Actionable insights at every stage of development: practical use cases for every team

In the world of software development, there is a saying (seemingly adapted from a quote from architect Frank Lloyd Wright), “You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledgehammer on the construction site.” In essence, problems can be discovered and easily corrected when in draft format, or they can be forcefully adjusted (at a loss of time and money in the process) when at a more complete stage. By getting customer and other critical stakeholder feedback early in your process, you gather the data that helps you make more informed decisions when everything is greenfield and focus on the efforts that drive the best outcomes.

Needs discovery 

During the discovery phase, this is a great opportunity to better understand your customers—yet this is often perceived to be a time-consuming endeavor and is often skipped in product development. Talking to customers during early-stage discovery could mean identifying and getting to know different personas, or understanding high-level pain points.

Regardless of your goal, as soon as you have a concept in mind, even if it’s just a sketch on a whiteboard, run a few quick tests with customers and potential customers to validate that you’re on the right track. Gathering customer insight early on can save time and budget later on in development—not to mention avoid the risk of building a product no one wants.

How to do it

Remote, live customer interviews are a great place to start during early-stage discovery and validation. Gathering feedback via interview enables your team to have open-ended discussions about a variety of topics, ask customers about their habits, and even have them complete specific tasks (with guidance if they get stuck). Interviews also enable teams to ask follow-up questions and observe non-verbal cues, helping them quickly gather critical insights that will drive more informed decisions.

Teams can also benefit from remote, self-guided tests as well. At this point in your development, you might not have a product to test, but that’s OK. This is a great time to do some competitive research and discovery to gain a better understanding of how customers currently interact with what’s available—and what they like or dislike about those products or experiences. 

Tests don’t have to be complicated, either. They can be as simple as asking your target audience how they currently perform a particular task with your competition, and how they feel about that experience.  Or, you can ask about their everyday lifestyle and habits, and their thoughts on a particular product.

In the following video, see the UserTesting Contributor Network in action, and how they evaluate mobile experiences—from first impressions to site satisfaction.

The insights you’ll uncover will give you a fast (think hours, not days) gut check early in the development process—before any code has been written. This ensures your team moves forward, equipped with data to support a confident decision. 

If you're feeling inspired, you can get candid feedback to help validate new concepts or ideas right away with a test template. Click below to get actionable insights fast.

You know the moment: everyone’s huddled around, eagerly anticipating the moment that you push the proverbial button and all the months of hard work go live. And if you’re like most folks, you have also gone through the experience where things don’t necessarily go to plan, and you’re left scrambling trying to patch up an unforeseen problem. Ensure go-to-market success by getting feedback prior to launch, whether it’s a new product, feature enhancement, marketing campaign, or another project. Get confirmation before you go live so you can launch with confidence.

Mobile validation

Your web or app can render very differently according to device type, screen size and operating system. Get confirmation based on these criteria to ensure users, across all different technologies, have the same positive experience.

Mobile is an important part of any successful company's strategy—but it's just one piece of a larger puzzle. At the heart of every successful company is a customer-centric mindset that relies on human insights at every stage of development, on every device, and on every channel to keep creating great experiences for their customers.

Testing your mobile experiences with real users throughout your development cycle will help you discover the drivers of behaviors on mobile, including why users abandon apps, what fuels frequent usage, and how you can improve experiences to drive greater adoption. Not sure what customers think of your mobile app? Try the template below and get actionable insights fast.

Once you’ve released your product or campaign, what do you do? You sit back, relax and enjoy the spoils, right? Of course not! In today’s fast-moving and competitive market, you have to keep moving, iterating, and innovating. Gather information to understand your customers’ evolving needs, and to get valuable insight on what your competitors are doing, to stay ahead and continue providing what your customers want and expect.

Competitive intelligence

Are you just dying to know: what is your competitor’s secret sauce? What is giving them the edge? Our contributor network of real consumers will give you the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what’s working for competitors and areas where you may be falling behind. When you understand your competitors’ kryptonite (or their competitive advantage), you can make the improvements that help you surge ahead and win more business.

Learn how customers feel about your competitors and uncover how your experiences can outperform.

Ecommerce optimization

Wondering where customers are getting tripped up, why they are dropping off and why conversions aren’t happening? By watching a recording of the customer’s screen and hearing them explain why they are making the choices they are, you gain a deeper understanding of customer intent, expectations and the challenges they experience. Insights inform optimizations from start to finish.

