Gaining feedback can be difficult, especially for a startup. The process can be expensive and time-consuming. Yet, seeking validation is an absolute must. It should be done as part of initial research and continued at every significant decision.
Feedback can stretch from a sanity check to validation of a whole business idea.
There are many different forms of feedback you could try as a startup:
The first step to starting a business is validation. Validating your idea first dramatically reduces the risk of wasting time and money.
This mantra continues to apply throughout your development.
Create a new logo and gain feedback.
Create a new workflow and gain feedback.
Write a new copy and gain feedback.
Gaining this feedback is perhaps even more important after starting. You don’t want to alienate an existing customer base by introducing something new without being certain there is added value.
Direct face-to-face interviews are a great way to gather feedback - even if they are online. Using a script so that questions and responses are guided. Interviews offer more qualitative feedback, not only is there a detailed response, the interviewer can also easily judge the sentiment behind a response. This sense of feeling also transcends to the interviewees who are more likely to appreciate this form of feedback.
Issues with startups conducting face-to-face interviews when trying to choose and schedule candidates. This can be time-consuming and expensive. If conducting in person, you will also need somewhere to host them. This can also be quite an intimidating environment for a candidate, as it is hyper-focused.
Essentially, the watch and listen method.
Give your audience your product and see how they behave. This is particularly important if you’ve created a service with a unique workflow. People within your business, or even closely associated with it, will understand your thinking and the product.
Usability Testing can be a great way to gain some perspective. That feature you thought was obvious will soon show its user experience efficacy when a total stranger new to the attempts to use it.
Some cons for a startup wishing to conduct usability testing are: Again, it is expensive and time-consuming to conduct Requires a working system, you’re unlikely to arrange a whole usability testing session if you haven’t achieved a working MVP
Customer reviews and ratings are the default, whether on TrustPilot, TripAdvisor, Google Reviews, or even your own hosted feedback.
Even if you don’t seek this type of feedback, it will inevitably arrive as you build a reputation. The typical 5 stars and comment means that it is easily accessible and will attract a wide variety of responses. Further, the fact that they’re often public, this type of feedback can serve as marketing.
The problem with Customer Reviews and Ratings is that often a large presence is needed. They are perhaps better suited to physical businesses such as shops, restaurants or businesses that sell tangible products. They are not necessarily the best for a purely online business.
Additionally, as this type of feedback is less hands-on and more dependent on the information being volunteered, it is susceptible to negative feedback only. How often do you review? What is the motivation?
Focus groups can be pivotal, a group of people that are within your target audience that you organise together to give feedback. This collaboration is what makes Focus Groups great. This means that responses are instantaneous, constructive and iterative.
One person’s idea may trigger someone else’s thoughts.
As valuable as this exercise may be, it will be expensive, difficult to arrange, and time-consuming. The greatest value is often achieved when all participants are in the same room, which may not even be possible if you have a niche target market. The complexity of the interview approach has been dialed up to 11.
Similar to customer reviews and ratings, listening to social media allows you to gain insight into what your users think.
It is free feedback and open to all, giving you a great opportunity to interact directly with your user base. Setting up alerts for certain keywords allows you to gain feedback on not only your startup but also your competitors, giving you that ruthless edge.
There is nuance here, as the feedback may come voluntarily. However, it will rely on you having a large Social Media presence already. Perhaps this is part of your marketing strategy as a startup, so it can be complimentary. This will require round-the-clock attention rather than the other more scheduled tactics—this world moves fast.
Proceed with caution as Social Media, in particular, can be the Wild West.
A/B testing is a little more nuanced than the previous, but it is common in Software Engineering. Split traffic in your customer base so that they receive different implementations and see which performs better. Increased views, sign-ups, or sales, depending on the desired performance metric, will help you infer your feedback directly from results rather than conscious feedback.
However, this still holds a risk.
Imagine that 10% of your audience receives such an unsatisfactory experience that they no longer use your service. Can you afford to lose that without validating sooner?
What most startups lack in expendable capital, vast outreach networks and time they have in enthusiasm for building, creating and collaborating. Your fellow startups can be the perfect place to seek feedback. There are several Reddit threads dedicated to the matter. See r/startups, r/IndieHackers et al.
