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Are you looking for ways to continuously improve your product and keep your customers happy? One valuable method is through the use of a customer feedback loop. In this article, we will explore the various steps of a customer feedback loop, including collecting customer feedback, analyzing the feedback, following up, and implementing findings.

Did you know that 73% of customers abandon a brand after three or fewer bad customer experiences? This is why customer feedback is so important for customer loyalty and reducing customer churn. With my experience working for eBay and the Guardian Soulmates dating site, I have seen firsthand the benefits of implementing a customer feedback loop. Join me as we dive deeper into this win-win initiative.

What Is A Customer Feedback Loop

A customer feedback loop is a process that involves collecting customer feedback, analyzing it, and then following up with customers based on the findings. This process is crucial for product development and customer satisfaction.

1. Collecting Customer Feedback

Collecting customer feedback can be done in various ways. One of the most common ways is through surveys. There are two types of surveys, proactive and reactive. Reactive surveys are pushed to users and get a higher volume of feedback while proactive surveys are only taken when the customer actively seeks it out.

Some examples of feedback surveys include NPS survey (Net Promoter Score), CSAT survey, exit survey, persistent feedback button, rating survey, and email surveys. It is important to be mindful of the user experience when deploying surveys as customers trying to complete a task in your product can easily be put off by pop-ups that get in the way.

In a B2C business, surveys should be used sparingly and only for important touchpoints in the customer journey, while in a B2B business, especially with a Saas product, surveys can be used more often as there is a closer customer relationship. Social media monitoring is also a valuable tool as customers may mention your product on social media platforms.

Product use monitoring is another way to collect customer feedback by watching a customer interact with your product in real-time. This can help spot frustration points, favored features, and follow the user flow from entry point to exit.

2. Analyze The Feedback

After collecting customer feedback, it is important to analyze it to get on top of the data and keep it up to date. Categorizing the feedback into a few buckets can be helpful. These buckets include quant metrics, bugs, and UX issues. Quant metrics like NPS or CSAT are easy and important to track but sometimes don’t directly give actionable insight into product issues. Bugs may be the top priority to act on depending on the number of reports and severity. UX issues are issues where a user struggled because they did not understand something or the product was not intuitive.

3. Follow Up

Following up with customers based on the findings is the final step in the customer feedback loop. This can be done by addressing bugs and UX issues, improving product features, and communicating with customers about the changes made based on their feedback. It is important to show customers that their feedback is valued and that their input is helping to shape the product.

In conclusion, a customer feedback loop is a vital process for any business that wants to improve their product and customer satisfaction. Collecting customer feedback, analyzing it, and following up with customers based on the findings can lead to a better product and a more loyal customer base.

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Implement Findings

One of the most effective ways to constantly improve your product is by implementing a customer feedback loop. By incorporating changes based on customer feedback, you can complement your new feature product roadmap.

In previous roles, it was common practice to filter collated feedback by product area and incorporate improvements based on customer feedback during an overhaul of a particular area. Improvements to help content and customer service scripts can be made continuously and don’t necessarily need to wait for product development.

To learn more about product roadmaps and their importance, check out our related read: “Product Roadmap Guide: Why It’s Important And Types You Should Know.”

Customer Feedback Loop — A Win-Win Initiative

Incorporating a customer feedback loop can lead to continuous improvement of your product and increase customer retention and loyalty. By starting small and incorporating surveys at critical conversion points, you can gain valuable insights into customer behavior. Tools like Pendo can serve up surveys based on previous behavior, allowing you to gather surprising feedback.

To take it a step further, set aside half an hour weekly to talk to a customer who has given you feedback. This personal touch can make a big difference in building customer relationships and improving your product.

Implementing a customer feedback loop not only benefits your customers, but also your business. By making use of user tracking software and other related tools, you can gain even more valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences.

By taking the initiative to integrate customer feedback into your role as a product manager, you can drive continuous improvement and create a win-win situation for both your customers and your business.

To grow your business and increase your profits, it is crucial to put your customers’ interests first in every business decision you make. By making your entire strategy customer-centric, you create a customer experience journey that adds value to your customers and keeps them coming back for more.

To achieve a customer-centric business, varied and detailed customer feedback is essential. Feedback tells you exactly what your customer wants, needs, and expects, enabling you to mold your products and services into something your customers will buy. In this article, we will cover what customer feedback is, six customer feedback methods, and what to do with customer feedback. Let’s get started.

What Is Customer Feedback?

Customer feedback refers to any information that customers provide about their experience with your organization. This feedback can be positive, negative, or neutral and can take many different forms. There are two main categories of customer feedback: direct and indirect.

Why Is Customer Feedback Important?

Customer feedback is crucial to the success and growth of your business. By understanding your customers’ needs and expectations, you can create products and services that meet those needs and improve the customer experience.

Proactively seeking out customer feedback can help you anticipate future needs and resolve issues before they become bigger problems. Additionally, listening to your customers and acting on their feedback can help build trust and loyalty.

Research has shown that customers appreciate being asked for feedback and are more likely to think highly of companies that actively seek out and act on their feedback. By utilizing customer feedback, you can improve your business and build stronger relationships with your customers.

6 Customer Feedback Methods

Collecting omnichannel feedback is crucial for any business. This means providing customers with the opportunity to provide feedback seamlessly across various channels without having to switch to another platform. This can be achieved through in-app pop-ups, automated telephonic questionnaires, or embedded surveys in emails. Omnichannel feedback provides more comprehensive insights and is more convenient for customers. Let’s explore the six great ways to gather customer feedback.

1. Surveys

Surveys are an excellent way to get answers to specific questions. They can be sent out to large groups of people to gather useful insights. You can deploy Customer Satisfaction surveys (CSAT) after specific touchpoints to get feedback on particular areas of your customer experience. For example, you can ask for feedback on the delivery process immediately following the delivery of a product. Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys can be sent out periodically to get feedback on your customers’ overall opinions about your company. The Customer Effort Score (CES) survey helps you understand how easy it is for customers to use your products or services.

When creating surveys, make sure to keep the questions simple and concise. It’s also a good idea to have a mix of open-ended, qualitative and closed-ended, quantitative (yes/no) questions. Open-ended questions provide context for the closed-ended questions and give you information you can use to make improvements for your customer.

2. Emails

Emails are a powerful tool to get feedback from customers. A great time to send out an email is following the purchase of a product or at another significant touchpoint like after an interaction with a customer service agent or after canceling a subscription. These emails are generally automated, making the process even easier. The surveys that you send in these emails should be short and embedded in the email, meaning your customer doesn’t have to click through to a different page to answer.

3. Interviews and Focus Groups

Interviews and focus groups are a highly effective form of direct feedback. They are generally done on a small scale due to budget and logistics. While fewer people will be giving their feedback, you might find the insights are richer. Face-to-face or over the phone conversation lets you ask more detailed questions and give the participants the opportunity to respond in-depth. When conducting an interview or a focus group, it’s essential to go in prepared and keep the conversation focused on getting the answers you need.

4. Social Media

Social media is becoming more and more popular for customers to voice their opinions regarding brands. Monitoring your own social media channels and chatter about your brand on other people’s platforms helps you detect small issues before they turn into big problems. You can also better anticipate any needs that your customers might have and provide them with a proactive customer experience. Customers expect you to be present for them on these channels, and studies have shown that 59% of people perceive brands more favorably if they respond to complaints on social media.

5. Website Analytics

Analyzing website traffic and the different patterns customers follow on your site can provide valuable insights into how customers feel about your products and/or services. Analyzing pages that customers spend longer on or pages where customers abandon the site altogether shows you what your customers like and what they don’t. You can then start to analyze that feedback to see where some of your issues lie within your customer experience journey. It’s essential to make sure you have the right tools in place to monitor your analytics. You should also take into consideration the context that exists around your insights as you analyze.

6. Free-Text Feedback

Free-text feedback allows customers to leave feedback in an open way. This can be achieved through in-app pop-ups, feedback buttons, feedback sites like G2, product request forms, and more. A free-text box means the customer is not constrained by one single question. This can sometimes mean that you receive vague feedback, but it can also mean that the customer can give you useful, surprising insights that you might not have thought about on your own.

In conclusion, there are various methods to gather customer feedback, and it’s important to use a combination of them to get a comprehensive understanding of your customer’s needs and preferences. By implementing these feedback methods, you can improve your customer experience and build stronger relationships with your customers.