Address customer drop-off and abandoned shopping carts with the template below.

Content that's clear, engaging, conveys a point, and is well organized is more likely to be consumed. You’ve made it this far in this use case ebook so you really can’t disagree. Whether it’s a marketing campaign or in-product messaging, it’s critical to provide the right content experiences to engage and educate customers, to encourage expected behaviors or workflows.

Cart sort and information architecture

Just as a new building needs a strong foundation and a logic to its layout, the same is true for the presentation of your ideas and concepts. Whether you’re redesigning a complex web or mobile application or curating website content for prospective buyers, get insight on optimizing information architecture, so that you are effectively guiding customers through layers of information to ensure an optimal workflow or a customer journey that ends in conversion.

Learn from your audience as they group content and label categories with the card sorting template below. 

Site design validation and discovery

Just as the actual content on your website matters, equally important is the layout and display of that information. Putting too much or not enough can result in feast or famine. Get customer reactions to understand how much information is enough to effectively compel audiences, to optimize the design and layout according to their needs and preferences.

Understand how much information is enough to optimize site design and layout and effectively compel customers to engage with the template below. 

Ad creative and messaging validation

The best ads capture the human experience and touch customers at an intellectual and emotional level. And the worst? Well the worst ads are created based on a misguided understanding of how to connect with customers and often end up dissected and derided on social media. Get feedback on whether your ads resonate with your target audiences before you launch. Ensure that the response you’re expecting is the response that you get.

Make sure your ads resonate with your target audiences before you launch, using the template below.

Site content validation and discovery (SEM/SEO)

Presenting easy to find, compelling and relevant content—and in the moment that customers are searching for it—is key to communicating your product and brand’s worth and convincing customers to choose your offerings. With qualitative feedback, alongside other analytics data you may be using, you can better understand the ideas and topics your customers are looking for to inform your content strategy.

Use the template below to understand the topics your customers are searching for and pair with analytics data.

Real-world experiences

Ever wish you could be a fly on the wall and watch your customers as they went about activities and decisions? And even better: if you could read their minds to better understand why they do the things they do? Using the back-facing camera on their phones, consumers record their experience at home, in-store (shop alongs), competitor stores, or really anywhere, giving you the most direct view of how they live and make decisions.

Gain the most authentic lifestyle insights, observing as customers freely move about in their native settings with the template below.

When it comes to creating a world-class customer experience, you need to mind the gap—the empathy gap, that is. But before we dive right in, let’s first set the stage. Briefly, don’t worry.

The CX industry is constantly evolving—to keep pace with the needs of consumers. A global economy means businesses are forced to pivot and adapt—one day, that might be due to a global pandemic, and the next it'll be something different. So whether you’re building the next best SaaS product or redesigning your mobile banking app, the old motto still rings true: you are not your user.

Despite the success you’ve had so far, there’s always so much to learn about your customers. And believe it or not, most brands aren’t as customer-centric as they think. Enter, the empathy gap.

What is the empathy gap?

In general, the empathy gap refers to the idea of not being able to relate to the emotions, needs, and feelings of others because they’re naturally experiencing the world around them differently than you are. 

Many brands suffer from what’s been coined the empathy gap. Studies by Gartner and PwC, respectively, found that while 90% of customer-facing employees said they understood the needs of their customers, only 38% of consumers feel the employees they interact with understand their needs. 

Collect customer feedback to close the empathy gap

It’s nearly impossible to predict the needs and actions of others. Which is why you probably shouldn’t. While it’s true that great product ideas can be stumbled upon, the most successful, lasting ones need testing and iterating to meet the needs of a wide audience, not just the needs of some.

If you haven’t guessed already, there’s no better way to understand what your customers need than by asking them. Here are a couple of tried-and-true methods for doing this that can save you time, money, and resources.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that while the steps of product development or any project plan are often presented as linear, in reality, inspiration and challenges can crop up anywhere and at any stage. It’s rare for a team to follow the process from start to finish.

If in the course of development you get feedback that creates the opportunity to pivot and change direction or creates an offshoot project for another team to pursue, these are moments to regroup and decide how to proceed. The point is: let feedback from your customers be your guiding light—your proverbial North Star—to ensure that all the work, time, and other resources you put into creating newer and better experiences line up with what your customers want.