If you successfully integrate in-app surveys into your mobile app, you’re going to be rolling in customer data, all without asking for more than a few seconds of your customer’s time.
We know you’re going to have questions, and we’re here to answer all of them patiently.
- What are in-app surveys? How do they work?
- Benefits of an in-app survey
- What questions do I ask in an in-app survey?
- What are the best practices for an in-app survey?
We’ll talk about all that and more in this article. So let’s dive right in.
What Is An In-App Survey?
Let’s start with an in-app survey definition.
An in-app survey is a term for a survey integrated into your mobile app. It is made to be part of your customer journey. So, customers encounter the survey while or after interacting with key elements in your app.
For example, when you order food online or book an Uber, how often do you get asked for a star rating once the order is delivered? The answer is: almost always. That’s an in-app survey.
Apps like Uber have integrated app surveys into their product so that it appears seamlessly. Do you remember ever asking to fill out a survey? Probably not. The in-app survey is prompted by the app itself.
But the more important question is: Have you ever felt negatively about in-app surveys? We’re guessing that you haven’t. They barely take any time, and they have almost become a routine part of our ordering experience. We also appreciate being able to give good feedback to riders and delivery personnel.
That’s the power of in-app surveys: they provide you with quality data without ever bothering your customers.
In-app surveys are available on SurveySparrow with our Mobile SDK. You can try this feature (and all others) with a free account.
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Benefits of An In-App Survey
It’s fairly obvious that an in-app survey is beneficial because it helps you get user data. But what is the value of that data for your business? To understand the true power of app surveys, we need to understand how they can help you improve your company.
1. Test A Feature
If you have a mobile app, you’re most likely going to add new features and move things around. That is, after all, how you improve your app and customer experience.
When you introduce a new feature, you’re going to be curious about whether your customers find it useful. The easiest way to find out is to ask them through an in-app survey.
2. Identify Pain Points
Whether your app has been around for years or is in early development, users will be able to identify their pain points while using it.
People who have been using your app for a long time will have already have opinions about what they like and what they don’t. With quick in-app surveys, like these product surveys for example, you give customers the opportunity to express those grievances.
3. Get Feedback On Your Services
If you’re part of the platform economy, you’re connecting service providers with customers who want those services. Such companies often have little control over the quality of service being provided, especially at scale.
By using an in-app survey, you can identify which service providers are doing well, and which are harming your company’s reputation.
In-App Survey Questions: What Should You Ask?
We’ve gone through all the reasons that in-app surveys are beneficial, but a lot depends on how they’re executed. At what point in the customer journey are you presenting them with an in-app survey? What questions are you asking, and what input methods do customers have? These are all important decisions.
Let’s focus for now on the questions you should be asking. Here are a few questions that are perfect for an in-app survey.
1. How likely is it that you would recommend our service to a friend or colleague?
Let’s start with one of the most popular in-app survey questions. It’s called an NPS (net promoter score) survey. The idea is to find out how likely your users are to promote your service on a scale of 1 to 10. An average rating from all your responses will be your net promoter score.
NPS surveys are the perfect fit for the app environment. They are fast, easy, and barely interfere with the user experience. On the other hand, what they help you find is invaluable: whether you’re able to turn your users into promoters of your app and company.
2. How did you find out about us?
While the previous question offered respondents with a range between 1-10, this is more of a multiple choice question. For in-app surveys, we recommend having questions that can be answered with one-tap responses.
When you ask users how they found out about you, you’re getting valuable information on which of your marketing strategies are working. If you need help prioritizing between your marketing efforts, send this quick in-app survey question and get all the data you need.
3. How important are the following aspects of our app to you? (ease of use, minimalism, responsiveness etc.)
Before making big changes to your app, you definitely want to take your users’ feelings into account. After all, they’re going to be impacted by your decisions, either positively or negatively. A customer feedback mobile app survey can help you with that.
If you’re planning to load a payment app with a ton of functionality, for example, ask your users if they want that. Are they alright with a compromise in responsiveness for more features? Keeping your users in the loop is the best way to design an app useful to customers. With an in-app survey, you can find out what they value and give them more of it.