What To Do With Customer Feedback

Feedback from your customers is a valuable source of information that can help you improve your products and services. However, analyzing large amounts of unstructured feedback can be a daunting task. MonkeyLearn offers AI-powered text analysis tools like survey analyzer and sentiment analyzer that can help you process and analyze your customer feedback data in seconds.

Here’s how MonkeyLearn can help you analyze NPS feedback:

1. Choose the NPS template to create your workflow.
2. Upload your data in CSV format.
3. Match your data to the right fields in each column, such as Created_at, Text, and Score.
4. Name your workflow.
5. Wait for MonkeyLearn to process your data.
6. Explore your dashboard and view all your insights.

With MonkeyLearn, you can filter your insights by topic, sentiment, keyword, score, or NPS category. You can also share your insights via email with your coworkers.

Analyzing customer feedback can help you identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions. MonkeyLearn can help you automate this process and save you time and resources. Get in touch with MonkeyLearn today to see how you can analyze all of your customer feedback data and visualize your insights in an easy-to-read dashboard.

Conclusion

Collecting customer feedback is essential for creating a customer-centric culture that leads to increased growth and profits. There are various methods to gather customer feedback, but analyzing it for insights is crucial. AI-powered analysis tools are the best option for dealing with large amounts of unstructured qualitative and quantitative data. MonkeyLearn is a great tool to get the most out of the customer feedback you gather. By using MonkeyLearn, you can analyze customer feedback quickly and efficiently, gaining valuable insights that can help you improve your products and services and ultimately increase customer satisfaction.

Are you looking to develop a new product? Whether it’s a completely new idea or an improvement on an existing product, the process can be challenging. However, the rewards of successful new product development can be significant.

To achieve success, it’s important to focus on product discovery and address the pain points of your target audience. This means gathering customer insights through surveys, interviews, social media monitoring, and ethnographic research. Additionally, product discovery should be an ongoing process throughout the product’s lifetime, from idea generation to post-launch. In this article, we will provide a detailed walkthrough of the new product development stages to help you turn your ideas into workable products.

What is New Product Development (NPD)?

New Product Development (NPD) is the process of transforming an idea into a feasible software product that meets customers’ needs. The NPD process involves identifying market opportunities, assessing the idea’s feasibility, and delivering a functional software product.

In contrast, Product Development is a broader term that encompasses the six stages of the software development lifecycle. It focuses on launching products that already have a Proof of Concept (POC). The NPD approach, on the other hand, centers on entirely new ideas, where the uncertainty around development and adoption is high.

Successful examples of NPD include Trello for task management and tracking, Zoom for video communication, Dropbox for cloud storage, Figma for remote design work, Airtable for relational data management, and more.

The NPD process consists of several stages, including idea generation, idea screening, concept development and testing, business analysis, product development, and market testing. Each stage is critical to the success of the NPD process and requires careful attention to detail.

Seven Stages of New Product Life Cycle Development Process

Stage 1: Idea Generation

To create a successful New Product Development strategy, a company must generate many ideas that can form the foundation of their product. The focus of this stage is to arrange brainstorming sessions where customer problems are given priority. The goal is not to generate foolproof ideas but to discuss raw and unproven ideas that can be shortlisted later.

1. Emphasize on Customer Problems

To identify the issues that the target audience is facing, a company should look at personal problems and understand the human story behind digital offerings. The feasibility of the shortlisted problems and their solutions should be checked based on the 4U approach by Michael Skok, the founder of Startup Secrets. If a problem has been identified, it’s time to look for possible solutions. For every user problem, there ought to be potential New Product Development opportunities. A comparison chart that lists all the shortlisted problems and solutions should be created, and the findings should be circulated across the organizational structure to develop a viable problem set.

2. Qualify Each of the Listed Problems

The 4U approach by Michael Skok stands for Unworkable, Unavoidable, Urgent, and Underserved. Taking a deeper look at each of these aspects in detail will provide greater clarity.

3. Coming Up With Possible Solutions

For every user problem, there ought to be potential New Product Development opportunities. The workflow starts with a problem and ends with strategizing around the solution. The solution should be unique, even if a product already exists, and the product should solve problems differently.

4. Narrowing Down Problems + Solutions

If the stakeholders are not convinced regarding the shortlisted idea, try the Replicate, Re-Purpose, and Upgrade approach.

Stage 2: Idea Screening

This stage revolves around choosing the one idea with the highest potential for success. Put all the ideas available on the table for internal review. A proof of concept (POC) should hold precedence for a new product development idea as it helps check the idea’s feasibility. SWOT analysis can be another good practice to consider when shortlisting New Product Development ideas.

Stage 3: Concept Development & Testing

Before starting the New Product Development process, building a detailed version of the idea and the user stories should be prioritized. This value proposition evaluation is the first step towards concept development and testing. The easy-to-follow concept development steps include:

1. Quantifying Gain/Pain Ratio

A business needs to create an insightful picture of the product from the user’s perspective. This can be achieved by calculating the gain/pain ratio.

2. Conducting a Competitor Analysis

Knowing about existing market players is a critical strategic step to consider. Understanding the competition makes it easier to infer where the competitor lacks, where is the scope for improvement, and existing white space in the market.

3. Enlisting the Major Product Features

The user stories involved in the New Product Development software project will make or break a business. When creating a list of such features, it is imperative to know how is it an innovative feature, and how is it going to solve a problem?

4. Create a Value Proposition Chart

Even if a product already exists, it should solve problems differently. A value proposition chart can help a business create a unique selling point.

5. Concept Testing

Before launching the product, it is essential to test the concept. The testing process should involve a small group of people who will provide feedback.

Stage 4: Market Strategy/Business Analysis

This stage involves developing a market strategy and analyzing the business. The cost-based pricing model and market-focused pricing are two pricing models that a business can use.

1. Cost-Based Pricing Model

The cost-based pricing model involves adding a profit margin to the cost of producing a product.

2. Market-Focused Pricing

Market-focused pricing involves analyzing the market and setting a price based on what the market is willing to pay.

Stage 5: Product Development

This stage involves developing the product. A prototype and minimum viable product (MVP) should be created.

1. Prototype

A prototype is a preliminary model of the product.

2. Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

An MVP is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development.

Stage 6: Deployment

This stage involves deploying the product.

Stage 7: Market Entry/Commercialization

This stage involves marketing the concept over the product, having a brand voice, and conducting intriguing webinars.

Benefits of Implementing the New Product Development Process

Following the New Product Development process has several advantages. It helps in evaluating the technical feasibility of the idea, ensuring faster time-to-market, addressing customer needs, and increasing the chances of success. Moreover, it reduces technical debt and effectively manages feature creep, negating the opportunity cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you’re considering new product development, you may have some questions about the process. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions and their answers:

What is the Purpose of New Product Development?

The purpose of new product development is to create products that solve real customer problems, which can help an organization achieve organic growth. Some reasons for considering new product development include meeting changing consumer needs, launching a product in a new market, maintaining a competitive edge, introducing a product based on a disruptive technology, solving a unique customer problem, or solving a common customer problem in a unique way.

How Can I Come Up with New Product Development Ideas?

Finding the right idea for new product development can be challenging, but there are some tried and tested ways for coming up with ideas. These include surveying customers to understand their problems, identifying internal or personal problems that you can solve, experimenting with new, disruptive technologies, or looking for problems that customers face with an existing product serving the same niche.

What are the Different Types of New Product Development?

There are four types of new product development, which include disruptive, radical, sustaining, and incremental. Disruptive new product development involves creating a new product that disrupts an existing market. Radical new product development involves creating a new product that is significantly different from existing products. Sustaining new product development involves creating new products that improve upon existing products. Incremental new product development involves making small improvements to existing products.

When it comes to creating and managing products, there are different approaches and frameworks that can be used to guide the process. These are known as product development methodologies, and they can vary in their focus, structure, and requirements.

In this article, you will learn about four of the most commonly used product development methodologies: Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and Waterfall. Each methodology has its own strengths and weaknesses, and choosing the right one for your project can make a big difference in terms of efficiency, quality, and customer satisfaction.

Why Product Development Methodologies Are Important

The Purpose of Product Development Methodologies

Product development methodologies are crucial for organizations because they provide a structured approach to creating and delivering new products, features, and integrations. These methodologies help organizations effectively manage the product development process from ideation to launch and beyond. By following established methodologies, companies can more easily mitigate ongoing and emerging risks, adapt to changing compliance requirements, and optimize product development efforts to achieve successful outcomes.

