Product feedback tools are a vital part of being able to deliver products that not only meet your requirements and targets – but the everyday needs of your users.
No matter how well you might have used internal testing – even dogfooding your own products, nothing can ever compare to the raw feedback you can receive through using the right product feedback tools.
But what are the right feedback tools for you to use for your specific product, and your unique audience?
Before answering the question of “what is the best product feedback tool in 2024?”, what we need to think about first is “what is the best type of feedback tool I should be using?”.
Relying on tickets, emails, and open-ended feedback through forms or social media is highly unlikely to connect you with your end users in a way that provides you with specific, meaningful, and actionable feedback.
And that’s the point.
Product feedback must be ACTIONABLE.
So the tool you use must be set up in such a way that not only are users able to provide product feedback easily, but also in a way that allows you to get value from their feedback.
So in this article we’re going to look at the different types of product feedback tools that we would recommend, before sharing our thoughts on the best feedback tools for each category.
In making our recommendations we have not been sponsored, cajoled, or bribed in any way!
Our recommendations are based upon our own experience, community feedback and reviews – taking into account user-friendliness, features, integrations, and pricing.
These are the product feedback categories we’ve identified, so if you prefer you can jump straight to the type you feel most suited to you. Or, of course, feel free to read right through our coffee-fueled advice and hard work!
After all, we may well have covered something you hadn’t previously considered:
- Comprehensive Feedback and Workflow Management
Categories of Product Feedback Tools
#1 – Comprehensive Feedback and Workflow Management
Effective product feedback shouldn’t be an isolated solution.
It’s not a postbox that suggestions and comments can be dumped in, resulting in a sort of ‘lucky dip’ approach as and when team members have availability to consider ‘optional’ or ‘additional’ product developments.
For a product feedback tool to be truly effective it should ideally connect seamlessly with your existing workflow, allowing comments and feedback to become tasks, and then tasks being assigned to the right person, tracked, progressed, actioned, and recorded.
Of course, you may already have an existing workflow, with communication and project management software. In which case a feedback tool that offers a wide range of integrations will allow for the best of both worlds.
Whilst there are some standalone feedback tools available, it’s important to be aware that there are a number of comprehensive feedback and workflow management tools available, providing a much more integrated, holistic, and accountable approach to actioning and benefitting from the feedback received.
Recommended Feedback Tool: Atarim
Yes, this is us!
But we’ve spent five years perfecting Atarim to become the best feedback tool in the industry.
And many of the top website design and development businesses and teams around the world have come to rely on Atarim’s feedback and workflow tools to significantly increase efficiency – which is a testament to our success.
Atarim is primarily for teams who need visual feedback on either live websites, or visual designs (such as logos, ads, graphics, etc.).
What makes Atarim really stand out as a visual product feedback tool is the fact that clients, team members, and any other stakeholder can simply visit any live website, click the Atarim Chrome extension button, and immediately start clicking anywhere on any live website, leaving virtual ‘sticky notes’ that explain clearly what they want changing.
But here’s the real kicker.
Because every time a client leaves one of these virtual notes, Atarim creates an actionable task right in your team’s dashboard. These tasks can be assigned to whoever is appropriate, tracked, and marked as complete. They can even be timed, to help with accurate billing. And each task links directly to the exact spot on the website where the client clicked.
Not only that, but each of these tasks also includes an automated screenshot of exactly what the client was looking at, and which browser they were using (so, you know, if they’re trying to access the website using Internet Explorer 4, it’s easier to understand why they might be having a problem).
Something that Atarim is well-known for is its huge array of integrations, allowing it to fit in seamlessly with almost any workflow, such as Zapier, Asana, Basecamp, Trello, Monday.com, and many more. With automated workflows as well, Atarim brings visual feedback and collaboration directly into any workflow, allowing teams to collect highly actionable and very accurate feedback on virtually any visual design.
So for a comprehensive product feedback and workflow management tool, Atarim is a highly recommended solution.
Try Atarim’s visual collaboration entirely free yourself, and if you fancy upgrading, paid plans start from just $20 per month.
In-App Feedback Tools
There’s a problem with users providing feedback on apps. It often requires them to leave the app completely in order to provide that feedback, and this onerous task can be enough to put them off telling you anything about how their experience could be improved, or issues that don’t work properly.
It might not seem a huge deal, but expecting users to switch from your app to their email app to compose a message is enough to put off more than 84% of all users who experience a bug or issue.
A more successful approach can be to integrate your feedback tool within the actual app itself. By doing this, as soon as an issue arises, users are able to immediately provide clear feedback on their experience.
There are several tools that can be used to help integrate this feedback approach, two of which include Hotjar and Pendo.
Recommended Feedback Tool: Hotjar
Hotjar is a popular in-app feedback tool that combines heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback polls to provide a comprehensive view of user behavior and feedback.
Key Features:
- Heatmaps: Visualize user interactions, such as clicks, taps, and scrolling behavior, to understand what users are focusing on.
