Pro Tips for When to Send Your Mobile Survey

Targeting techniques are essential for survey success. While it's critical to get the framing and wording of your questions right, they only work if you send your surveys to the right people at the right time. Knowing when to send your mobile survey is necessary for getting the feedback you want.

With Instabug, you can already choose user groups for your surveys with ease. User targeting is a piece of cake. You can set conditions for who sees the survey using attributes like app version, OS, country, last seen, email address, and more. For advanced targeting, you can define custom events down to the most granular detail you need so that your users receive your survey at the exact moment you want them to see it.

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When to send your mobile survey to get the most feedback: At the start of a user's session

With Instabug's auto targeting default settings, surveys are shown to your users 10 seconds into the start of their first session after you hit the Publish button. This optimizes for survey views, reaching as many of your app users as possible so that you can gather mass feedback. With this targeting option, there are no app updates or code changes required. Your surveys are shipped straight from your dashboard.

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This approach is best for collecting general feedback. If you want to get responses about a specific experience, you'll want to target users based on events.

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When to send your mobile survey to get the most relevant feedback: Based on user events

Custom events make it easy for you to time your surveys for strategic moments. For the developer’s details on how to set custom events, check out our documentation.

You’ll want to align user behaviors with survey triggers to catch their thoughts at the most relevant occasions.

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So let’s look at some examples of custom events that are used by Instabug customers to gather contextual feedback.

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After completing a purchase

If your goal is to optimize your checkout flow, when would be the most relevant time to ask your users about your checkout process? How about right after they’ve made a purchase? Sending a survey right after they’ve completed a checkout connects the desired user behavior (made a purchase) with the most relevant moment for the user (the seconds after they’ve just made a purchase). This is the time when they’re most likely to remember details about the experience and they’re more inclined to respond to a survey when their emotions about the experience are fresh.

Was there anything missing from the checkout process? Can they rate its ease of use? If your customer is a repeat purchaser, you can ask about what you guys are doing right.

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After a service interaction

Here’s a common example: Most of us are familiar with the rating request that comes after completing a trip booked through a ride hailing app. You’ve reached your destination. How would you rate your driver? As a user, if I’m not prompted for a rating right then and there, I’m likely to forget about the experience as soon as I’ve begun focusing on something new. You can also add a survey to find out why a user canceled a ride to discover which factors contribute to losses.

If you're a service app and regular ratings are a big part of your business, you'll want to set custom events to trigger a survey at the end of a key interaction, whether it was with a customer support agent, a delivery driver, a babysitter, or other service provider.

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When an experience is completed

Let's talk about an example related to mobile games. You can get the pacing right on your levels by surveying your users after completing levels. A post-level survey can find out how fun the level was, how challenging it was, and if there were parts that felt long or boring. You can also ask them if there were parts that seemed confusing or if they needed extra help.

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When an experience is abandoned

Understanding the "why" behind users' negative behavior is as important as understanding the happy path. For workout apps, for example, you'll want to know what your users think of your workout routines. Are they sufficiently entertaining? Do your users feel appropriately challenged? Or are they lying on the floor in a puddle of their own sweat, unable to get up and finish the routine? Here’s where you want to set up a survey for users who exit the routine before the last exercise to understand more about why they abandoned the experience. You can test your hypotheses by asking them to rate how fun the routine was, followed by how challenging it was.

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Pro tip: Drive five-star reviews by timing app rating prompts with rewarding moments

When you send app rating or NPS surveys with Instabug, you have the option of requesting satisfied users to leave you a review in the app store. What’s the best way to boost your app store rating? Asking for their review at the perfect time.

Rewarding moments in your app could include when the user completes a task, matches with another user, or receives a prize of some kind. These are the moments that make your users feel good. You can also get other cues from your users that they are experiencing rewarding moments. For example, a food delivery customer might indicate their satisfaction by leaving a tip or rating their meal favorably.

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Schedule app rating surveys to be triggered by rewarding moments. Users that give positive responses will be asked to leave you a review in the app store. Users that give negative responses will be asked for feedback on what you can improve. You’ll receive their answer as a message in your inbox rather than a public review. Instabug helps you keep the critical feedback private so you can work on improving it, and the positive feedback public, so people can hear what a great job you’re doing!