Mobile App Survey: A Complete Guide

With over 300 billion emails sent and received each day globally, how many do you think are ever opened?

Hardly any!

Collecting feedback through emails is like taking a shot in the dark, and this is why mobile app surveys have seen a meteoric rise in the past few years.

No matter what industry, mobile apps can always be considered the best platforms to collect feedback from your customers.

We know you’re going to have many questions related to in-app surveys, and we’re here to answer all of them for you. So let’s dive right in and first take a look at what mobile app surveys are and how you can leverage them for your business

What Are Mobile App Surveys?

Mobile app surveys are an engaging way of collecting user feedback, customer validation, customer-driven support, and building a better overall product.

Simply put, the in-app survey is a term used for customer surveys integrated into the mobile application, which pop up at a designated time while the user is interacting with the application.

For instance: when you perform a certain task on an application or book a service, quick rating feedback pops up asking for your overall satisfaction with the application. This is how in-app surveys mostly work. 

The application itself triggers these surveys, aiming to increase response rates and collect valuable feedback from their users. 

Mobile app surveys have become an integrated part of every smartphone user across the globe. Also, people appreciate their role and participation in surveys and giving in-app feedback to people and services they interact with. 

That is the power of mobile apps survey, delivered through quick and quality feedback without bothering the customers. 

Benefits of Mobile App Surveys

The market research space has been revolutionized through the mobile app survey tools, and they have scaled the opportunities for marketers and researchers in all kinds of businesses. Let’s explore some of the advantages of mobile survey apps in detail:

1. Wider Reach

According to GSMA real-time intelligence data, over 3.8 billion people in the world have access to a smartphone, which means that around 48.2% of the world’s population uses smartphones

With numbers that high, the reach of in-app surveys is essentially immeasurable. These surveys can target people even in the remotest part of the world and gather their feedback if they have a mobile device. 

2. Insights in Real-Time 

The feedback given from the users is stored on the mobile application and transmitted immediately through the online servers using the internet. This simplifies data collection and helps researchers gather and analyze data in real-time, without any time lag. 

For example, Disney has its own app called “Genie” for which the team uses in-app surveys to gather real-time customer feedback.

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3. Works Without Internet

Many applications today allow users to submit their feedback even without any internet connection. This data is stored on the application and then transmitted through online servers whenever the application gets access to the internet.

4. Cost-Effective

In-app surveys have a negligible cost per respondent compared to other survey methods like paper surveys or email surveys. Plus, the higher number of responses and better reach make it a much more feasible solution. 

5. Design Flexibility 

Mobile app survey tools can be programmed and designed to be best suited to the surveyors. Even though the programming and designing can be a little complicated, developers can design and redesign the survey interface and its content any way they want. 

6. Avoids Interview Bias 

When surveys are conducted through mobile applications, no interviewer or surveyor is involved in the process. This eliminates the possibility of judging the respondent based on their unspoken or unconscious criteria, which can potentially compromise the data. 

7. Avoid Bots

Individual users mostly use mobile applications, so mobile app feedback is a great way to collect data from genuine users and avoid bots that are programmed to automate the process.

8. Remote Area Accessibility 

As we discussed above, mobile app feedback has a much wider reach due to the accessibility to smartphones. This allows the collection of data from remote parts of the world that have no internet access and almost little to no physical access.

9. High Response Rates

Mobile surveys are sent straight to the user’s mobile phone, and they pop up when using the application. This increases the response rate quite significantly, and there is also no scope of filtering these surveys out or sending them to spam like the email surveys. 

For example, Uber sends mobile app surveys to the users who have just taken a ride to collect their feedback.

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Read More: To learn more about collecting and benefitting from in-app feedback, give this article a look: How to Collect and Benefit From In-App Feedback

Types of Feedback You Can Collect with In-app Surveys

Mobile app surveys can collect a wide range of data from users. The nature of the data depends entirely on how the survey is structured and the contents of the survey. 

