Feature Voting – why you should use it & best practices

Do you know which customers care about what and what matters most to them? Use feature voting to take the guess work out of feature prioritisation. Read this post to find out why you should use feature voting and best practises.

What is feature voting?

Voting for features on the product roadmap, also known as feature voting or roadmap voting, is done by customers. The features with the highest votes are shown on top of the list of features, similar to Reddit. This is typically accomplished through a page where your customers can submit feature requests. If a feature has already been requested, they should upvote it rather than adding a duplicate.

Why to use feature voting?

Know What Matter to Your Customer?

The key purpose to utilise feature voting is to find out what matters most to your consumers and also what matters to particular customer.

Your clients will upvote the features that are the most essential to them. If you add features that your consumers desire and value, you will make your product more valuable.

Know which clients care about certain features. Check which customers are upvoting which features. If you have more than one customer segment or persona, you can see what’s important to each segment and you can make product decisions based on the segment that you are prioritising.

Take the guesswork from feature and roadmap prioritization

Feature voting is a great way to take the guesswork out of knowing what your customers want. Once you know what your customers want, you can use that prioritize your roadmap to make sure you’re building the right products

Always have an up-to-date list of your top requested features. Use the number of upvotes as one of the data inputs that go into your product prioritization. Combine this with other data points such as effort to develop the feature, strategic importance, etc.

Let Customer Know When they Should Want things What they asked for

When I utilise SaaS solutions, I often find myself searching for a place to provide comments (which is a large part of the reason we decided to build Convas, more about that here). Then it’s great when I discover that they have a feedback page where I can post feedback, give it my support, see what other people are asking for, and learn about the company’s future plans. I can both express my criticism and learn more about the direction the business is taking.

The moment I get a notification that anything I requested or upvoted has been introduced, though, is when things really start to shift. This makes me feel both valued and listened to. It’s a simple method to provide your clients with a wonderful experience, yet much too few businesses take advantage of it.

Best Practices

Engage with your customers.

Be transparent and straightforward.

Curate your feature voting page similar to a forum.

Update your customers on your progress.