The primary purpose of product development methodologies is to improve efficiency, quality, and collaboration within product teams. They ensure that customer needs are met, and that products are developed on time and within budget. By prioritizing customer needs and fostering collaboration, these methodologies adapt to changing requirements and promote continuous improvement to product roadmapping and portfolio building. By using these methodologies, companies can align development efforts with business objectives and ensure more successful product outcomes.

Benefits of Using Product Development Methodologies

Using product development methodologies offers a range of benefits for organizations. Successful organizations focus on regularly enhancing efficiency, product quality, and customer-centricity. These methodologies provide structured guidelines that streamline workflows, mitigate risks, and improve collaboration among cross-functional teams. By focusing on customer needs and data-driven decision-making, these methodologies foster continuous improvement and ensure timely delivery of products.

Product development methodologies contribute to faster time-to-market, which is critical for staying ahead of the competition. They instill confidence in internal and external stakeholders and have a significant impact on the overall success of product development strategies and operations. By using these methodologies, companies can adapt to changing market conditions, customer needs, and compliance requirements, ensuring that their products remain competitive and meet the needs of their customers.

1. Agile Methodology

Summary

Agile methodology is a customer-centric approach to product development that emphasizes collaboration, adaptability, and responsiveness to changing requirements throughout the development process. The development process is broken down into smaller, manageable increments called ‘sprints’ or ‘iterations’. Cross-functional teams work closely together, including product managers, developers, designers, and stakeholders. Key principles of agile include customer collaboration, incremental and iterative development, adaptive planning, empowered teams, and continuous improvement.

Implementation

Implementing an agile product development methodology requires careful planning and a commitment to change. To implement it successfully, you need to:

• Educate and train the team
• Form cross-functional teams
• Define the product vision and roadmap
• Break down work into sprints
• Prioritize and create a backlog
• Sprint planning
• Daily stand-up meetings
• Continuous testing and integration
• Review and retrospective
• Adapt and improve
• Foster collaboration and communication
• Monitor progress and metrics

Advantages and Disadvantages

Agile methodology offers numerous benefits in terms of responsiveness, customer-centricity, and continuous improvement. It enables faster time-to-market, promotes transparency, and fosters open communication and visibility. However, it can be challenging to implement and manage, especially for larger projects or organizations with distributed teams. It may sometimes cause long-term planning and strategic objectives to be overlooked. It can be difficult to accurately predict project timelines and costs, and may strain resources and time. Some team members or stakeholders may find it difficult to adapt to a product development style that requires constant, cyclical progress.

2. Kanban Methodology

Summary

Kanban is a visual project management and workflow methodology that aims to optimize the flow of work, eliminate bottlenecks, and deliver value to customers more effectively. Work items are represented as cards or sticky notes on a Kanban board, which is divided into columns representing different stages of the workflow. Key principles include visual management, work-in-progress (WIP) limits, continuous delivery, continuous improvement, and a pull system.

Implementation

To implement Kanban, start by creating a visual board that represents the workflow of your project. Use columns to represent different stages of work, such as “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done.” Break down tasks into smaller, manageable tasks that can easily move through the board. Determine the maximum number of items allowed in each column at any given time to prevent burnout and delays. Keep a prioritized backlog of work items that are ready to be pulled into the “To Do” column when there’s available capacity. Use color-coded cards or sticky notes to represent different workflows and tasks on the board. Keep track of how work items move through the board and measure key metrics like lead time and cycle time to identify bottlenecks. Encourage the team to regularly review the process and identify areas for improvement. Ensure that team members understand the principles and practices of Kanban and provide training and support as needed to promote successful implementation.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Kanban offers advantages such as visual management for clear workflow representation, flexibility for adapting to changing priorities, reduced waste, continuous delivery, and improved flow. However, it lacks structure, may have limited long-term planning capabilities, and relies heavily on team discipline and communication efforts. Whether or not a Kanban methodology is appropriate for your business depends on the specific needs and characteristics of each company, project, and team. Consider your unique requirements before adopting this methodology.

3. Scrum Methodology

Summary

Scrum is an agile product development methodology that emphasizes teamwork, collaboration, and iterative progress. It is based on the principles of transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Scrum divides work into time-boxed iterations called “sprints,” typically lasting 1-4 weeks, during which a cross-functional team works to deliver potentially shippable product elements.

Scrum involves key roles like the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team. The process includes sprint planning, daily team stand-ups, sprint reviews and retrospectives, and backlog refinement for effective project management and delivery.

Implementation

Implementing Scrum means adopting an agile product development approach centered around collaboration, adaptability, and ongoing improvement. It begins with educating the team about Scrum principles and roles, creating a cross-functional Scrum Team, and defining a product backlog with user stories and features. Sprint planning meetings select items from the backlog for each sprint, while daily stand-ups provide progress updates and address challenges.

During the sprint, the Development Team works on completing the selected work, guided by the sprint goal and product backlog. After each sprint, a review meeting demonstrates completed work to stakeholders, and a retrospective encourages reflection and improvements. Backlog refinement ensures that the queue remains updated and detailed.

Continuous improvement is encouraged through feedback implementation and empowering the team to self-organize. Monitoring progress using sprint burndown charts and metrics keeps the team on track, while an adaptive and collaborative culture fosters success.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Scrum is well-suited for projects with changing requirements, high collaboration needs, and a focus on delivering frequent, incremental improvements. It provides an environment for flexibility, transparency, continuous improvement, and team autonomy. However, rigidity in sprints, limited documentation, and a strong dependence on effective collaboration can make this a highly challenging approach to sustain.

4. Waterfall Methodology

Summary

The waterfall methodology is a traditional, linear approach to project management where the product development process follows a strict sequence of phases. The phases include gathering requirements, design, implementation, testing, and deployment. Each phase must be completed before moving on to the next one. This approach offers predictability, but it may not be well-suited for projects requiring flexibility, continuous user feedback, or those subject to evolving market conditions. There is little-to-no room for changes or adjustments once a phase has been completed, which can lead to longer development cycles and delays.

Implementation

The waterfall methodology involves clear documentation of requirements, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance. Each phase must be completed before moving to the next. The process requires thorough planning and documentation to ensure successful project execution. However, it may not be suitable for projects with changing requirements or the need for frequent feedback and adjustments. In those situations, it’s best to apply agile or Kanban methodologies.

Advantages and Disadvantages

One of the main advantages of the waterfall approach is its simplicity and predictability. Since each phase has clear deliverables, progress is easy to track. Its structured and well-documented approach makes it easier to assess progress. However, the waterfall method has some significant drawbacks. It does not allow for virtually any flexibility or adaptation to changes in scope, which can be problematic in dynamic environments. The feedback loop with users is limited, and there’s a greater-than-average risk of delivering a product that no longer meets market needs. It’s also a time-consuming and resource-intensive framework, and therefore not ideal for complex or large-scale projects.

In summary, the waterfall methodology is a linear approach to project management that offers predictability but may not be well-suited for projects requiring flexibility or continuous user feedback. Its structured approach requires thorough planning and documentation, but it may not be suitable for projects with changing requirements. The waterfall approach has advantages such as simplicity and predictability but also significant drawbacks such as limited flexibility and a greater-than-average risk of delivering a product that no longer meets market needs.

How to Determine Which Methodology You Need

When it comes to selecting the most suitable product development methodology for your business, you should carefully evaluate various factors. These factors include project requirements, project size and scope, customer involvement, time constraints, team expertise and culture, risk tolerance, and stakeholder expectations.

Project requirements – If the project requirements are well-defined and unlikely to change significantly, a waterfall approach may be suitable. On the other hand, if the project has evolving requirements and needs flexibility, agile methodologies like scrum or Kanban may be more appropriate.

Project size and scope – Smaller, less complex projects may benefit from agile methodologies, which allow for incremental development and continuous feedback. Larger projects with well-defined stages and deliverables might align better with the waterfall approach.

Customer involvement – Agile methodologies emphasize continuous customer collaboration, making them ideal for projects where customer input is critical. On the other hand, projects with less direct customer involvement may lean towards a waterfall methodology.

Time constraints – Determine the project timeline and desired speed of delivery. Agile methodologies can deliver incremental results more quickly, while the outcome of the waterfall approach won’t fully materialize until launch.

Team expertise and culture – Consider the expertise and experience of the product development team. Agile methodologies demand a high level of collaboration and self-organization.

Risk tolerance – Agile methodologies allow for early detection and mitigation of risks, while waterfall may present higher risks due to limited opportunities for course correction.

