How to find users that represent your broader userbase

Back in May we ran an OpinionX survey with our users to figure out the biggest barriers people had when trying to use our product.

The very first new opinion added by a participant was, "I need to create a new survey every time I want to add a new sample statement." We realised that this user hadn't noticed a really important feature and we wanted to jump in to show them how to use OpinionX better. But we didn't know who wrote this opinion!

Over the last 2 months, we've heard similar stories from OpinionX survey creators who wanted to dig deeper into their data to understand who authored and agreed/disagreed with each opinion. Experiencing this first hand, we realized that we needed to improve the transparency of participant data for survey creators.

We just shipped new features that enable survey creators to dig deeper into their data on OpinionX.

Opinion-Level Data

On your Opinions tab, click the Actions triple dot on any opinion you want to learn more about. In the dropdown list of options, click "View Details" to open your details window. On this window, you can see the opinion author (if you're collecting email addresses), the version history (if you've edited the opinion) and the voting overview.

Clicking 'Explore Consensus Votes' takes things one step further, breaking down the consensus voting data to show you a list of participants that picked each option.

Participant-Level Data

Loads of OpinionX users we talked to told us that they like to contact their survey participants to do follow up interviews and dig deeper into their results. If that's something you do, then this new feature will be great for you!

Just like the Opinion Details feature, you can open a Participant Details window that shows you an individual-level stack ranking, what they agree and disagree on, and a list of opinions they submitted to your survey:

When should you use these new features?

Now that you have these new features at your disposal you might be wondering when you should use them. There are 3 occasions where these features add a tonne of new value:

1) Contacting users with personalized support

One of the most common ways people use OpinionX is to prioritize their product roadmaps, where survey creators add a list of problems for their users to stack rank. This is a great way to get a double win; get fresh feedback from your users and data to prioritize the biggest problems they face.

Some of the statements added to your roadmap survey will highlight specific users and unique problems they're facing. Being able to see who wrote each opinion allows you to do quick personalized follow ups to solve their problems and build a real relationship with your users.

2) Building user personas

Understanding your different user personas is key for marketing and product management — especially as an early stage startup. By viewing each individual-level voting data, you can begin to see patterns that will help you to form more advanced personas based on the biggest unmet problems and needs.

3) Arranging customer interviews

Now that you know who authored each statement or agrees with a specific problem, you can email those people to organize follow up interviews for more context. Authors of statements with high consensus are a great entry point into the mindset of your users, as they have demonstrated an ability to articulate a broadly representative view of your users' experience with your product.

Organizing user interviews is one of the most time consuming parts of user research — your OpinionX data will help you reduce this time by surfacing articulate representatives from your user base and the biggest problems those users face.

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Have some feedback for the OpinionX team? Get in contact and share your thoughts. As the name suggests, we love hearing our users' opinions :)