Survey

This test obtains quantitative data on the potential of a solution in the market through free-form and/or closed ended questions. Surveys allow testing a variety of assumptions regarding customer segments and their problems, value proposition, and product characteristics.

Surveys are a great way to get quantitative validation of your business model hypotheses. Typically done after an early qualitative test format like a Problem/Solution Interview, it helps you confirm your identified customer needs and proposed value proposition and features on a larger scale. It also provides you an opportunity to test various target segments and identify potential early adopters. By collecting contact information from your respondents, you can stay in contact with interested customers that you would have otherwise not found through your personal network. Through online forms, surveys are today very easy and cheap to make, but require some time investment for building and testing.

Helpful Tips

Take your time: A survey is typically sent out to a lot of people; prepare an easy to follow structure and develop precise questions that give you the most useful feedback.

Get to know your audience: Always start with demographic data and characteristics that you can use to separate your target segments. It helps you with the market segmentation afterwards and with identifying early adopters.

Setup is key: No one likes to fill out long and boring surveys. Be very precise with your questions and keep the survey as entertaining as possible.

Beware of asking about willingness to pay: Many surveys include a section on how much a customer is willing to pay for the solution; know that the answer to this question will most likely not be truthful due to the setting.

Use multipliers for recruiting: Try to find single access points with a wide reach to obtain a broad audience for your survey. Especially for large companies, it makes sense to run a survey internally with all employees.

Combine it with other formats: Especially when presenting a new solution, it makes sense to introduce it in an interactive way. An Explainer Video, a Flyer or a Mockup are simple formats to show your offering and make it more realistic to the respondents.

Before entering a new city, Foursquare used Google Forms surveys to gauge customer interest in different cities. This helped them to ensure that they did not waste resources by starting in cities that would not be active enough.

How to Guide

Create the survey, ideally based on the results of the first interviews with customers. There are many online tools and service providers that offer survey templates you can use.

Select and recruit participants based on your needs, either by inviting them selectively, recruiting in your own networks, using your existing contacts or hiring service providers that offer recruiting or full-survey-solutions.

Conduct the survey, analyze the results and present them in a visual format so you can easily share them. Always check back and revise your hypotheses afterwards.