Stakeholder expectations – Agile methodologies involve frequent communication and progress reviews, which may be preferred by some stakeholders, while others might prefer a more formal and structured approach.

By considering these factors, you can determine which methodology is best suited for your project and team. It is essential to keep in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and you should choose the methodology that aligns best with your specific project requirements, team capabilities, and organizational preferences.

If you’re looking for a way to streamline your product management process, you might want to consider using product management software. This kind of software can help you manage your day-to-day tasks and keep track of the big picture, all while encouraging collaboration among your team members.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best product management software options available. We’ll provide you with a shortlist of tools to consider, as well as some tips for selecting the right one for your organization. Plus, we’ll give you in-depth reviews of each tool to help you make an informed decision.

What Is Product Management Software?

Product management software is a specialized suite of applications that enables businesses and product teams to effectively plan, develop, and manage their products throughout their lifecycle. It acts as a central hub for collaboration, streamlining workflows, and making informed decisions. This software is essential in today’s fast-paced business environment, where careful planning and execution are necessary to bring successful products to market. With product management software, you can easily manage your team’s tasks, track progress, and ensure that your products meet the needs of your customers.

Overviews Of The 10 Best Product Management Software

Below are brief overviews of the 10 best product management software, including standout features, integrations, and pricing information.

monday.com

monday.com is an online product management platform that enables teams of all sizes to plan, track, and manage their daily work. From large scope product roadmaps to weekly iterations, monday.com helps teams define clear ownership, analyze and track their work, manage sprints, and collaborate together. monday.com’s easy-to-use agile platform makes it simple for teams to work together from anywhere.

Why You Should Consider monday.com: monday.com has customizable project templates for any team or stage of product management. Use the template as is, or customize by adding column types (such as numbers for calculations, deadline, rating) or switching between views (such as Kanban, Gantt, calendar, and more). monday.com’s flexible scrum platform provides value to managers and can support teams with anywhere from 5 to 5,000 members.

Standout Features & Integrations: Features include project management, task scheduling/tracking, resource management, scheduling, budgeting, API, calendar management, Gantt charts, file sharing, time management, email integration, third party plugins, and notifications. Integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible through a paid plan with Zapier.

Pricing & Plans: Pricing for monday.com starts from $11/user/month. The tool offers a 14-day free trial. They have a freemium plan for up to 2 users.

Craft.io

Craft.io is an end-to-end product management platform with best practices built in. It provides product professionals with an all-in-one solution to effectively manage the entire lifecycle of their digital products, from feedback collection and feature definition to prioritization, capacity planning, road mapping, and portfolio management.

Why You Should Consider Craft.io: The platform is built to enable product professionals with best practices built into every step of the way. The platform can help even seasoned Product Managers create, view, update, adjust, and share the right product data more quickly and efficiently with the Guru layer. For example, pre-built templates for product epics, user personas, and prioritization frameworks can help an experienced Product Manager develop these assets in minutes—as opposed to spending hours building them manually in static files.

Standout Features & Integrations: Features include roadmapping, Guru views, data visualization, product management, prioritization, customer management, Gantt charts, workflow management/tracking, and capacity planning. Integrations include Jira, Azure DevOps, GitLab, GitHub, Targetprocess, Okta, Google Workspace, Active Directory, SAML, Confluence, PingIdentity, and thousands of additional applications via a paid account with Zapier.

Pricing & Plans: Craft.io starts at $19 per editor per month when billed annually. A 14-day free trial is also available.

Ignition

Ignition is a go-to-market software with product management, research management, and launch tracking tools.

Why You Should Consider Ignition: The software’s product management features include roadmap planning, idea organization, and customer insight collection and management. Teams can turn end-user feedback into product releases, and gather their research on competitors and personas in the platform. Launch processes can be built and re-used in the system, reducing time spent on workflow planning.

In particular, the software’s data collection abilities are a unique way to gather insights in the product development process. Teams can stay updated on their competitors, collect feedback with public-facing forms, and find persona and brand insights to fuel their go-to-market strategy. The software also tracks KPIs to give teams information on how their product launches perform.

Standout Features & Integrations: Features include unlimited users, roadmap planning, internal communications automation, release notes, battle cards, calendar and timeline views, product idea boards, competitive intelligence, research studies, and retrospectives. Integrations include Asana, ClickUp, Confluence, Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Docs, HubSpot, Jira, Linear, Microsoft Teams, Mixpanel, monday.com, Productboard, Salesforce, Slack, and Wrike.

Pricing & Plans: A free-forever plan is available, and various parts of the product can be purchased individually. For teams that only want access to the product management tool, plans start from $49/month.

Miro

Miro is a collaborative online whiteboard platform that’s designed to help teams work more effectively together. It’s like having a giant, interactive canvas where you can brainstorm, plan, visualize, and manage projects.

Why You Should Consider Miro: It’s incredibly flexible and versatile. You can use it for everything from creating user story maps and product roadmaps to

Need Expert Help Selecting the Right Product Management Software?

If you’re struggling to find the right product management software for your business, we’ve got you covered. Our partnership with Crozdesk.com means you can access their software advisors at no cost or commitment. Simply fill out the form below with your needs, and they’ll match you with a shortlist of vendors that best fit your company. Plus, you’ll have access to exclusive software discounts. Let the experts help you make the right choice.

The Best Product Management Tools Comparison Chart

When selecting a product management tool, it can be challenging to decide which one is best for your team’s needs. To help you make an informed decision, we have compiled a comparison chart of the top product management tools in the market.

Tool	Trial Info	Price	Best For
monday.com	14-day free trial + free plan available	From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats)	Scalability
Craft.io	14-day free trial available	From $24/editor/month	Built-in industry-leading best practices
Ignition	Free version available	From $99/month	Full go-to-market functionality
Miro	Free plan available	From $10/user/month	Seamless collaboration and visualization for effective product management
ProductPlan	14-day free trial	From $49/user/month	Beautiful UI
Productboard	15-day free trial	From $25/user/month	Customer research
ProdPad	7-30 day free trial	From $25/user/month	Product lifecycle management tools
dragonboat	Free trial available	From $39/user/month	Connecting product development to OKRs
Reveall	14-day free trial	From $24/month	Product discovery
ClickUp	Freemium plan available	From $9/user/month	Modular product management software

Each tool has its strengths, and it is crucial to select the one that aligns with your team’s goals and objectives. The comparison chart can help you evaluate the features, pricing, and trial information of each tool to make an informed decision.

Other Product Management Software

If you are looking for more options beyond the top product management software, here are some other great options to consider:

• airfocus – Known for its modular approach to product management
• Peoplebox – Best for collaboration among team members
• QA Wolf – Ideal for companies that focus on web applications
• Jira Software – Best for digital product development such as apps and SaaS tools
• Wrike – Offers the best product management analytics
• Confluence – Offers a wide variety of product collaboration templates
• Planview – Best product management roadmap tool for enterprise organizations
• Walling – Best for visually organizing project ideas and tasks
• Visor – Best for project management collaboration
• Creately – A visual workspace for team collaboration used to draw flowcharts, diagrams, and mindmaps
• Aha – Best product management software for road mapping
• API Fuse – Best for building product integrations for your SaaS app
• Canny – Best for tracking feedback from customers and teammates

Each of these software options has unique features and benefits that can enhance your product management process.

How You Can Pick The Best Product Management Software

Selection Criteria

When selecting the best product management software for your needs, there are several key factors to consider. Here are the criteria that I used to evaluate and compare the top options:

Road Mapping

One of the most critical features of any product management tool is its ability to help you turn your ideas into actionable roadmaps. The software should provide a clean, intuitive user interface that enables you to see the evolution of your product over time. Look for products like Figma or Miro that offer an easy-to-use interface that provides an intuitive user experience.

Usability

The software’s learning curve is another crucial factor to consider. How easy is it to learn and use? Does it offer adequate customer support across different mediums like phone, chat, and email? Does it provide training, certificates, blogs, webinars, or other interactive materials to assist with learning? Consider these factors when evaluating usability.

Integrations

Another critical criterion is the software’s ability to expand its capabilities through integrations. Look for products that can connect to software that helps with user research, such as heatmaps, roadmapping software, or survey tools. Consider native integrations, connections to apps using third-party software, and custom integrations using APIs.

Pricing

Finally, pricing is an essential consideration. Is the price appropriate for the features, capabilities, and use case? Is pricing clear, transparent, and flexible? Consider these factors when evaluating pricing.

By considering these selection criteria, you can choose the best product management software for your needs.

