I have the easiest job in the world. All I have to do is ask the right questions, and other people will tell me what to do.

Audience surveys are one of my favourite paths to validating ideas, getting user feedback, and getting told what to do. I say “audience surveys” because this method works at any stage, for any type of respondent. Early in the product process you’ll want to speak to anyone within your demographic, usually through social media. As you grow your user base, you can use the same method to speak to those real users directly.

My rule of thumb when creating surveys is, "Don't ask people what they think/want... let them show you!" Keeping this in mind, I like to do surveys in two phases.

Phase 1: Gather data with a Qualitative survey

This step is about gathering as much open-ended information from your audience as possible. It's about learning how they think, what their challenges are, and what they expect from you - even if they don't know it yet. The answers you get in this phase will help you make product decisions that solve a real problem.

During this phase, volume is the name of the game. For this reason, I recommend not making any questions required, because a half-completed survey is better than no completed survey.

Goals and Challenges

The sample questions below are written for a professional persona, but you can adapt them to your audience:

• What is your current goal in your career?

• What is your next step toward that goal?

• When it comes to your career, what do you wish took up less time?

• When it comes to your career, what do you wish cost less money?

• When it comes to your career, what do you wish was easier?

• When it comes to your career, what question do you wish you knew the answer to?

• What is your biggest fear for your career?

• Tell me about a big break you got in your career. What happened? How did it benefit you?

Speak Their Language

If you’re surveying a specific professional demographic, it can be helpful to learn about the language they use around their industry:

• How would you define __________?

• How would you describe __________?

• Do you consider yourself a professional __________? Why or why not?

Existing Behaviours

You probably already know what solution you're hoping to sell them, so you can also ask questions about their existing relevant behaviours. These questions are based on the respondent's reality, not on their own assumptions or guesses about how they may react to your features.

• What services do you currently use to do __________?

• Has there ever been a time when you were frustrated by __________?

• How many times did you __________ last month?

• Have you recently done __________? What happened?

Avoid Fake Brainstorms

You want to avoid questions that create what I call "Fake Brainstorms". People who have burning ideas for your product will find a way to contact you. Asking for these ideas in a survey, however, tends to make people try to come up with something because they want to feel smart and helpful. Therefore, the responses you get often are not features they would actually use or pay for. Some examples of questions to avoid are:

• What features do you think we should build?

• What ideas do you have for the app?

A trick to getting around this is asking them to think about other people, as opposed to themselves. This can produce better quality ideas, but the responses still need to be taken with a grain of salt. One way to ask this is:

• How do you think you could benefit from our app?

• Who do you think could benefit from our app, and why?

• Are there any tools or services that you wish existed to help with __________?

Note that the last question leaves it open to the user to simply say, “No” and move on, if they don’t have any burning answers to give.

Phase 2: Check your assumptions with a Quantitative survey

Once you've gathered and processed your qualitative data, and looked for patterns, you can follow up with quantitative questions based on your assumptions. This can help you determine where to prioritise something, how much room to give a feature in the UI, or if it's something your users might pay for.

Ask About Preferences

Give users one topic at a time to choose or rate. Some examples of how you might ask this are:

• Which of these features would you rather have access to? __________ or __________?

• Please rate your interest in __________ (1-5)

You can take these same concepts and ask them a different way, so that you’ve approached the topics from two angles. My favourite way to do this is by asking:

• Please select all statements below that are true.

  • I am interested in __________.

  • I find __________ to be stressful.

  • I am confident in my __________ abilities.

  • etc…

Perceived Feature Value

If I’m looking to project purchase behaviours or product-market fit, I end these surveys with some additional open-ended questions:

• Think about all the features from above that you were interested in. Which of these features excite you the most?

• How much would you expect to pay for a service that provided those features?

• How much did you spend on __________ in the last month / year?

• How disappointed would you be if [your app] went away, and none of those features were built?

Asking About Pricing

I’ve been asked before, “Why are you asking about pricing as a text input question?” Asking this question through multiple-choice, a slider scale, or even limiting the input to a number, would require you to make some assumptions. You would be assuming what the low and high ends are, if users are expecting a monthly fee vs a one-time fee, etc. If you’re confident you know those answers, then that’s fine, but if not then it’s best to not force the user into any specific type of input, as you would be missing out on answers like "I wouldn’t pay anything because I already have these features" or "I wouldn't pay for it, but I have friends who would." etc.

Extra Tips

👉 You’ve already got their attention, so use that to your advantage! Don’t forget to end your surveys with a strong Call To Action (CTA). That could be leaving their email to opt into updates, linking them out to a Facebook group, etc. Either way, try to avoid leaving your respondents at a dead end.

👉 How many people do you need? Check out Survey Monkey’s Sample Size Calculator.

👉 How can you find people to take your survey? Check out my blog post, “8 Places to Find Survey Respondents”.

🎁 Read over 160 additional tips and tricks for your product journey on my Trello Board.

Now Go do it!

My challenge to you is to run a survey this week. There’s never a wrong time to learn more about your audience or to double-check your assumptions and plans. I’d love to hear how it goes - tweet me @ashleymarinep!