Below are the types of feedback that you can collect through mobile app survey tools:

1. Constructive Criticism About Product Development

If your application is in the development process, targeted surveys will be one of the most effective ways to gather contextual insights. Developers can ask their users about the things that work perfectly and things that need further improvement. 

You can target surveys on specific functions of the applications, and feedback about those functions can be taken up by the developers constructively to build upon them. New surveys can again be circulated with the new application versions, and you will repeat this process until the application runs perfectly.

2. Feedback About Prospects of the Product

Now that you have used the customer feedback for fine-tuning your application. It is now time to ask your users what they would like to see more in it. This is where you use surveys to scout for additional features that you can add to the application. 

Once the users have gotten accustomed to the application, you simply need to ask them open-ended questions about what they would like this application to do more. Once the users have given their ideas about what features they would like to see in the future, you can choose the most popular answer and go ahead with it in the future development stages.

3. Review for Products

One of the most common in-app survey questions you would have seen is “How would you like to rate this product?” followed by a rating in the app store. This is more commonly known as a product review. You can easily ask your users to leave a product review about their overall likingness of the application. 

You can effectively conduct this step by circulating a Star Rating or even a Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey, asking them about their likelihood to recommend this application further.

4. Post-Purchase Behavior 

Post-purchase behavior effectively describes how a customer feels, thinks, and acts about a product after making the purchase decision. Post-purchase surveys can be extremely useful to assess how customers feel about buying from your application.

Following up with your customers right after their purchase will help you understand how happy the customers are and catch a negative response early. A follow-up will allow you to make corrections before the negative responses spread over the internet.

5. Improve Conversion

If your mobile app conversions are low, then you are simply not offering what your targeted audience desires. In-app surveys are the easiest way to understand the market trends, validate ideas, and understand what the customers need. 

You can ask your customers about their preferences with the application and then refine your process and tailor your product specifically to fit their needs. This is a foolproof way to improve mobile app conversion rates in no time.

Sample in-app survey questions on conversions

• If you did not make a purchase today, can you tell us why not?
• Do you have any questions before you complete your purchase?
• What would’ve convinced you to complete the purchase of the item(s) in your cart?
• What was your biggest fear or concern about purchasing from us?
• Is there anything preventing you from completing your purchase?

Not just this, with tools that offer exit-intent popup overlays like Picreel, you can ask why visitors are not choosing to go for a certain product or service by asking for feedback when they leave or offer lucrative discounts to make them stay:

6. Feedback About Company Loyalty

Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty are two different sides of the same coin. When the customers are satisfied with the product offering and their experience, the chances of their returning and retaining them go extremely high.

In-app surveys accurately determine the returning customers and also understand the overall satisfaction level of the new customers. The returning customers and the satisfied ones will give an accurate idea about the company’s loyalty. 

7. New Product Ideas

Customer feedback is a valuable resource as it provides a vast resource of product ideas, ensuring that your product innovation is in perfect alignment with current and future needs. 

You can ask the customers about new possibilities in the product segment. They will offer you actionable insights into what product offerings are trending in the market and which gaps need to be filled.

In-app survey questions to discover product ideas

• Of these four options, what’s the next thing you think we should build?
• What’s the next feature we should build?
• Have feedback or an idea? Leave it here!

Explore this survey questions library to learn more about what to ask!

8. Improvement of Services

When introducing a new product or service to the market, people usually have limited knowledge about how the product or service would perform. Conducting market research through customer feedback will give you an idea of the potential customers willing to buy your product.

You can easily circulate targeted surveys and use the insights to highlight the improvement areas. You can work on these areas to improve mobile app conversion rates in the future.

Watch- How to collect mobile app feedback.

Step-by-step guide to creating mobile app survey

Here are a few simple steps you can take to create flawless mobile app surveys with Qualaroo:

Step 1: Click the “Create New” option on your dashboard interface in the top right corner.

Step 2: Here, you can choose a Nudge type depending on where you want to launch it, i.e., iOS or Android apps. 

Step 3: Click “Choose Template.”

You can choose any one mobile survey template from the library. If you don’t want to use a template, you can also create one from scratch.

Step 4: Enter the app name on which you want to add the survey and click “Create.”