4. How would you rate our mobile app experience?
It’s one thing to code blocks in a mobile app, but it’s a whole other to have all that add up to great customer experience. For businesses that are going digital, mobile app experience is a big factor in determining the overall customer experience. What better way to ask users about their app experience if not with an in-app survey?
Customer feedback questions often tend to be open-ended, but we recommend that you keep this one as a rating from 1-10, or if you want to get fancier, a slider scale.. A slight limitation of in-app surveys is that you’re dealing with a short attention span. If you know just how to utilize that time, though, you can make in-app surveys work for you.
5. What prompted you to use the app today?
Are you sending out countless notifications that users just don’t click on?
Of course, all brands want customers to open their apps regularly. It is, after all, the virtual equivalent of entering a storefront. But to attract users to your app at just the right time, you need to know exactly what brings them to the app.
You probably have a few guesses for why a user would open your app. That’s why this question is best asked as a multiple-choice in an in-app survey. Put down those guesses, and see which one is most prominent. Then design marketing and notification strategies based on those user motivations.
6. What do you like the most/least about our mobile app?
We’ve talked about how in-app survey questions cannot be descriptive, but once in a while, you can take the risk. Of course, you don’t want to bombard your users with hundreds of descriptive questions. But once in a blue moon, you can provide them the space to express their opinions.
It wouldn’t harm to, every once in a while, ask users what they love and what they hate about your mobile app. You want to keep innovating and improve your digital offering. Checking in with customers using in-app surveys and rooting out bad features is the best way to move forward.
7. How satisfied are you with the loading speed of our app?
The in-app survey often revolves around concerns customers may have about your app. That is, in part, what they’re for. One of the biggest customer complaints in the app domain is load times. The app doesn’t load fast enough on their phones. In your in-app survey, you should find out if your customers feel the same way.
There are plenty of ways to optimize apps for loading faster, but how much of a priority should that be for you? With this multiple choice question, you can find out just how important this is for your customers, and plan accordingly.
8. Would you mind rating us on the Play Store/App Store?
For apps that are not well-established yet, ratings on marketplaces mean everything. They are the primary drivers of trust in your future customers, and impact how you show up on search results.
But did you know that your in-app surveys can help you gain better reviews on the app stores? Here’s how:
- You ask your customer about their experience on your app, and prompt them to give a star rating.
- If they give a lower rating, then you direct them to your customer service feature.
- If you get a great rating, you ask them to rate you on the store. That way, you’re keeping the lower ratings out of the stores.
In-app surveys are great for filtering out bad reviews while addressing them at the same time.
In-App Survey: Best Practices
We’ve walked through the benefits of an in-app survey, and a comprehensive list of good in-app survey questions. Now let’s check out some best practices.
#1. If you’re pumped up to start your in-app survey, you’ll probably be looking for an in-app survey tool. Shortlist in-app survey tools that offer free trials, like SurveySparrow.
#2. Prioritize a mobile-first experience. SurveySparrow’s mobile first surveys are especially optimized to give you the best survey experience on phones.
#3. Put a lot of thought into your survey designs and templates – like how we do with ours. Our online survey tool has powerful templates and beautiful surveys that your customers will want to fill.
So you can leave the in-app survey to us, and focus on making your apps even better using the best responses and results from the best analysis tools on the market.
#4. Keep your in-app survey simple – focus on a goal, and only that goal. And you’ll get invaluable customer data without ever bothering them for more than a second.
With that, we’ve covered everything you need to know about in-app surveys, and you’re now ready to create one of your own. Soon enough, you’ll be collecting immensely useful data and improving your service, backed by the insights revealed by your user responses.
Wrapping Up
Companies love data about their customers. The meteoric rise of data-driven companies like Facebook and Google is a testament to how valuable customer data can be.
But people hate giving away their data. That is why giant tech gets all the flak it does. It’s also why your survey emails are rarely ever opened.
So there’s a mismatch between your customer’s lack of interest in giving their data and your desire to have it. An app survey is a good workaround for this.