- Session Recordings: Replay user sessions to see exactly how they navigate through your app, identifying any pain points or confusion.
- Feedback Polls: Collect user feedback through targeted polls, asking specific questions based on user actions.
Recommended Feedback Tool: Pendo
Pendo offers a robust platform for in-app surveys and polls, combined with powerful product analytics and roadmap integration. It’s designed to help product teams understand user behavior and prioritize features based on real user needs.
Key Features:
- In-App Surveys and Polls: Gather direct feedback from users through customizable surveys and polls embedded within the app.
- Product Analytics: Track user interactions, feature usage, and user journeys to gain deep insights into how users engage with your product.
- Roadmap Integration: Link feedback directly to your product roadmap, ensuring that user input drives development priorities.
Survey and Form Builders
Sometimes you need more information from users than a simple comment when they run into an issue. You may wish to be more proactive, or even provide users with a guided form that includes specific questions or requires predetermined responses.
This is where surveys, polls, and questionnaires can be hugely valuable, allowing you to create a carefully constructed method of getting exactly the information you need, whether that be opinions, preferences, or experiences.
This approach can make it significantly easier for you to gain much more in-depth insight into what your users are thinking and feeling, allowing you to make more informed decisions for further improvements to your product.
Recommended Feedback Tool: Typeform
Typeform is renowned for its visually engaging and conversational survey forms. It stands out due to its user-friendly interface and interactive design, which makes filling out surveys a more enjoyable experience for respondents.
Key Features:
- Engaging Design: Typeform’s surveys are visually appealing and interactive, which helps increase response rates.
- Conversational Interface: The tool uses a conversational approach, presenting one question at a time to keep respondents focused and engaged.
- Customizable Templates: Offers a wide range of customizable templates that can be tailored to match your brand’s look and feel.
Recommended Feedback Tool: SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a versatile tool for creating detailed surveys with extensive reporting features. It is widely used for its robust functionalities and flexibility in survey creation and data analysis.
- Key Features:
- Comprehensive Survey Builder: Allows for the creation of detailed and complex surveys with various question types and logic branching.
- Advanced Reporting: Provides extensive reporting and analytics features, enabling you to interpret data effectively and gain valuable insights.
- Wide Range of Integrations: Integrates with numerous other tools and platforms, such as CRM systems and email marketing services, to streamline your workflow.
These survey and form builders not only help in collecting valuable feedback but also ensure that the data gathered is organized and actionable, supporting better decision-making and continuous product improvement.
Feature Request Management
How do you decide what your development team will work on next? What informs the decision making process regarding the features and tools that are built and integrated into your product next?
If that process is entirely internal, then how do you know you’re truly meeting the needs and wishes of your target audience – your users?
This is where it can be hugely valuable to make use of feature request management tools, allowing your users to submit their own ideas for new features or tools they’d like to see, and for them to vote on features and tools from a list (that’s completely user-led, curated by you, or set out by you exclusively).
This feedback is vital, if your goal is to have your product evolve in a much more user-centric way – a proven approach for increasing customer satisfaction, and boosting your reputation as a listening and responsive developer.
Recommended Feedback Tool: Canny
Canny is a powerful tool that enables users to submit and vote on feature requests, helping to prioritize development based on user demand. This platform is particularly useful for gathering collective insights and making informed decisions about which features to develop next.
Key Features:
- User Voting: Users can submit feature requests and vote on existing ones, providing a clear indication of what the majority of users want.
- Prioritization: Helps prioritize features based on the number of votes and user comments, ensuring that the most impactful features are developed first.
- Integration: Seamlessly integrates with project management tools like Jira and Trello, ensuring that feature requests are easily turned into actionable tasks.
Recommended Feedback Tool: Productboard
Productboard integrates user feedback directly with product roadmaps, aligning team priorities with user needs.
It offers a comprehensive solution for managing feature requests, making it easier to understand what users want and how it fits into your overall product strategy.
Key Features:
- Centralized Feedback: Collects feedback from various sources, including direct user input, customer support tickets, and sales insights, consolidating it into a single platform.
- Roadmap Integration: Directly links user feedback to your product roadmap, ensuring that development efforts are aligned with user priorities.
- Customer Insights: Provides detailed analytics and insights into customer needs, helping teams make data-driven decisions about feature development.
By using feature request management tools like Canny and Productboard, you can ensure that your product development is closely aligned with user expectations, leading to higher satisfaction and more successful product releases.
Usability Testing Tools
How usable is your product really? The thing is, you know exactly how to use it, because you designed it.
But often users will find innovative ways of using products that were never envisioned by those who designed it.
This is where usability testing tools are so important. They help you to observe and analyze your users’ behavior, helping you to accurately identify pain points you may never have been aware of, because of how you use your own product.
By using remote usability testing you can see exactly how users interact with your product in real-time, helping you make much more accurate decisions about how to design and develop your product in future.