Step 5: Customize your surveys by adding questions and relevant answer types such as multiple-choice, open-text, radio button, Likert Scale, etc.

You can also implement branching logic to ask follow-up survey questions and gather insights from participants.

Step 6: Choose the “Targeting” option.

Qualaroo also offers advanced targeting to help you zero in on your audience and get accurate and reliable customer feedback. You can decide how many times you want to show your survey, to whom, etc.

Step 7: Click the ‘Design’ option to personalize the mobile app survey design to match with your branding.

Click ‘Save’ once you’re done. You can preview your pop-up survey to ensure everything as it is supposed to be and activate it.

Mobile App Survey Questionnaire

Asking your audience a series of well-targeted in-app surveys questions will prove to be extremely helpful as far as the time and resources that are put into the application are concerned. 

Knowing what features to improve and identifying development areas is just one of many benefits of asking the right questions. 

Here is a list of some questions that you can ask your audience at different stages:

A. UI/UX Survey Questions

1. How did you first learn about our application?

This is a question that will help you evaluate your marketing channels and find out how people hear about you. Using this data, you can invest more resources in the marketing channels that are less responsive and continue engaging in your high-response marketing channels.

2. What comes to your mind when thinking about our app?

This question offers a great opportunity for the developers to understand the user’s perception of the application. 

By allowing customers to voice their opinions, you will understand what customers think about you and what you can do to change the negative responses. But if these are going to be free-form responses, then you’ll do better using a feedback survey tool that has intuitive AI features like Sentiment Analysis.

3. Why did you choose us over the competition?

This is another app survey questions examples that accurately highlights the features that users think your application does better than the competition. This will prove helpful as you can work towards making those features even more functional and detailed to retain your current users and attract new users.

Must Read: 16 Best UX/UI Tools for Designers and Researchers

B. Early Stage Product Development Questions

1. How does the application run after the updates?

Every new update brings in new changes, so it is essential to ask users about the usability of the application at every stage of the update process. This will filter out any additional bugs or imperfections with the application, which the development team can fix. 

2. How do you feel about the new app design?

Asking users about the aesthetics of the applications is also necessary. Even though it is a matter of personal preference, if the majority of the users dislike the design, it is an evident sign to make changes. 

Good app design attracts a lot more users and helps retain the current users as well.

3. How functional does the application feel to you?

Another major question to ask the users is about the functionality of the application. An application should be functional enough, and users should do what the app intends to offer.

C. Mobile App Features Survey Questions

1. Can you tell us about a situation where the application was useful?

This question will paint a perfect scenario of how users interact with the application and its use in different circumstances. 

Using these questions, you can focus on communicating other application features and investing your resources in the right places. 

2. What goals have you achieved with this application?

This is an important follow-up question that will accurately highlight what job the users aim to perform on the application. Every user has their preferences, and it may surprise you what your application is being used for. 

Knowing this will allow you to promote specific features to the audience and target new segments based on the usage. 

3. What more functions would you like us to add?

Your users will have a pretty good idea about what more features they could use to help them achieve their goal through your app. Enabling customers to voice their opinion will allow you to further develop the app and aim for perfection. 

4. How would you like to rate this new feature?

Once you implement new features into your app, you need to know how those features are performing. You will do this by asking your users to rate the new feature. A good rating will mean that the new feature performs as intended, and a poor rating suggests further improvements.

Related Read: How To Grow & Retain Your Mobile App Users With A Feedback Engine

D. Prioritizing in-App Feature Survey Questions

1. How often do you use this feature?

This question will help you identify the most popular and the least popular features in the application. You can then further refine the popular features and make the necessary efforts to promote the other features.

2. Which feature do you use the least?

Using this, you will come across the least popular feature. By gathering the data, you will decide on removing the feature or further promoting it to the users based on the information.

3. Should this feature be listed higher up?

If the feature is popular, users may want to access it easily. One way of doing this is by listing the feature higher up in a menu to be quickly accessible to the users. 