How about seeking feedback from your peers?
They’re an interested demographic, they can empathise with your feedback difficulties, and they share your passion for building.
The problem here results in the equality of feedback requested. Some are looking for an in-depth response to a whole business idea, whereas others are looking for validation of whether a particular small icon is fit for purpose.
As said, time is a limited resource to a startup, and each opportunity has its cost. Giving feedback to others may not be at the forefront of your priorities.
Therefore, this equality can be balanced by allocating a score for the feedback given. At BetaBud, we call these Tokens, where each component that is responded to is worth a different value.
Often, when creating something new, it is easy to become so focused that it is difficult to gain perspective. Particularly if you're a small team or an individual, outside input can reorient your opinion.
I have worked in large corporations in the past where there have been internal feedback forms, think Peakon. These allow the company to gain a sentiment heartbeat about how the company is progressing, and any particular changes that could improve the business. However, a small startup doesn't have that resource.
So BetaBud offers the opportunity to use others in the community to gain your feedback. The questions a large corporation is troubled with aren't necessarily going to apply to your startup. Internal feedback is often going to be dictated by HR-related questions, whereas going public means you get an unbiased, honest opinion around a plethora of subject matters.
This means you can gain insight into any of your startup decisions. Be that:
The respondents will have a diversity of experience and opinions. A UI design startup’s founder is going to have a different perspective than someone creating a FinTech service. Likewise, someone starting a blog is going to have another angle.
Hopefully, as you read this post, you’ll think, “This is both quantity and quality!” 😝
By reaching outside your company or even your network, you’re already increasing your chances of both quality and quantity.
Quantity increases, as you’re no longer bound by a small audience. You’re actively publicising to external sources.
Quality goes up because you’re increasing the diversity of your audience. Again, quieting the echo chamber.
As aforementioned, non-dedicated feedback sites aren’t necessarily fit for purpose. Granted, they have a number of users, but one large comment box isn’t always going to achieve the quality you desire.
Or even worse, reducing feedback to upvotes/downvotes and likes. Again, this will probably gain a higher quantity of data, however how valuable is it? Context can often be lost with such a rudimentary feedback method, meaning the actual response is misinterpreted.
By providing guard rails to the feedback you receive, you can counter these “walls of text” or one-click responses. Therefore, we offer a variety of different components, allowing you to structure your forms so that you get honest, valuable feedback but in a handheld manner.
Allowing you to trust the data.
This will ensure the interpretation is correct for both parties, making feedback more scalable and allowing metrics to be derived from results.
Collaboration is the best opportunity to create feedback. A situation where respondents have a vested interest in providing the best possible response without any particular bias.
Internal feedback bias may be due to it being a particular person’s idea, or that they’re too entrenched in the project to have a valuable perspective.
External feedback bias may be due to respondents tailoring their answers directly to themselves rather than a holistic review. Or, a response may be led by the thought of possible incentives.
Both internal and external feedback is fundamentally essential. However, when feedback opportunities are limited, it can be distracting or misguided.
Therefore, for a community with similar aspirations, the sole motivation is that they, in turn, want the community to offer them the most encompassing feedback. A community of creatives and builders that want to propel their startup. A community motivated to give feedback to gain an insight into what others are building.
BetaBud is building that community.
As described earlier, BetaBud depends on tokens. You respond to a form, earning tokens for every completed component. For instance, you respond to the following:
Radio [1] + Drop Down [3] + Rating [1] + Free Text [5] = 5 tokens earnt (Skipping the Free Text component)
Then, you can create your form based on the feedback you desire. Start by writing a captivating title to stand out in the main form thread. Then, detail your description, giving guidance about who you are and what feedback you’re hoping for. Don’t forget to include a URL link!
Then you can continue to build your form, choosing from:
For each component added, there will be the same token-associated cost. This means that you’re bound by components and not forms. Complete one in-depth form, then create multiple forms around different subject matters.
Then save your form and wait for the responses to come in.
Please note that once your form is submitted, it cannot be amended. This is to maintain the validity of responses.
Once live on the Form Thread, it will exist for 28 days before it is automatically archived. You can still view the responses, but they will no longer be visible to others.
