Did you know that 70% of products fail in the development stage? This statistic shows how challenging product development is and how important it is to carefully plan and research possible solutions before launching a product.

That's where product discovery comes in. It is the process of understanding user needs to reduce uncertainty and ensure you build the right products that customers will love.

In this article, we present six practical product discovery examples of methods that help you recognize customer preferences, market trends and unexplored opportunities. 

Product discovery examples: 6 methods to try

Customer feedback

Customer feedback is vital for the continuous product discovery cycle because it provides insights into user expectations, needs and preferences. These are the basis for deciding what features to prioritize in your product and what you can omit.

User feedback in the product discovery process can take different forms, such as:

• Customer interviews – You can ask questions like: “If you could design the perfect [product type] for yourself, what features or functionalities would it include?” or “What factors would make you hesitant to adopt a new tool like [product type]?”
• Customer surveys  – You can use questions like: “Which features of our [product type] do you find the most valuable? Please rank them in order of importance.”
• Focus groups – Their value lies in the group discussions and the dynamic interactions between members. To organize a focus group, select participants from different backgrounds and prepare questions to guide the conversation, such as: ”What do you like or dislike about the current products or methods you’re using to solve [problem]?”

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Though customer feedback is precious, the tricky part is analyzing all the collected data and drawing conclusions. With proper software, the whole process becomes much more straightforward.

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Zeda.io is the best product discovery tool that helps you establish the proper product feedback strategy and streamline the process. It gathers customer feedback from various sources, such as feedback forms, customer portals, and in-app widgets, and consolidates them into a single, convenient dashboard. It generates actionable customer insights from the feedback gathered. 

After that, you can use multiple frameworks to prioritize top-requested features and decide what to develop next. Sign up for a free trial to learn how Zeda.io can help you overcome product discovery hurdles.

User behavior analytics

User behavior analytics (UBA) leverages data and insights to understand how users engage with a product. Based on that data, UBA identifies patterns and uncovers opportunities for improvement. Here's how user behavior analytics can contribute to product discovery:

• Usage patterns: UBA allows you to track how users navigate your product, which features they use most frequently and where they spend the most time. This information can help identify popular features and potential areas of enhancement.
• User engagement: By analyzing user behavior, you can gauge engagement and interaction with your product. This data can reveal which parts of the product capture users' attention and where they might disengage.
• Identifying pain points: UBA can highlight areas where users encounter difficulties, drop off or exhibit frustration. Pinpointing these pain points can guide product improvements and optimizations.
• Feature prioritization: By understanding which features customers use most frequently and which are less popular, you can make informed decisions about which features to prioritize for further development or enhancement.

Competition analysis

How users perceive your product is also closely connected with the alternatives they have. That's why you should always be aware of competitive products and their possibilities – this is one of the best product discovery methods.

You shouldn't confine yourself to reading customer reviews but go deeper and try to know the tool from the user’s perspective. Sign up for a free account to evaluate the product from the inside and discover its features, strengths and pain points. This way, when you collect information about several competitive options on the market, you'll get a picture of what is missing and what ideas are worth deploying.

Collaborative product development

Collaborative product development involves customers in the design process.

For example, GoDaddy has a program called GoDaddy Customer Council where a selected group of customers (who are at the same time marketers, developers, designers, SEO experts etc.) provides feedback, shares their experiences and offers suggestions for improving GoDaddy's products, services and overall customer experience. 

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Council members often participate in surveys, focus groups and other feedback-gathering activities. Apart from influencing decisions on the product and experiences, they take part in monthly sweepstakes and get Amazon gift cards or different kinds of compensation.

The insights GoDaddy collects from the council members help them see their products from the user perspective, understand customer needs and pain points and make informed decisions on tailoring the company's offerings to meet customer demands effectively.

It allows GoDaddy to maintain a strong customer focus and ensure its products and services remain relevant and valuable to its user base.

Brainstorming or brainwriting

Using the inventiveness of your product team members is a vital step in the product discovery process. Therefore, you should employ brainstorming sessions in your discovery work. Give your team members a chance to share their ideas and look at the product from their perspective.

However, brainstorming also comes with the danger that individuals will be captured by groupthink and exert less effort to generate new ideas. To avoid that, consider replacing brainstorming with brainwriting: let participants prepare their ideas individually and write them on paper. After the allocated time, each participant passes their ideas to the next person, who then elaborates upon them.

Usability testing

When conducting product discovery, it's crucial to understand how users perceive your product. Do they think it is easy to use or encounter any difficulties in the whole process of working with the product? 

When conducting usability testing, allow your users to go through different scenarios and present them with various tasks to complete. Their behavior and comments will provide valuable insights and shed light on the product's strengths and weaknesses to show you how and where to improve it.

One example comes from Satchel, an education software developer. Their consulting agency conducted usability testing to improve the website user experience, and the results showed frustration about finding pricing information. 

This data helped them create a "Get pricing" link to simplify the process, resulting in a 34% increase in demo requests.

Customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping is a product discovery method that helps to understand and analyze the steps a customer takes, from discovering the product to purchasing it and becoming an advocate. Here are the steps of this discovery process:

• Identify the customer's different touchpoints with the business and offerings throughout their journey. They can include website visits, online searches, social media interactions, dealings with customer support and more.
• For each touchpoint, map the customers' actions and how they engage with the product.
• Identify customer pain points to find areas for improvement.
• Based on the insights gained from customer journey mapping, determine how to improve the user experience. It can involve changing the website, enhancing the product or addressing any other pain point.

Recognizing all touchpoints of the customer journey helps you explore all potential solutions for increasing your customer base and fostering growth and expansion.

Conclusion

After discussing different product discovery techniques, it becomes clear that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. By applying a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research methods, you can discover how to take your business to the next level.

The product discovery process doesn’t have to be difficult and time-consuming.

Zeda.io provides a centralized platform to identify market trends, user behavior and customer preferences so you can make an informed decision on what to build next. It offers solutions for customer feedback management, helps you develop and implement product prioritization frameworks and provides effective product analytics tools. In short, it has everything you need for streamlined product discovery. Test how the tool works by signing up for a free trial.