Product development survey templates

The right questions follow the stage. At the concept stage, ask about appeal, relevance, and likelihood to use. At the feature stage, have respondents rank options with MaxDiff or a priority scale. At launch, ask satisfaction and improvement questions. Include at least one open-ended question on why respondents rated as they did, since that is where the actionable insight tends to live.

Use a monadic concept test to show one concept at a time and rate it on appeal, uniqueness, and purchase intent. Switch to a sequential monadic test when you need to compare two or three concepts with the same respondents. Keep each description short, around one image and two or three sentences. Recruit through the SurveyMonkey Audience panel when you do not have a customer list for the new product.

MaxDiff is the most reliable method for feature prioritization. It shows respondents small sets of features and asks for the most and least appealing in each set, producing a rank order across everything without the fatigue of ranking a long list directly. Built-in significance testing then shows which preference gaps are real before you move them onto the roadmap.

Keep it to 10 or fewer when you can, since short surveys complete at 99.1%. Medium-length surveys of 11-20 questions still hold at 96.7%, which works for detailed concept or feature studies. Past 21 questions, completion drops to 81.6%. Tie every question to a decision; if you cannot explain how an answer changes what you do, cut it.

For an existing product, send the survey to your current customers. For a new concept in an unfamiliar market, use the SurveyMonkey Audience panel to reach screened respondents who match your target, filtering by age, income, purchase behavior, and dozens of other attributes. Targeting the wrong audience is one of the most common causes of misleading product research.