http://www.justinmind.com) to make an interactive prototype for nearly free and share their business ideas with potential clients and investors.
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