E. Mobile App Rating Survey Questions 

1. How would you like to rate our app?

This is a survey targeted at the users who have been using your application for a while now. The answers will give you a general idea about how the targeted users like your application in the market.

2. Would you recommend this app to your family and friends?

This is a question that you can pose in the form of an NPS survey question. If the users rate it from 1-6, they would be considered detractors who would not recommend it and would end up switching. 

Users who rate it between 7-8 are considered neutral, and they are generally undecided about their stance. Users rating it 9-10 are considered promoters who would stick to the application and recommend it further to other people. 

3. Would you like to leave a review?

A positive response in the NPS question would automatically lead to the users leaving a positive review on the app store. This is a great way of building a positive reputation on the platform for other potential users to see. 

But remember, only ask this question to the promoters and neutrals for positive and realistic responses. 

4. What can we do to improve?

You should always work towards perfecting your application. This is why you should always ask your users what they think can be done to improve the application even further. Do remember to take this feedback constructively.

Related Read– If you are looking for a more detailed list of in-app survey questions, look at What Survey Questions Should I Ask?

7 Best Practices to Design Flawless Mobile App Surveys

Now that you know how to create excellent mobile app surveys and what questions to ask. 

So, let’s move on to the other critical parts of the discussion: How can you ensure flawless mobile app surveys that collect accurate feedback?

Here are a few mobile app survey best practices for you to consider:

Use Simple Language

While you may be tempted to showcase your extensive vocabulary, remember that clarity is key. Use simple and easily understandable language in your survey questions. 

Avoid jargon, technical terms, or complicated phrases that could alienate or confuse respondents. The goal is to make it accessible and easy for everyone to participate.

Prioritize Mobile-Friendly Design

Around 60% of people use mobile devices to access the web. So use a responsive design to ensure that your survey is optimized for mobile devices.

It’s important that the survey is easily navigable, with large, tappable buttons and legible text on smaller screens. By prioritizing mobile-friendly design, you’ll enhance the user experience and increase survey completion rates.

Analyze the Collected Survey Data

Simply collecting feedback via mobile app surveys is not enough. For the feedback to benefit your business, you must properly analyze it to extract actionable insights.

If you have qualitative data, you can perform sentiment analysis to understand how customers feel toward your offerings. This feature lets you see the most used words in the written feedback and what emotions they indicate.

But if you have collected quantitative data using surveys like NPS, then you can use advanced reporting features from Qualaroo to make sense of the data and see the larger picture.

But once you analyze the data and have the insights, incorporate those into your strategies.

Design and Sequence Questions Thoughtfully

The order of your mobile app survey questions can impact how respondents perceive and answer them. Customers may abandon the survey midway if the survey questions don’t make sense. 

You can start with easy and non-sensitive questions to ease participants into the survey. Then, gradually progress to more indepth or personal inquiries for collecting qualitative feedback.

The sequence of the questions also depends on your survey objective. For example, if you want to know whether your customers are loyal, you should first ask the NPS question and then follow it up with other open-ended questions to collect contextual insights.

Target Surveys The Right Way

The success of the survey responses mostly depends on how you target them. A right set of mobile app survey questions targeted to the right people will generate valuable responses with actionable insights that you can act upon. 

Based on Timing

• Don’t survey the new users right away. Let them take their time to get used to the application.
• Never ask your customers to fill out a survey while they are in the middle of a task.
• Try not to push the survey when there’s a possibility of the user having a negative experience.
• Don’t be too adamant about getting a response. Do not push the survey time and time again; instead, choose a designated time.

Based on Segmentation

• Make sure your mobile app survey questions are always relevant to the users. If you want feedback about the booking procedure, only ask users who have booked something. 
• Create segmentation of your customers based on the NPS survey that everyone receives.
• Catch detractors and the negative responses beforehand using your NPS segmentation. 

Based on Length

• Always keep your surveys short and do not consume more than a minute of your user’s time.
• Try not to include lengthier and multiple questions in the feedback.
• Multiple, focused surveys that are distributed over time will generate much better responses.

Related Read:  The Marketer’s Guide to Surveying Users.

