Your Complete Guide To Collecting and Analyzing User Feedback

Everyone who works on products understands that the best way to tell if users are enjoying using your product is to ask them directly in your user feedback software or tool. But user feedback can be a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, they provide valuable insights that can help inform your product roadmap. On the other hand, the quantity and variety can make it hard to notice trends and separate widely held opinions from outliers.

In this guide, Beamer is going to cover everything you need to know about user feedback analysis—from the basics of setting up surveys to more advanced techniques for qualitative data analysis. By the end, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge you need to make user feedback work for you and your product.

Ready? Let’s go!

Learn how to collect and analyze user feedback!

What Is User Feedback?

User feedback is any piece of data that describes a user’s experience with your product. These experiences (and the data that they generate) can span every aspect of your product’s design, functionality, and user interface.

There are many different kinds of user feedback, including (but not limited to):

• ratings
• messages
• reviews
• comments
• surveys
• interviews
• usability studies
• customer support tickets
• social media mentions

This wide range of user feedback can fall into one of two categories: quantitative or qualitative.

• Quantitative feedback provides data that can be easily measured and analyzed using numbers and scales (e.g., “4 out of 5 stars”).
• Qualitative feedback offers insights into the user’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions (e.g., “I wish this product integrated with MailChimp”).

Both types of feedback are important for understanding how users feel about your product—but they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Let’s take a closer look at both.

Quantitative Feedback.

Quantitative feedback has the advantage of being easy to collect and analyze. This is because quantitative feedback is usually given in response to a structured question that can be answered using a numerical scale (e.g., 1-3, 1-5, 1-10, etc.).

This type of feedback is great for answering “What?” and “How Many/Long?” questions about your product (e.g., “What feature do users like the most?” or “How long does it take to do X?”). But it’s not as good at providing insights into the “Why?” behind user behavior.

Some examples of quantitative feedback include:

• ratings (e.g., Beamer Quick Reactions)
• survey responses (e.g., Beamer NPS®)
• customer satisfaction scores (e.g., CSAT, CES)
• feature requests

What Is Feedback Analysis?

User feedback analysis is the process of transforming the user observations and comments you collect into actionable insights that help you build a better product.

This process can be as simple as manually reading through every piece of user feedback and looking for trends. But for products with a large user base, this isn’t really feasible.

Instead, the feedback analysis usually relies on some combination of techniques and methods to generate insights.

The Feedback Life Cycle

The feedback life cycle is a process that describes how user feedback moves from being collected to eventually being acted upon.

The user feedback life cycle has three distinct stages:

1. Collection: This is when the feedback is first gathered, typically through surveys, in-app messages, or user reviews.
2. Analysis: Once user comments has been collected, it needs to be analyzed to generate insights. This usually involves sorting user feedback into different categories and looking for trends.
3. Action: Once the feedback has been analyzed, it’s time to take action on the insights that have been generated. This might involve making changes to your product or reaching out to individual users.

As you can see, this is a continual process that doesn’t end once you’ve made a few changes. Customer feedback should be constantly collected and analyzed to ensure that your product is always improving.

How? Keep reading to find out!

How To Collect User Feedback.

With the background information out of the way, it’s time to take a look at the first stage of the user feedback analysis cycle—collection.

There are a few different methods you can use to collect feedback, including:

1. in-app widgets
2. surveys
3. media engagement
4. review requests

In-App Widgets.

One of the easiest (and most effective) ways to collect customer feedback is through customer feedback tools and features like in-app widgets, pop ups, forms, and banners. These tools can be embedded directly into your product, making them accessible to users at all times.

In-app feedback tools are great for collecting both quantitative and qualitative feedback. They’re also the best way to get real-time insights into how users are feeling about your product because they’re accessible while users are actually using it.

With Beamer, you can easily install no-code feedback widgets, popups, and surveys into your site to collect a range of user feedback data, including:

• Quick Reactions: Quick, one-click feedback that lets users rate their experience with a product feature, page, update, or notification.
• Feature requests: You can set up a voting system for features that are highly requested by users.
• Beamer NPS®: A Net Promoter Score survey that measures customer satisfaction and collects qualitative feedback.
• Feedback and Messages: A feedback and messenger tool that lets users comment on ideas, problems, or suggestions for improvement—all neatly organized in an inbox for easy response and analysis.

Surveys.

Another popular method for collecting customer feedback is through surveys. Surveys can be sent out via email, social media, or in-app (if you have the development skill set or use a no-code tool like Typeform).

This method is great for collecting both quantitative and qualitative feedback. But it’s important to keep your surveys short, sweet, and to the point. Otherwise, you run the risk of users getting bored or frustrated and abandoning the survey altogether.

Media Engagement.

Encouraging users to engage with your product through your media channels (e.g., YouTube, Instagram, blog, etc.) is a great way to collect high-quality feedback without paying for the customer feedback tool. Although having a user feedback tools or software will make this task times easier.

This method is best for collecting feedback on specific topics or problems because you can use your content to direct and structure user feedback.

For example, if you want to collect feedback on a new product feature, you could use Beamer to create a blog post that shows off the feature and let users know about it via a Beamer Notification or Beamer Changelog entry. The comments and reactions the content generates will (hopefully) be focused on your users’ feelings about the new feature.

Review Requests.

Another way to collect user feedback is by requesting reviews from customers who have had a positive experience with your product. This can be done through in-app messaging, email, or even a post-purchase thank you note that directs users to review platforms, like:

• Capterra
• G2
• TrustRadius
• SourceForge

This method is great for collecting qualitative feedback because it allows you to get in-depth insights into what people like about your product—and what could be improved. Plus, as a bonus, it also works as a form of reputation marketing through additional social proof!