People Also Ask

What is a product roadmap used for?

A product roadmap is a visual representation of the product strategy. It outlines the high-level goals and objectives of a product, as well as the key features and milestones needed to achieve them. It is used to communicate the product vision to stakeholders and keep the team aligned on priorities.

Why is product management important?

Product management is important because it helps ensure that the right products are developed and delivered to the market. It involves identifying customer needs, developing a product strategy, and working with cross-functional teams to bring the product to market. Effective product management can lead to increased revenue, customer satisfaction, and market share.

What Are The Benefits Of Product Development Software?

Product development software can help streamline the product development process by providing tools for ideation, prototyping, testing, and collaboration. It can also help teams stay organized and on track, reducing the risk of delays or errors. Additionally, it can provide valuable insights into customer needs and preferences, helping teams develop products that better meet those needs.

Product Management Software vs Project Management Software

While both product management software and project management software can help teams stay organized and on track, they serve different purposes. Product management software is focused on developing and delivering products, while project management software is focused on managing the tasks and timelines needed to complete a project. Product management software may include features such as product roadmaps, customer feedback tracking, and ideation tools, while project management software may include features such as task management, resource allocation, and Gantt charts.

What is feature flagging in product management?

Feature flagging is a technique used in product management to selectively enable or disable features within a product. This allows teams to test new features with a small group of users before rolling them out to everyone. It can also be used to turn off features that are causing issues or are not being used. Feature flagging can help teams iterate quickly and reduce the risk of introducing bugs or other issues.

Are there other types of product management software?

Yes, there are many other types of product management software available. Some examples include product analytics tools, customer feedback management tools, and A/B testing tools. These tools can help teams gather insights into customer needs and preferences, track customer feedback, and optimize product features and functionality.

What’s Next?

After considering the available options for product development software, it’s important to determine the best fit for your team’s needs. User stories can be an effective tool for staying focused on the product’s goals and prioritizing features. When it comes to software, there are benefits to both all-in-one tools and collections of specialized software. Consider the specific needs of your team and project when making this decision. Additionally, explore the related tool lists for product planning software, UX design tools, and product development software to find the best fit for your needs. Don’t forget to weigh in with your own experiences and suggestions in the comments.

In today’s digital world, testimonials play a crucial role in the buyer’s journey. It’s not enough to claim that you have the best product or service; potential customers want to hear from others who have tried it and can vouch for its quality. This helps build trust and credibility for your brand. However, gathering and displaying testimonials can be a challenge, especially when it comes to video reviews. This is where Testimonial.to comes in, offering a solution to streamline the process of collecting and showcasing testimonials on your website.

Having personally tested Testimonial.to, this review will discuss how the platform works and whether it’s worth using to gather customer feedback. As an unbiased, unpaid evaluation of the product, this article aims to provide an honest and clear assessment for those considering Testimonial.to as a tool for their business.

Key Takeaways

• Testimonials are essential for building trust and credibility in the digital era
• Collecting and showcasing testimonials can be challenging, but Testimonial.to offers a solution
• This unbiased assessment explores Testimonial.to features, and its potential value for businesses

🪪 Understanding Testimonial

Who Created Testimonial?

Testimonial is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform I discovered that enables users to collect customer testimonials and seamlessly embed them on their websites. It offers a simple way to gather written and video testimonials, manage all submissions from a central dashboard, and display them on your website without needing professional developer or video hosting assistance.

The platform’s reach extends beyond direct testimonials, as it allows you to curate mentions about your business from various sources like Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google, and Capterra. Moreover, it offers a Metrics add-on to track and analyze the engagement levels of displayed testimonials.

The brain behind Testimonial is Damon Chen, a skilled developer who I’ve been following on Twitter for years. Throughout his entrepreneurial journey, Damon has maintained transparency and built a loyal fanbase eager to witness his success. Besides Testimonial, Damon also runs other side projects focusing on seeyafuture.me, embed.so, and supportman.io.

🧑💻 Who Can Benefit from Testimonial?

As someone who values feedback, I believe Testimonial is an excellent tool for a wide range of website owners who want to seamlessly integrate testimonials on their site. From my perspective, it’s perfect for:

• Startups
• Businesses-to-business organizations
• Online retailers
• Coaches, consultants, and educators
• Service-oriented companies
• Marketing professionals and agencies

Although this list covers various industries, Testimonial is ideal for any business that offers products or services and wishes to display customer reviews. However, I must mention that the cost of Testimonial may not be suitable for all budgets, making it a better fit for established businesses capable of gaining immediate returns on their investment.

🎮 How Testimonial Works

Creating Your Own Testimonial Space

After setting up an account, it’s time to create a new Space for your brand, which will serve as the landing page for testimonials. This can be customized with a brand name and logo, landing page heading and message, custom video, list of prompt questions, additional review information, and button color.

Gathering Reviews

In just two minutes, customers can utilize the landing page to write text testimonials, record videos, or upload pre-recorded videos. There’s also the option to embed a widget on your website for easy access.

Bringing in Testimonials from Other Sources

Testimonial supports importing reviews from various sources, such as social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram), external videos (YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia), and other reviews (Google, G2, Capterra, Yelp, Product Hunt, AppSumo, Amazon). Manual uploading of text and video testimonials is also possible.

Handling Your Reviews

An ‘inbox’ in the Space dashboard neatly organizes incoming testimonials. For each review, you can add it to your Wall of Love, tag it, share it, download it, edit it, delete, and even send a response to the reviewer.

Showcasing Your Testimonials

With a collection of social proof at hand, it’s time to display them on your website using the Wall of Love. Choose between a masonry grid or carousel slider, and select which testimonials to show. Customize the widget’s appearance and functionality, and even add cool features like auto-scrolling, randomized order, or a search bar.

Monitoring Your Metrics

Subscribing to the Metrics addon offers insights into your testimonials’ performance. Track landing page and Wall of Love statistics, such as page views, unique visitors, and average time on page. For video testimonials, monitor view count, total watch time, and average playing time.

🧩 Integrations

Integrating with Your Website (WordPress, Webflow, Wix, etc.)

I can easily add Testimonial to any website because it offers an HTML embed code. This code uses an iFrame, ensuring that compatibility and styling issues are minimized.

Zapier Integration

By connecting Testimonial with Zapier, I unlock numerous automation opportunities. It contains:

Trigger: Activates when a new testimonial is received.

Action: Sends an email requesting a testimonial.

With this integration, I’m able to:

• Automatically share new testimonials on my social media pages.
• Request testimonials from customers after a product purchase.
• Save video testimonials to Google Drive, Dropbox, and other storage services.

Using Webhooks for Notifications

If I don’t use Zapier, I still have the option to benefit from Testimonial’s webhook feature. This allows me to send real-time event notifications to external services like SureTriggers or Make.

🚲 Ease of Use

I can confidently say that Testimonial.to is incredibly user-friendly. The interface is clean and well-organized, making it easy to navigate. As I went through the platform, I appreciated the onboarding modals and tooltips that guided me. It’s evident that significant effort was put into ensuring an optimal user experience, eliminating the need for me to search for features or consult the documentation.

🛟 Customer Support

In my experience, the customer support was quite efficient – I received a response to my inquiry within 30 minutes. Additionally, I have been following Damon on Twitter and the overall product experience is reliable, so I believe customer support will not disappoint. Testimonial also offers a comprehensive knowledge base featuring detailed tutorials for further assistance.

💵 Pricing

Testimonial offers various plans to cater to different needs, starting with a free Starter option. However, the Starter plan’s limited number of testimonials makes it more suitable as an initial stepping stone.

For most users, the Premium plan at $50 per month should suffice, while upgrading to Ultimate ($150 per month) or Agency ($300 per month or more) provides added benefits like more spaces, staff accounts, and personalized onboarding. Additionally, Video Metrics and Curator can be purchased as separate add-ons.

Given its features, Testimonial’s pricing reflects its position as a premium product, which is understandable considering the cost of video hosting. Plus, a 7-day free trial allows potential users to explore the platform before fully committing.

🔖 Testimonial.to Coupon Code

I discovered a link that grants a 15% discount for the first year. What’s great is that no promo code is required; the reduction is automatically applied during checkout.

🔥 Do I Recommend Testimonial.to?

As a frequent user of Testimonial.to, I am continually impressed by its effectiveness and ease of use. This exceptional product simplifies testimonial collection which can be a cumbersome task for businesses.

