Recently I gave a talk at the Utah iPhone Developer’s Group about listening to user feedback. I’d like to just rehash the idea and summarize what I talked about. I ran a little short on time while giving my presentation and I dont remember if I left anything out. The bulk of the talk focused on different ways we can listen to users, and pros/cons of those methods.
iTunes Reviews -
In my opinion this can be some of the worst feedback you can get from customers. These reviews are focused at other people making decisions about the games. You should never ignore these because they do give a good indicator of what is going on, but do not rely on these as your main source of how you users are doing. It’s a lot of work to review in iTunes, and most users don’t take the time. You need to focus on ways that are easier to get the user to give feedback
In Game Feedback -
Build a feedback button into your iPhone app or maybe a form that submits to the server. The users do have a limited keyboard, but atleast they can give feedback while using your app. They don’t have to go through all the work to talk to you and they feel like you want the feedback. You not only have an another and easier way to get feedback, but the customer actually feels like he is important. We all like to feel like we are important sometimes. This is great way to create evangelists for your app. When you listen and improve your app you will increase customer sentiment and create some evangelist for you app.
The Web -
The web is a great way to get feedback. Yeah the user is away from the phone, and its not as centralized as iTunes, but it is so much easier. Set up a website and create a twitter account. People are probably talking about your app on twitter or are looking for you on the web. Make it easy for them to find you and go out and try to find them. I am a huge fan of Get Satisfaction and User Voice. Create an account on their and start talking to your community and listening to what they want.
Analytics -
Listening to what your user has to say is great, but listening to what they do is even more valuable. Analytics is where you are able to see how much your app is being used or if it is even being used. You can see the most used, abused, and missed features in your apps. Analytics has helped me find bugs and cheats in my game, and I believe every app should have some form of mobile analytics installed. You can easily just track app usage, but take the time to track user behavior. It takes a little bit of effort to scatter the logs around your code, but its worth seeing what the user is actually doing while using your app.
My favorite source for mobile analytics is Pinch Media. I have analytics in Green Wars, and it has helped us add many great features to our game. Like I said, it helped us find a cheat in our game that we could only see because of the way users were using the game.
Take the time to install analytics in your app. The libraries are small and you wont notice any lag in performance at all. It is worth the little effort that is required.
I am a huge fan of customer development, and this continue even after you release your product. You need to continually get feedback from your customers in order to imrpove your product. Pocket God is a great example of this. They have a great product and are staying in the top apps. Their decisions are based upon customer requests because the customers are the ones buying their product. Without the customer are products would be pretty useless. So get out there and focus on building what the customer wants, and then after you release it make it even more of what the customer needs and wants.