Recommended Feedback Tool: UserTesting
UserTesting is a leading platform for remote usability testing, offering comprehensive features such as video recordings and live interviews. It allows you to gain firsthand insights into how users experience your product, helping you to identify areas that need improvement.
Key Features:
- Video Recordings: Capture real-time interactions of users with your product, providing visual and audio feedback on user behavior.
- Live Interviews: Conduct live, moderated testing sessions to ask users questions and observe their reactions in real-time.
- Broad Audience Reach: Access a diverse panel of users to ensure that your testing covers a wide range of demographics and use cases.
Recommended Feedback Tool: Lookback
Lookback offers live moderated testing and screen recording for real-time user insights. It is designed to help teams collaborate during the usability testing process, making it easier to gather and analyze feedback.
Key Features:
- Live Moderated Testing: Conduct live sessions where you can guide users through tasks, ask questions, and receive immediate feedback.
- Screen Recording: Record user sessions to see exactly how they navigate your product, providing valuable insights into user behavior and usability issues.
- Collaboration Tools: Allows team members to join live sessions, take notes, and discuss findings in real-time, enhancing collaborative analysis.
Using usability testing tools like UserTesting and Lookback, you can gain deep insights into user interactions with your product. This helps you identify usability issues, improve user experience, and ensure that your product meets user expectations.
Customer Feedback Management
The trouble with feedback from users is that often it can be arriving from so many different channels.
You may have email addresses, website forms, and in-app forms, and trying to make sense of it all is like trying to juggle half a dozen live chickens, each of which is trying to knit a rhombicosidodecahedron out of spaghetti.
All right, well it might not be quite that bad.
But it is still hugely challenging, and that’s where customer feedback management tools become so hugely useful.
Customer feedback management tools allow you to collect and analyze user feedback from a whole heap of different channels, making sure that all voices are heard – not just those who tag you most frequently and publicly on social media.
These tools help you to collect comprehensive insights, track trends, and make decisions based on data, rather than guesswork.
Recommended Feedback Tool: Qualtrics
Qualtrics is a leading customer feedback management tool that offers comprehensive solutions for collecting and analyzing feedback across multiple channels.
It is designed to provide deep insights into customer experiences, helping organizations understand and address customer needs effectively.
Key Features:
- Multi-Channel Feedback Collection: Gather feedback through surveys, social media, email, and web, ensuring a holistic view of customer opinions.
- Advanced Analytics: Utilize powerful analytics tools to interpret feedback, identify trends, and generate actionable insights.
- Customizable Surveys: Create and distribute highly customizable surveys tailored to specific user groups and feedback goals.
- Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly integrate with other platforms such as CRM systems and analytics tools, enhancing the value of collected feedback.
Recommended Feedback Tool: Zonka Feedback
Zonka Feedback provides a robust solution for multi-channel feedback collection, offering detailed analytics and reporting features.
It is particularly useful for businesses looking to streamline their feedback processes and gain comprehensive insights from various customer touchpoints.
Key Features:
- Multi-Channel Feedback: Collect feedback via email, SMS, web, mobile apps, and kiosks, providing flexibility in how you gather customer opinions.
- Real-Time Reporting: Access real-time feedback and analytics, allowing you to respond promptly to customer needs and concerns.
- Customizable Feedback Forms: Design and deploy feedback forms that match your brand and specific requirements, ensuring relevance and engagement.
- Actionable Insights: Generate detailed reports and dashboards to track feedback trends and measure customer satisfaction over time.
Using customer feedback management tools like Qualtrics and Zonka Feedback, you can build a comprehensive understanding of your customer base. These insights empower you to make informed decisions that enhance the customer experience, driving loyalty and growth.
Conclusion
Collecting customer feedback is essential. No developer aims to be the monkey that ‘sees no evil’ – or indeed, anything at all. It’s essential for businesses to ensure they’re accurately meeting the needs of their users, and having the right product feedback tools is crucial.
When selecting a product feedback tool, consider the following criteria:
- User-Friendliness: Ensure the tool is easy to use for both your team and your users.
- Feature Set: Look for comprehensive features that meet your specific needs.
- Integrations: Check if the tool integrates well with your existing systems and workflows.
- Pricing: Choose a tool that offers good value for its features.
By focusing on these factors, you can select a tool that not only collects valuable feedback but also drives meaningful improvements in your products and services.
Call us biased, but Atarim is honestly a terrific tool for collecting feedback on designs. Why? Well, to start with – it’s exactly what we use ourselves when developing Atarim!
With its unique approach to gathering feedback in a visual and highly intuitive way, it invites feedback with just a single click, and because it’s integrated into a full task-management platform, actioning feedback becomes just as easy.
If you’re ready to take feedback to the next level, consider integrating Atarim into your workflow.
Whether you take advantage of the Atarim WordPress plugin that allows you to collaborate and provide feedback on both the frontend and backend of any WordPress site, or the Chrome extension that enables one-click collaboration on any website, Atarim has feedback fully covered.
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