With a fast, modern, and user-friendly interface, Testimonial.to is a pleasure to navigate. However, the pricing may be a concern for new businesses as the starting cost of $50 per month may not be feasible for budget-conscious entrepreneurs.

In contrast, established businesses should not hesitate to invest in Testimonial.to. Utilizing testimonials can significantly boost conversions and sales, and Testimonial.to streamlines this process effortlessly.

☁️ How to Sign Up

Begin with Testimonial

I decided to try Testimonial.to for showcasing my brand’s impressive reviews. If you also want to experience this remarkable tool, click here to sign up. With that link, you’ll benefit from a 15% discount on your subscription for the first year.

The platform turned out to be accessible, providing outstanding value for the investment. Testimonial.to excelled in functionality, ease of use, documentation, and support. Here are the ratings I gave:

Aspect	Rating
Functionality	5/5
Ease of Use	5/5
Documentation & Support	5/5
Value for Money	4.7/5

My editor’s rating was 4.9/5, and the overall rating I assigned was 4.9/5. So, give Testimonial.to a try and see the difference it can make for your brand.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s a useful approach for composing review testimonials?

A good method for writing review testimonials is to:

• Focus on the specific benefits and results the client experienced.
• Be authentic and genuine in your tone and language.
• Include the client’s name, company, and role for credibility.
• Keep it short and concise, while effectively conveying the message.

How do I make a testimonial video?

To create a testimonial video, follow these steps:

1. Choose the right clients to feature, ideally those with a compelling story.
2. Prepare a list of questions for the interview, focusing on the client’s experiences.
3. Record the interview in a suitable, well-lit location with good audio quality.
4. Edit the video, highlighting the most impactful parts, and keep it under three minutes.
5. Add captions or subtitles for better accessibility.

What are the crucial components of a successful testimonial format?

Essential elements of an effective testimonial format include:

• A headline summarizing the main benefit.
• A relatable, concise story of the client’s experience.
• Emphasizing key results and outcomes.
• Emotional appeal through the client’s satisfaction.
• Visual aids such as photos or charts, when applicable.

How can I design an impressive client testimonial?

To design an impactful client testimonial:

• Use clear and concise language.
• Feature quotes that highlight the most significant benefits.
• Use a visually appealing layout with proper white space, font, and design elements.
• Add visuals like headshots, graphics, or screenshots to support the testimonial.

Are there other options besides testimonial.to?

Some alternatives to testimonial.to are:

• Trustpilot
• G2 Crowd
• Capterra
• Yotpo
• Google Reviews

What separates a review from a testimonial?

A review is an individual’s objective evaluation of a product or service, often including both pros and cons. A testimonial, on the other hand, is a positive endorsement showcasing a client’s personal experience, usually focusing on the benefits and results they achieved.

When getting into product management as a career, it is possible to feel lost as a result of all the information available online and the numerous courses that sometimes get confusing.

As an aspiring Product Manager (PM), learning from those that went before us into this beautiful space is the ideal way to get started.

Dave Wascha has been a product manager for over 20 years. He says he got into this career when Apple was still a failing computer company and Mark Zuckerberg was only 13 years old. Quite an amount of experience don’t you think? He is currently Chief Product Officer at Zoopla.

I got the opportunity to tune in to a talk he made back in 2017 – Hail YouTube – and learnt really good lessons that I will take into this product management exploration.

I wanted to share those with you below:

1. Listen to customers

To avoid designing things that no one wants, listen to your customers well.

Don’t listen to customer’s solutions – they are not the best source of solutions. Listen to them to understand the problems they are facing then come up with solutions.

2. Watch the competition

When the competition releases new features, the feedback they get from their customers is a good source of understanding the customer’s problems.

Learn from the instant feedback, comments and reviews that your compeition is getting.

3. Don’t watch the competition

Do not focus on what the competition is doing.

Ask yourself if what the competition is doing will make your customer’s life easier. Tip – it won’t.

Your customers are talking to you about what will make their lives easier, listen to them; not the competition.

4. Get paid

Will customers pay for the new feature you are working on?

Make sure that people are seeing enough value in what you are building to pay for it.

5. Don’t worry too much about getting paid

If you are always chasing money with your product, you miss the chance to connect with your customers in a truly emotional way.

Always worry about building trust with your customers. Do the things that make them trust your product and brand without necessarily earning you money.

For example, making it possible for customers to freeze their cards and know they won’t be charged if they are not using your service. Make it possible for them to unfreeze it too.

Another example, make your customer smile with little effort in either copywriting, onboarding, etc. When people smile, they connect.

There is no ROI on making customers smile. No money to be made; but lots of connecting.

6. Speed up

Take action faster. There is a huge cost in delay or inaction.

Putting off making decisions destroys value.

The shelf-life of the features we ship is limited and the longer we take to go to market, the less value they have.

7. Say No

The CEO comes to you and asks for one feature for one customer, say No.

8. Stop saying No

Don’t say no for the wrong reasons. Understand why you are saying no.

When it is sensible and reasonable, say yes.

9. Don’t be a visionary

Products don’t need visionaries, they need product managers who are obsessed with solving customers’ problems.

The bottom-line, you are not Elon Musk; please sit down, haha.

10. Don’t confuse yourself with your customer

What you want does not matter. The customer’s problems matter.

You ≠ Customer

11. Be dumb

You don’t know anything – best assume that.

Have the capacity to be dumb.

Have the ability to look at things from the eyes of the customer.

If you would like to listen to the full talk, check it out here.

When users sign up for a free trial it feels amazing. It is an achievement every time even if it happens several times every day.

You know what else feels great? When they activate from free trials to premium plans essentially giving you their money. And here comes the real problem affecting most Saas companies:

The sinking feeling when a free trial cancels or never logs back into the app again.

Do you hear the rumbling sound of that? It is the sound of churn – the single biggest plague killing Saas companies. And it happens more than often.

According to a research done by Intercom, 40-60% of free trial users of a software or Saas application will use it once and never return. This means that they have a very low Day 1 Retention rate, which has a dismal impact on the LTV/CAC ratio. Simply put: when your new users churn out, you bear all the CAC, and get no of the LTV. 

Source: kissmetrics.com

That stat is staggering but it only means that so many companies [ startups] miss opportunities  to turn free trials to activated users. Their free trial users leave without realising the value the software brings.

It doesn’t have to be that way, not for you. Activation determines your app’s revenue and revenue determines your app’s survival. Higher activation rates are within your reach.

The goal of this blog post is to help you understand what activation rate is and how to optimise it so that you can escape the plague, activate more users, and achieve increased growth for your Saas. 

In addressing this, we will look at the following:

1. What is product activation point and activation rate?
2. What is Product Activation Rate Optimisation (PARO)?
3. How to identify your activation point?
4. Mapping out your onboarding flow
5. Identifying where users are dropping off leading to churn
6. Optimisation strategies to achieve a higher activation rate

What is product activation, activation point and activation rate?

Product activation refers to the action that realises the value of your Saas or offering to the user.

It is the user’s first experience of success with your Saas. 

The action that demonstrates to the user why your app will positively transform their lives.

I would say this is the action that delivers the first big win for both you and the user.

The point in your funnel where this happens is called the activation point. It is at this point where you deliver the value you promised.

To be clear, the activation point is not your Aha! moment. The Aha! moment happens before activation. However, it could be that either one or several Aha moments lead a user to the activation point. (Read: The Aha! Moment Guide for Product Onboarding)

For example, if we use the case of a Taxi-hailing app like Uber or Lyft, we can have the user journey mapped out as follows to illustrate the Aha moment and activation point.

User creates an account > he requests a ride > he is able to watch the driver arrive with an ETA > the ride arrives on time (Aha! moment) > the trip begins when he gets in the car > he is dropped off at his destination safely (activation point) > makes payment > leaves a positive review

In the flow above, the user experiences the Aha moment as a perceived value. At that point, the car has arrived but remember for the user to achieve their first success, they have to safely get to their destination. 

When they do, is when they realise the value that Uber promised. This is the activation point after which the user is happy to make the payment and leave a positive review.

In the case of a Saas application, we shall take the example of Userpilot and map out the user journey as follows:

User creates an account > she installs the Userpilot Chrome extension > she creates a product’s onboarding experience > previews it (Aha! moment) > installs javascript code on their website > deploys her first experience live (activation point) > selects a plan and pays her first Userpilot contract

In the Userpilot flow above, the action of previewing the first onboarding experience delivers the Aha! Moment. It is here where the user sees the perceived value of Userpilot. 

