SaaS organisations have a lot of new challenges ahead. With product-led growth at the forefront of their initiatives, product managers within these organisations are scrambling to create and maintain a memorable and engaging product experience. But what does a good product experience look like and how can the users themselves help these teams beef it up? The answer is user feedback.
In this post, we will discuss the following:
- What is the product experience (PX)?
- Product experience vs user experience vs customer experience
- What constitutes a good PX strategy?
- How user feedback will shape up your product experience
Let’s get started.
What is the product experience?
A subset of the entire user experience, the product experience (PX) refers to the customer journey that takes place within the product alone. In other words, it looks at how product users interact with a digital product. It is there to guide and nudge users at the right touchpoints and help them achieve their goals while using the product. A good product experience demands a clear onboarding process, a product that is discoverable and easy to navigate, and adequate in-product support.
If the product is the vehicle, product experience is the journey.
Chameleon
Product experience vs user experience vs customer experience
So how does the product experience differ from the more commonly used terms: user experience and customer experience?
Customer experience (CX) comprises the interaction between customers and a brand from A to Z in the customer journey. That means from the very beginning, i.e. a landing page, to using the website and product.
User experience (UX) falls under the umbrella of customer experience. The UX comprises the interaction between users and the website, product or service. And typically this is more focused on the design and UI side of the product.
As you can see these two are quite different from product experience (PX) which – as previously mentioned – focuses on the interaction between users and the product itself.
What constitutes a good PX strategy?
Coming up with and maintaining a good PX strategy is a challenge faced by many product teams in the SaaS market. Typically when drawing up a PX strategy, product managers work with three key components: Analytics, Engagement and Feedback. In fact, Gainsight does a great job of explaining these three components here in their Essential Guide to Product Experience. But let’s take a look at each of these more closely…
Analytics
In order to understand how users are using your product and identify causation, product managers gather data on user behaviour using various analyses. One of the most common types of analyses are path analyses. Using tools such as heatmapping or session recording tools, product managers can visualise user activity, track how users are moving through the product and identify unexpected user flows.
Additionally, many organisations also leverage a funnel analysis so as to uncover where users are running into trouble and/or where they are unable to complete a task within the product.
Engagement
Based on these insights, product managers can then draw up a plan for creating and maintaining product engagement among users. To achieve a healthy level of engagement (not to mention, product adoption) this typically includes a strategy for user onboarding, keeping users abreast of the newest features and preventing existing users from going inactive.
Find out how NCSA builds better products with user feedback
In this story, NCSA explains why nothing can replace capturing feedback from a user actively engaged with your product.
User onboarding is – in fact – one of the most critical processes for introducing your users to your product and leading them through all of the necessary workflows. It’s also an opportunity to educate them and communicate valuable tips and information for using your product successfully.
Additionally, there should be attention put towards announcing and raising awareness for the newest features and developments within your product. This is often done using notifications within the product.
And lastly, many product teams make use of user reactivation campaigns whereby the user is re-engaged with the product by way of email reminders.
Feedback
And as a final component of your PX strategy, it is advisable to incorporate user feedback. In fact, feedback ties the first two components together in that it provides context to the data collected and gives product teams insights into how they can best structure different parts of their product, i.e. onboarding processes.
Let’s look at an example.
Your analytics software tells you:
Many users are creating new surveys, but failing to finish and deploy these surveys.
Your customer feedback software tells you:
- “Where do I deploy my feedback surveys?”
- “I have created my survey, but can’t find the next step in the software for deploying the survey.”
- “Why isn’t there a clear next step after finalising the design of my survey?”
What you’ve learned:
Users are failing to deploy their surveys because the navigation to the deployment section after creating a survey isn’t clear.
Using this information, you can make changes to the deployment section so that it is easy to find in the navigation. You could also create tips within your product guiding users from one step to the next to clarify.
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Intrigued? Let’s deep dive into the feedback component a little more…
How user feedback will shape up your product experience
Though user feedback can be gathered in a variety of ways, one of the most effective ways is through digital product feedback surveys. These are feedback surveys deployed right in your product that help bring focus and alignment to your strategy around optimising the product experience.
So what’s the best way to gather this feedback? Feedback surveys should be a frictionless addition to your product experience. That means they should be designed in such a way that insights are gathered quickly, non-intrusively, and in a relevant manner. This typically translates to deploying surveys that are short (i.e. microsurveys) and targeted to the right product users.
In order to shape the product experience, it’s important to leverage these surveys for both gathering insights on existing products and features as well as gathering insights on new products and services. With these two approaches, product teams can successfully optimise existing product flows and manage their product roadmap.
Need some additional tips on how to collect user feedback within your product? Be sure to check out our Guide to Collecting Product Feedback here.
Combined with the quantitative insights (gathered from web analytics tools), the qualitative insights obtained from user feedback give you the opportunity to deep dive into the mind of the customer and understand their perspective. So by analysing these two types of data simultaneously, you’ll be able to get a more holistic view of your product experience.
Adopting the right user feedback solution
The benefits of using user feedback have been laid out for you. Now it’s time to get started with a solution fit for your needs.
Mopinion is an all-in-one user feedback solution that empowers organisations to collect and analyse website, mobile, and email campaign feedback. Its easy-to-use interface allows you to build, design and configure feedback forms to suit your brand standards. Additionally, advanced targeting means you can show forms to specific groups of visitors/users and gain insights into why they are struggling, or where your experience is lacking.
Once collected, you can visualise your product feedback using customisable dashboards and charts, and carry out advanced analyses. A great way to organise your product feedback data is by tagging items based on their category. Mopinion’s tag management system is great for assigning feedback items to different teams, and the smart notifications feature means you can always stay on top of your product feedback.
Ready to see Mopinion in action?
Want to learn more about Mopinion’s all-in-1 user feedback platform? Don’t be shy and take our software for a spin! Do you prefer it a bit more personal? Just book a demo. One of our feedback pro’s will guide you through the software and answer any questions you may have.