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How To Analyze Customer Feedback.

Now that you know how to collect user feedback, it’s time to take a look at the second stage of the user feedback analysis cycle—analysis. This is where user feedback analysis gets a bit more complicated.

Why? Because there are so many ways you can analyze user feedback data. And, unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The best way to approach analysis will vary depending on your specific goals, the type of feedback you’ve collected, and the user feedback software you’re using.

That said, there are a few methods for feedback analysis that you should definitely be considering:

1. segmentation
2. progress analysis
3. trend analysis
4. comparative analysis

Now, let’s take a close look at these methods.

Segmentation.

One of the most important things you can do when analyzing user feedback is to segment your data. Segmentation allows you to break down your data into manageable chunks, so you can more easily find patterns and trends.

There are a number of different ways you can segment user feedback data, including by:

• date
• product
• feature
• location
• billing

Beamer makes it easy to segment user feedback data by product, country, operating system, feature, or billing. And you can even use our filtering and sorting options to further narrow down your results for easy analysis.

Progress Analysis.

Progress analysis means comparing two data points collected at different times to see how things have changed. This is a great way to track progress over time and identify any areas where improvement is needed.

For example, you might decide to use Beamer NPS® to track your products NPS® over time. By comparing NPS® scores collected at different intervals, you’ll be able to see how customer satisfaction changes as you release new features, updates, or content.

Trend Analysis.

Trend analysis is all about identifying patterns in your user feedback data. This can be done using a variety of methods, including:

• Keyword Analysis: Tracking the usage of certain keywords in written user feedback to pinpoint benefits and pain points (e.g., “easy to use”, “laggy”, etc.). This can be done manually at low volume, but is easier with a customer feedback analysis tool like Thematic.
• Sentiment Analysis: Using sentiment analysis tools like Lexalytics to sort user feedback into categories (e.g., “Positive”, “Negative”, etc.) for easy analysis.

Tip: Want to do a deep dive into your data? Beamer integrates with 3,000+ apps via Zapier, including Segment, Airtable, and ProductBoard—so you can analyze your data however you’d like!

Comparative Analysis.

Comparative analysis is all about comparing two datasets side-by-side. This can be done using a variety of methods, including:

• A/B Testing: Comparing the performance of two different versions of something (e.g., a landing page) to see which one generates more positive user feedback.
• Competitive Analysis: Analyzing how your product stacks up against your competitors by comparing user feedback data points like reviews and ratings.

No matter what method you decide to use, remember that the most important thing is to take action on the insights you uncover! After all, what’s the point of doing all this work if you’re not going to use it to improve your product?

Feedback Analysis Best Practices.

User feedback analysis is an essential part of any product development cycle—but it’s only effective if it’s done right. A good user feedback tool should help. So, before we finish up here, we thought it would be helpful to quickly run through some best practices for collecting and analyzing user feedback:

1. Always start with a question in mind.
2. Define your feedback analysis goals upfront.
3. Collect from multiple sources.
4. Use a mix of quantitative and qualitative data.
5. Analyze feedback on a regular basis.
6. Take action based on your findings.
7. Rinse and repeat!

Here they are again in a bit more detail!

Always start with a question in mind.

Before you start collecting and analyzing user feedback, take some time to think about the questions you want to answer. What do you hope to learn from your users? What pain points are you trying to address?

Having a clear question (or questions) in mind will help you focus your efforts—and make sure that you’re getting the most out of your user feedback data.

Define your analysis goals upfront.

It’s also important to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your user feedback analysis. Do you want to improve customer satisfaction? Increase conversions? Reduce churn?

Whatever your goals may be, make sure you define them upfront—so you can track your progress over time.

Collect feedback from multiple sources.

Don’t rely on just one source of user feedback. Collect data from as many sources as possible—including customer surveys, support tickets, social media, and user testing sessions. User feedback software has become a must-have for the product teams and will simplify all the feedback collection and analysis tasks.

The more data you have to work with, the easier it will be to identify patterns and trends. Plus, you’ll get a more well-rounded view of how users feel about your product.

With Beamer, you can collect (and analyze) a range of user feedback data—including user comments, NPS scores, and reactions—all from within your app!

Use a mix of quantitative and qualitative data.

When analyzing user feedback, it’s important to use a mix of quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data (like surveys and NPS scores) will give you a general overview of how users feel about your product.

Qualitative data (like customer support conversations and user testing sessions) will help you understand the “why” behind those numbers.

Both types of data are critical—so make sure you’re collecting both with you user feedback software!

Analyze on a regular basis.

Don’t wait until you have a problem to start analyzing your customer feedback data. Set up a regular cadence for collecting and analyzing data (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.), so you can identify issues early—and prevent them from becoming bigger issues down the road. This should be easily done if you have a customer feedback software in your toolkit.

Take action based on your findings.

Once you’ve analyzed your user feedback data, it’s time to take action! Use what you’ve learned to make improvements to your product—and keep your users happy. For instance, your customer feedback insights can help inform your product roadmap.

Rinse and repeat!

User feedback analysis is an ongoing process, not a one-time thing. So once you’ve made some changes based on your findings, start the cycle all over again—and continue making your product better and better. Once again, a good user feedback software will make your life much easier.

Make it actionable.

User feedback analysis is a crucial element of the product development cycle—so it’s important to get the most out of it!

With Beamer and its user feedback tool, it’s easy to collect, track, and analyze feedback data—all in one place. Announce updates or features, collect feedback and reactions, and easily export your data to the analysis tool of your choice.

Ready to take your user feedback analysis to the next level? Sign up for a 14-day free trial of Beamer today!

Read our blog “How can PLG Teams Build Better Products from User Feedback” for a deeper dive into best practices.