The promise Userpilot has made is that it will help her deliver the perfect product experience to her customers. While she achieved the Aha moment, the activation point is a few steps away. 

When she installs the javascript code on her website and deploys her first experience, it is at this point that Userpilot delivers on the promise. Her users can now see the onboarding flow. This is the activation point where Userpilot delivers their first success for the user.

This brings us to the activation rate. This is a percentage of the number of users that activate to become paid users out of the total number of acquired users.

Simply, if you have 200 free trials and 40 people successfully activate to become premium customers, your activation rate is 20%.

What is Product Activation Rate Optimisation (PARO)?

We already know what product activation rate is which makes it easier to define and understand what PARO means.

The most important word is optimisation. When you optimise something you are trying to use the least resources possible to make a process more efficient. In the case of activation rate optimisation, it just means identifying means to increase your product activation rate.

For instance, if your activation rate is 20%, what can you do to increase it to 25%, 30% and so on? 

Increased activation rates mean more activated users, higher revenues, increased growth and little churn.

This is the holy grail of Saas companies.

To understand activation rate optimisation, it is important to understand the fundamentals of optimisation. These are:

Step 1: Identifying the problematic process that needs to be optimised. In our case, our problematic process is the onboarding funnel.

Step 2: Analyzing if the process is achieving the desired goal. If the desired goal is for our Saas activation rate to be 35% and we are currently at 20% then our analysis shows our onboarding flow is not meeting the goal desired.

Step 3: Auditing the process to figure out the problematic steps and come up with solutions for them. In our onboarding flow, our audit might reveal that some steps are problematic to the users making more of them to quit the onboarding process before reaching the activation point.

Step 4: Implementing possible solutions to these problematic steps, getting rid of unnecessary stages and making the flow as efficient as possible.

Step 5: Monitoring whether the new tweaks in the process increase or decrease the activation rates.

Step 6: Repeat.

In pursuing this article further, we are in agreement on step 1 and step 2 of the fundamentals which are: the onboarding flow is our problematic process and it does not achieve the desired goal. We would like to optimise it.

How to identify your activation point?

In order to be sure that the activation rate is not achieving the desired goal, we have to identify the activation point. This is the point where we would like to take users to as fast as possible to realise their first success using our Saas.

For Userpilot, it is the point where users install the javascript code and deploy a live onboarding experience for their customers.

For Twitter, the activation point is when new users follow at least 30 people.

For Facebook, it is when users add 10 friends within 14 days.

For Trello it is when new users successfully create a new board and add a number of cards to the board.

Source: userpilot.co

We will expound on these shortly.

You need to know what your equivalent to following 30 people or adding 10 friends is. 

Most Saas product managers think they know the activation point without measuring. But you cannot know the activation point as a mere assumption.

Every activation point is guided by a metric which is driven by data.

Remember the example about Twitter’s activation point being new users following at least 30 people? What is 30? A number. Data. And Twitter didn’t just stumble on the number, they actually measured that.

Josh Elman, who was Twitter’s product lead for growth and relevance until 2011, analysed their usage numbers. He found out that once a user had followed 30 people, they were highly likely to be active forever. If Twitter didn’t get a new user to follow 30 people that person was very unlikely to return.

Facebook’s Vice President of Growth, Alex Schulz, when asked about the magic moment for Facebook while speaking at Y Combinator, he said: 

“Zuckerberg talked at Y Combinator about getting people to 10 friends in 14 days; that is why we focus on this metric. The number one most important thing in a social media site is connecting to your friends, because without that, you have a completely empty newsfeed, and clearly you’re not going to come back; you’ll never get any notifications, and you’ll never get any friends telling you about things they are missing on the site.”

When you have been taking users through a clear onboarding process and measuring the activation rate, getting the activation point should not be so hard because it’s in the data.

While this is true some of the time, sometimes there is a grey area. Your activation point might not be a single action but several actions, each of them activation points, that your users need to take to become customers. 

We know that some Saas applications are very complex.

Source: towardsdatascience.com

What might be realised value for one user is not the same for another user. 

Let’s take the example of Hubspot. It has several products including marketing, sales, CRM, and service hubs. It is possible User A activated after realising value in the CRM and User B after realising value in the Sales hub. 

A second example is Lemlist. It promises users that it will help them send cold emails that get replies. It is possible User A activates after successfully sending several cold emails in the free trial while User B only activates after getting replies from the cold emails sent.

The last example is Tidio, a chat and live chat solution that helps its users to create chatbots, live chat their customers and do email marketing. It is possible that user A activates after creating an automated chatbot, User B after sending out their first email campaign using imported contacts while user C only activates after deploying the live chat function on his website.

If you have a complex Saas like any of the three above, here is how to define your user’s desired outcomes and quickly find the activation point:

a) Talk to your activated users.

In the early days, Airbnb wanted to understand why the hosts who had signed up did, in order to create an onboarding process that drives new hosts to that activation point. So they walked door to door to talk to those hosts.

Walking door to door in the case of a Saas app is a bit insane. But you can conduct surveys, polls, video calls, and customer interviews at a small scale to understand why your premium users upgraded. What was the action or outcome in your app that did it for them?

b). Conduct A/B tests

Do you know that you can actually stage more than one version of your product with separate onboarding flows to understand where more users get activated?

Facebook does it all the time. Mark Zuckerberg once said that at any one time there were more than 10,000 versions of Facebook around the world. Credit to them and the resources to achieve such level of testing, but for a Saas small business, it might be unrealistic.

Source: berkeley.edu

Even so, you can do split testing on different user onboarding flows that have different activation points in order to know which one gives a better retention rate. 

This is where cohort analysis and segmentation of users is important. In cohort analysis, you group various users together in different groups in order to analyse their behaviours in your Saas app. 

Rather than look at your users as one unit, segmentation ensures you can test and measure to find which group responded better to which onboarding process.

c). Look deeper into your data

Again, the data point is coming up because it’s important for finding your activation points and moving forward with activation rate optimisation.

Take a very deep dive into your existing customer data and onboarding process. The goal is to uncover those hidden features that your customer finds to be adding the most value.

You will see the value of this shortly under strategies that have been used in activation rate optimisation by other companies. 

At this point, we have the activation point(s) in place. It’s time to break down our onboarding process to discover opportunities to optimise our activation rates.

Mapping out your onboarding flow

This stage is quite simple. In order to perform product activation rate optimisation, we have to dig into the current onboarding funnel.

When breaking down your onboarding flow, you need to focus on the aha moment and the activation point. Remember, the only reason we are breaking down this process is to analyse what the journey of our new users looks like before they REALISE the value of our Saas app.

Here are two quick examples:

Example 1: Airbrake is an application that monitors code to find and fix errors in a few minutes. Here is how they break down their onboarding flow:

• User creates an account at Airbrake
• They indicate the programming language they use e.g PHP, Javascript, Python, etc. 
• They install and deploy lines of code in their application (aha moment)
• Capture their first coding error (aha moment)
• Mark the error resolved within a few minutes (activation point)

Example 2: Ghost.org is a modern publishing platform that helps its users to create and publish blogs. Here is how they map out their onboarding flow:

• New user creates free trial on Ghost.org
• Creates a blog
• Sets up the blog
• Publishes first post (aha moment)
• Chooses a theme (aha moment)
• Adds a domain name (activation point)

In a few clear steps both Airbrake and Ghost have gotten their users to the activation point while passing through more than one aha moment.

Have you broken down your onboarding process yet? Because the next step is crucial for product activation rate optimisation.

Identifying where users are dropping off leading to churn

This step is the reason you will be doing optimisation. This is the point where you learn why your activation rate is low. 

Once you mapped out your onboarding flow, you should have your data across the onboarding funnel. 

In the case of the Ghost.org example above, the onboarding funnel wasn’t always as indicated. Infact John O’Nolan, the Founder/CEO, has blogged about how they discovered cracks in their onboarding channels and found ways to fix them to increase activation rates.

In one instance, he describes how they discovered that while 90% of users would create a blog in step 2, only 60% would proceed to set it up in step 3. This indicates a drop off point for a large number of users in the onboarding flow. 

For Twoodoo, now closed, they detailed how they discovered drop off points in their onboarding process. One realisation was that most of their users dropped off when requested to fill in a long questionnaire at the sign up stage. Their activation rate was only 2% at this point. This is a huge drop off point that totally discouraged 98% of their free trial users.

Twitter had a huge problem in its early years. People would set up accounts and disappear. When Jake Stein of RJMetrics did an analysis of the Twitter data in 2010, he found out that a large percentage of Twitter accounts were inactive. 

