Why survey.io works
Lately, Burt has been using a tool called Survey.io, a dead simple tool developed by Sean Ellis, Hiten Shah and the rest of the good people over at Kissmetrics. We use Survey.io to send out a couple of standardized questions to our users, learn from their response and use the input to improve faster and with a better sense of priorities. Being six guys managing three products, while trying to keep thousands of waiting users happy we sort of need all the operating leverage we can get ;)
A more in-depth explanation of the philosophy behind the tools is available over at Venturehacks. The core idea is to get above 40% of your users to claim they would be very disappointed if your product was discontinued. Once you hit that mark, you can start worrying about other things, such as pricing, distribution, conversion optimizatio etc. But unless you hit the 40% mark, you shouldn’t worry about anything else. You’re a “nice to have”, not a “need to have”.
The brilliance of this is not that it’s 40% and not 46%, but that there is a number for you to benchmark against. And benchmarks bring your metrics into context. All of a sudden it’s not just a number, but a judgement. Without comparison and context, most metrics are just numbers on a screen. Without comparison, no action. Without action, no value. And without value, why bother?
On a side note, 75% of Rich users are recommending us to their friends and colleagues. Kind of awesome, wouldn’t you say?