Provide Clear Instructions

Ambiguous or confusing instructions often lead to inaccurate responses or survey abandonment. So, provide clear and concise instructions at the beginning of the survey to guide respondents on how to proceed.

Follow up and Show Appreciation

Once the survey is complete, don’t forget to follow up with your respondents. Let them know that their feedback matters and how their input will be used to improve the app. 

Additionally, consider offering a token of appreciation, such as a discount code or a chance to win a prize. This gesture of gratitude encourages participation in future surveys and fosters loyalty among your user base.

When it comes to in-app feedback surveys, there are few survey tools that have the right mix of useful features. Let’s have a look at how Qualaroo ticks the right boxes and can help your business by letting you deploy mobile app surveys the right way to get actionable insights.

How to Use Qualaroo for Mobile App Surveys

Qualaroo offers an ideal platform for conducting mobile surveys for both iOS and Android platforms. Users can gain valuable insights from mobile app users using Qualaroo’s iOS and Android SDK. It is a highly sophisticated tool with diverse features to collect valuable customer feedback at any given time. 

1. Custom Surveys

Qualaroo offers over 12 different question types at the user’s disposal and is also fully customizable. From choosing the exact question for the survey, users also can choose and set different metrics for feedback measurement. Each metric can be customized to represent different data and units.

For instance: Surveyors have the ability to add NPS benchmarking, which allows them to gather and automatically track NPS scores with visual charts. 

The customizability allows users to create a survey that is engaging and asks the right questions at the right time.

How to use:

• On the dashboard page of Qualaroo, you need to find or create your survey by designating a targeted website or application to run the survey on. 
• Once done, you will be able to edit the contents of the survey and define your own set of questions and question types. 
• You also get the ability to use question branching by simply selecting it and choosing the branching questions based on different criteria. 
• With the ability to customize themes, you can also make your survey look extremely attractive for your users. 

Related Read: What Is Survey Fatigue & How to Avoid It – a Step by Step Guide

2. Survey Responses

When you decode the survey responses perfectly, they offer actionable insights that you can later use to make crucial decisions. When it comes to the responses collected by Qualaroo, it not only collects them but also analyzes them using AI-Powered IBM Watson Sentiment Analysis and visualizes areas of improvement. 

The analysis tool automates the feedback mining process and allows you to respond in real-time by creating a unique call-to-action. 

How to use:

• The feedback collection and analysis is an automatic process. 
• Once the users respond to the surveys, the data is transferred to the Qualaroo analysis tool in real-time, and the dashboard gives you an overview of the survey results. 
• The analysis tool visualizes the data and gives an accurate overview of users’ perceptions and sentiments towards the application or a particular feature. 

3. Audience Targeting Modes

Another nifty feature of Qualaroo is the audience targeting modes that offer a range of customization to only target specific users at specific times. Advanced targeting effectively gains specific insights while ensuring that no redundant data is being collected. 

Qualaroo has some of the most powerful advanced targeting modes that offer a ton of flexibility to the surveyors.

How to use:

• Once on the targeting page, you will be able to navigate your way through all the targeting options. 
• You get the ability to target visitors or users by their identity, behavior, and where they came from. 
• You can also target geographic locations to exclude people from certain countries or regions to make your data more meaningful.
• The timing is another important feature that allows you to choose when and how often you want your surveys to be displayed.
• You can also choose how long you want your surveys to be displayed to specific users. 

Related Read- Why You’re Getting Rotten NPS Data and How to Fix It

Improve Your Mobile Experience With the Right Feedback

Mobile app surveys are part of the new wave in the domain of customer feedback and user research. They are the single most effective and sophisticated way of improving user experience and product development, along with innumerable benefits. 

Now that you know everything about in-app surveys, from what they are and how to deploy them, you will need a tool capable of doing so.

Qualaroo offers a sophisticated mobile app survey solution optimized to give you the best survey experience on mobile devices. With features like unobtrusive survey Nudges™ and support for both Android and iOS devices, Qualaroo is a one-stop solution for all your in-app survey needs.

Frequently Asked Questions