About 25% of accounts had no followers. More importantly, about 40% of accounts had never sent out a single tweet. 

In these three examples, the apps used their data to find out where users were dropping off in the onboarding flow.

Right out of the gate, they found issues to resolve in order to optimise their activation rates, improve user numbers and achieve increased growth.

• What is your data telling you? 
• Do you have stage by stage conversion rates for your onboarding process? 
• Are you seeing a huge drop in conversion rates at any particular stage of your onboarding process?

If you are not measuring the success of your onboarding flow, you won’t know what to work on for your product activation rate optimisation. 

But here is what you can do right away:

• Set up product usage analytics. It is simple, if you can’t measure something, you can’t improve it. Joe of Userpilot has written a detailed guide about How Product Usage Analytics Can Boost Engagement and compared MixPanel vs Google Analytics.
• Do you know what actions are most important to get your user to the activation point? If you don’t, pick your activation point and work backwards or talk to your most profitable customers. Ask them what actions they took before becoming a customer. These are the actions you want to encourage others to take.
• Setup your activation funnel to collect data. 
• Track and measure steps in your onboarding flow. Find the steps where most of your users are dropping off.

Since you have now found the cracks in your onboarding flow, it’s time to patch up those cracks and increase your activation rates.

10 Optimisation strategies to achieve a higher activation rate

#1. Data collection from dropped users

You can take ages guessing why users are dropping off at a particular stage of your onboarding flow or you could just ask them. 

Are you able to call them? Do that. 

Alternatively, set up a short survey to find out why they did not complete a certain step in your activation funnel. If your step is correlated to a product feature, learn more about feature surveys.

If you have several ideas why they might not have finished that step, add those ideas in a poll and send it to them. The winning vote will give you a great perspective.

This is qualitative data directly from users who did not finish activation. They did not achieve their first success with your app and can provide invaluable insight.

There is no better data than this. It gives you the roadblocks right away so that you can get started sorting them out.

#2. A/B testing activation funnels

Carrying out A/B onboarding experiments is crucial to finding out which activation funnels have the highest retention rates. 

Design two activation flows. Test them on different segments of new users. Determine where you have the opportunity to do activation rate optimisation.

Ghost.org carried out an A/B test to discover opportunities to optimise their activation rates. They added a step in their existing onboarding flow to find out if the activation rates would be higher.

The step added was to ask the user to add a custom theme to their blog. 

CEO John O’Nolan said that their activation rates jumped by more than 10 times. 

Source: ghost.org

Users who added a custom theme were 10 times more likely to proceed to the next step than users who did not. That translates to a 1000% increase in the conversion rate.

#3. Email Drip campaigns

If a user has created an account and only completed 20% of the onboarding process, logged out and did not return, how do you get them back? 

You create drip email campaigns to re-engage them.

These should be conditional emails that you send to users who forget to finish the funnel. By conditional it means that your email is based on “if this then that” logic depending on the stage where the user left the app. 

For example, if a user has completed step 3 but has not done step 4 then send email X on day X. 

In 2016, while running a technology blog, I was looking for ways to optimise revenues. I signed up at The Blogger Network (now Monumetric) but did not finish the onboarding process. Here is a drip email that I received: 

Amazing, right? By the way, I completed the application.

#4. Leading actions

To help users complete the in-app activation funnel, you can set up an onboarding process with leading actions that nudge them to the aha moments and eventually to the activation points.

For this to be achieved, you need to know which steps are related to the value discovery for your Saas app.

A good example of this is Close.io.

Close.io is a sales CRM for startups and small businesses. This is a crowded field with top notch players like Hubspot and Salesforce. 

Therefore, Close.io cannot risk losing any user because for what they do, there are more than 20 other alternatives in the market. 

They realised early on that for high activation and retention rates, they had to lead new users into a space where they see value. The most important stage being importing of contacts from CSV files into the CRM. Without the contacts, the value of the CRM is not achieved.

Source: cloudsponge.com

They designed their onboarding flow in such a way that new users will not be launched into the platform until they have imported contacts and set up an emailing address.

Every action of their onboarding process attempts to lead new users to these two aha moments which then help them realise the value of the Saas app.

#5. Show users desired outcome

Where you are able to show the new user their desired outcome, you should. This shortens your users’ time to value incredibly. The user is able to experience immediate value or even perceive it.

Canva are masters of this. 

Canva helps people to create beautiful designs of brochures, images, logos, presentations, etc. Xingyi Ho detailed the explanation while speaking to Appcues. 

They tested what activation rates would be if they onboarded people who said they wanted to design posters by showing them already designed posters to use as templates.

Source: canva.com

For posters alone, they were able to increase their activation rates by 10%. They used only 5% of new users to do the experiment.

#6. Provide examples or templates

When you need users to do a complex task in the activation funnel, it is better to provide them with a template which they can use to build what you want them to. 

Hubspot CRM for instance requires you to import contacts in a particular CSV format. However, this might be a complex process for some users who don’t know the format. 

The easy way for them is to get a sample CSV sheet with at least one row filled in with dummy data for them to follow.

#7. Personalisation

Personalisation creates intimate connections. There are various ways to personalise your activation funnel to increase your activation rates. For example;

• Call users by their names e.g Hi Nancy, upload your contacts to proceed.
• Tracking their actions during onboarding so that you send them personalised conditional emails if they don’t complete the activation funnel.

The Canva example earlier is a perfect personalisation strategy too. They only show poster templates to users who say they want to design posters. 

Netflix is many things including a Saas app.

In the app, they show you recommendations of movies and say “Because you watched movie X” we are showing you these other movies that are similar.

Make sure to read 4 Ways to Personalize Your User Onboarding Experience

#8. Gamification of activation flow

Gaming is addictive and very engaging. In fact, in a Saas application it can be a huge incentive to make your users come back. 

Gamification can be implemented through rewards and competitions. This makes the experience fun and playful. 

You can use coupons or step-related badges to reward users and encourage them to finish the next steps in the process. 

You can also send them drip emails with a progress report for that week. 

I use Duolingo to study French and my weekly report comes in with a gamified angle. Check below what I received last week:

It shows I earned less XPs than the previous week. There is more:

I spent a total of 1hr and 30 minutes in the app for the week, learning 16 new words and completing 23 lessons.

Generally the news wasn’t very good for me, so this made me work harder this week. I have more than doubled last week’s XPs.

As you can see, gamification has made me a returning user on Duolingo. Every time I can see the rewards, I am motivated to go back. How can you use gamification in your saas app?

#9. Little steps of progress

Does your onboarding flow have a step that requires the user to do a lot of work on their side for it to be achieved? Is it possible for you to break that action into small little steps of progress?

Always remember that customers are impatient. If they cannot achieve their goal quickly with you, they will drop off. 

If you make them do one big step that consumes their time, they will drop off too. 

Source: hopechannel.com

Therefore, break down your onboarding process and the huge steps into little steps that take a few minutes or seconds to complete. 

In addition, ask yourself if some of the time-consuming steps in your activation flow are necessary. 

• Are you asking for information that you don’t need at this time?
• Is the action you are asking your user to do correlated to their value discovery?
• Can this action be simplified?
• Can it be broken down into 3 or 4 little steps that take seconds to complete?

#10. Adjacent users theory

Adjacent users are users who signed up for your free trial but never successfully became engaged. 

As we have seen earlier, Twitter had this issue. So did LinkedIn and Instagram. 

In fact, I am part of the Twitter statistics.

These are users who got stuck somewhere in the activation flow.

What they need is to be helped out of where they got stuck. I would say you need to unstuck them.

Find out why they got stuck. Were there too many obstacles? Was it because of poor onboarding or lack of it?

The reason these adjacent users are important is because their insight will help you remove the roadblocks in your flow. 

In addition to that, it is widely known in Saas businesses that it is easier and cheaper to activate adjacent users than going after total strangers of your app. 

Try to read about adjacent users theory. 

Some of my favorite optimisation strategies that can improve your product activation rate have to do with Psychology. 

Strategies like the Zeigarnik, IKEA, and Progress effects are crucial to product activation rate optimisation. Luckily, Ali Shad has discussed them in much detail in app onboarding psychology. 

After reading this guide, you can go ahead with your PARO mission. Optimise, measure, repeat. While at it, remember that Userpilot is here to help you deploy the right in-app onboarding experiences that retain more users in your activation flow to achieve increased growth for your Saas app.