[Ask IH] What are the most important questions to ask (perhaps on IH :>) when creating new product / website / landing ?
[Ask IH] What are the most important questions to ask (perhaps on IH :>) when creating new product / website / landing ?
To be more specific: Let's say I create a new website for professional services and have some friends, mentors or a group that I would like to use to validate it. The common approach is to ask for "feedback", but when you look, here on IH, at the answers, you will see myriad of different approaches to the topic.
What do you think are the most important questions, that will give you the best feedback about your product? (Ultimately you should ask them yourself first)
For example, based on some previous posts I read, the common replies would answer to:
What is this product offering?
What problem does it solve?
How does it look?
Do you understand CTA?
What was your first thought when you saw the page?
Is the price reasonable?
Who do you think is a target customer?
What do you think this page is about?
Etc.
It seems like you nailed it with those questions you posted. I would also ask if the description was easy to understand.
I think you should first define what do you want to learn. For example, the questions you pose 'what is the product offering?' clearly aims at learning whether the landing page is clear. But it will not allow you to learn anything about the product itself, market fit, etc.
Assuming you only want to validate the landing page, you have to define the important things for you to learn. For instance, the first couple of questions you ask are very relevant.
Asking if the price is reasonable is a completely different topic. You are either asking for advice, or you are interviewing a potential customer. If you are not addressing the entire IH community with your product, you will hardly learn anything from that question. You could have asked about the clarity of the pricing plans... 'Are you aware that you pay a yearly fee?'
The asking questions process normally starts the other way, by thinking what answers do you want that will help you lower the uncertainty you have. Plus, you can leave room to unexpected, unasked questions. Remember that asking feedback is not the same than asking advise. I can tell you what I remember of your page after seeing it for 1 minute (feedback) or I can tell you who I think is your customer (advise). Giving advise puts the interviewee on a position of power, and if what you are looking for is feedback, you should try to avoid it as much as possible.
The problem with a lot of these questions is that they are subjective, and unless the person reviewing is a prospective customer, the "feedback" to these questions is mostly noise.
Here are some of the questions I always go through mentally when I'm analyzing a new product concept/pitch or landing page.
The first and most important question is "who is this product for." If that's not crystal clear at first glance, or the answer is any kind of vague "anyone who...." there is work to do.
The next question is what problem does it solve, and how clearly is that expressed? Lots of the landing pages and product concepts we see are post-hoc attempts at describing an idea, which puts the emphasis squarely on the idea instead of the reader/customer/user's problem. If the landing page doesn't describe the reader/customer/user's problem as a priority, there is work to do.
Assuming the landing page communicates the problem clearly, the next question is if it makes me want to know more. This question could be read subjectively, but there are some basic writing and design techniques that are relatively universal when it comes to desire and persuasion. Does each headline or sentence or image make me want to know what happens next? Think 3-act stories (conflict->escalation->resolution).
Great answer! Also a valid point about the low relevance of non-customer opinions. I change my thought about universal feedback questionnaire to base pre-market validation questions :)
The third bullet reminds me about Before-After-Bridge copy formula. Buffer has a good article about it: https://blog.bufferapp.com/copywriting-formulas so one of the questions to ask would be if the content matches either of those formulas.
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Thanks! However, I'm not really looking for customer interview questions but something like questions that would be part of the professional feedback here on the forum. For example fellow IH'ers are not really customers but have the ability to answer them.
Ah. But out of curiosity why would fellow HI'ers want to answer them? I don't quote understand what you're doing? Offering? Business is?
Thanks!
In general, they are already replying to them after the ask for feedback, my goal is to have the list of all the questions that I and other makers need to think about before launch. I noticed that a lot of feedback is very similar. An additional benefit is that after you ask correct questions it won't be so important to ask them here.