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Feature voting: How to make it work for your SaaS

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Are you skeptical about the effectiveness of feature voting in your product development process? In this blog post, you’ll discover why feature voting is so important and how to implement it for your organisation to get the best results.

We’ve been using feature voting for our product for 6 years and will show you what’s worked for us, pitfalls to watch out for, and things to look for when choosing a feature voting tool.

Let’s dive in.

  1. Top 4 benefits of feature voting
  2. Who should use feature voting (and who shouldn’t)
  3. Tips for doing feature voting right
  4. Considerations for choosing a feature voting tool
  5. Common objections to feature voting
Feature voting board screenshot

Top 4 benefits of feature voting

1. Streamline feedback collection

With a thriving product, manually logging and keeping track of feature requests can quickly become a full-time job. Feature voting boards provide a structure for your users to submit and upvote feedback that can save you and your team hours.

2. Uncover the most popular feature requests

Feature voting eliminates the guesswork in feature prioritisation. It gives you a clear way to identify the feature requests that are most important to your customers. Want to see how your users would respond to an idea your team or bosses came up with? Drop it on it on your board and see if it catches on.

3. Align expectations by giving your users full visibility

With all feature requests in one place, users can see what feature requests you’ve received and what you’ve done with them. Status updates help them understand whether you’ve planned or rejected an idea and admin notes tell them why.

It also helps align people’s expectations. Users usually have a good understanding that if a request has been on the feature request board for two or three years and has only been upvoted once or twice, it’s unlikely to get built. You don’t have to reject it outright.

4. Empower users to respond to feedback while you sleep

When we made our feedback board public six years ago, we were surprised to see that customers engaging with each other and essentially moderating the board on our behalf.

For example, we’ve seen users comment on a feature request to let the author know (and us) that the feature had already been submitted and to encourage them to go and upvote the existing request.

This considerably reduced the amount of time we spent responding to customer requests.

A user reports a potential duplicate feature
A user reports a potential duplicate suggestion

Who should use feature voting (and who shouldn’t)

Feature voting isn’t for every company, nor is it for every product.

Use feature voting if:

✅ You’re drowning in feedback. You’re collecting feature requests in a spreadsheet or Jira and are struggling to track and make sense of the feedback you’re getting.

✅ You have no way to evaluate the reach and importance of a feature—it’s mostly guesswork. You need a system for knowing which feature requests you’re getting more often so you can make quantified product decisions.

✅ Your roadmap is shaped around whatever senior management is pushing for at any given time. Your users’ voice and needs are lost in the process.

Don’t user feature voting if:

❌ You’re developing a new product and haven’t yet hit product market fit. Because you’re likely to pivot, the suggestions you’ll get won’t be relevant or helpful.

❌ You don’t want competitors to see your feedback board. That’s a personal choice that has a lot to do with the industry you’re in and the way you run the business. We keep our board public – here’s why.

Overwhelmed with customer feedback? Try Feature Upvote.

We make easy-to-use feedback boards that let your customers submit and upvote feature requests – all in one place.

Tips for doing feature voting right

Collect all of your feedback in one place

Even after you’ve set up your feature voting board, you will still receive suggestions through email, social media, and over the phone. You must consolidate all of the feedback you receive in one place to help track and quantify the users’ needs. That means pointing the contributor to your board or adding their suggestion on their behalf.

Many feature voting tools offer integrations that make it easy to move suggestions from and to different tools like Slack, Jira and Zendesk and reduce the chance of feature requests falling through the cracks.

Related: Feature Upvote integrations

Delete old requests regularly

A dormant board with feature requests collecting dust does not tell your customers you care about their input. Something that was suggested 2 years ago shouldn’t still be “under consideration”. Either it gains traction or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, then it should be archived.

Occasionally go through old requests and delete things that haven’t received many votes. If it’s something your users really need, someone will go in and add it back to the board.

A user voices their concern about an old feature request
A user voices their concern about an old, dormant feature request

Manage expectations

Feature voting boards are a 2-way street. As users submit product ideas, you must acknowledge and address their feedback.

Use comments and status updates to let users know when their suggestion has been considered, added to the roadmap, or released. Indicate when a feature will not be implemented and why using a status such as “Not planned” or “Won’t do”.

By closing the feedback loop, you make your users feel heard and encourage them to continue contributing product improvements and feature ideas.

Combine votes with other criteria to inform your roadmap

Popularity is only one layer of feature prioritisation. Just because something has the most votes doesn’t mean it’s what you should do next.

Weigh it up against the vision for your product, how much work building the feature involves, how much maintenance work it is going to require, etc. Complement that with customer interviews, surveys, and other customer feedback tools.

Find a system that works for you

Once you’ve chosen the right feature voting tool, you need to decide how you’re going to collect feedback. There are many ways you can go about this and you should feel free to choose the way that works for you. It wouldn’t make sense for a video game company to collect feedback the same way a marina management platform would, would it?

For example, you could collect feedback in 2 phases: first suggestions, then votes. Or you could open your board to beta testers only (using an access list) before opening it to the general public.

RocketWerkz used feature voting for the beta release of their popular game Icarus
RocketWerkz used feature voting for the beta release of their popular game Icarus

Considerations for choosing a feature voting tool

🎨 Customisation: can you make the tool look like an extension of your site?

Choose a tool that can integrate well with your products in terms of look and feel. For example, check whether you can embed the feature voting board on your site. Does it let you use your own logo and color theme? Can you use custom CSS to fine-tune the small details? Can you use your own domain name?

Visual continuity between your site and your board will give your users a seamless and enjoyable experience when leaving feedback.

Related: Customising appearance and branding in Feature Upvote

📁 Data: can you easily export your data to another tool?

In the future, you may decide to switch tools. When you do, you’ll want to export all your feedback along with votes and user comments and import them into your new tool.

Look for a tool that makes exporting your suggestions easy and frictionless. Some companies will require you to contact support to get your data, while others will allow you to download it on your own, anytime, in just a few clicks.

Whatever tool you’re considering, we recommend signing up for a trial and test the export process to avoid any surprises down the road.

Feature voting tool's one-click data export
You should be able to export your data anytime in just a few clicks

🇪🇸 Language support: can you show your board in your users’ language?

If not all of your customers speak English, you will need a tool that lets you change the language of the user interface. This ensures that all users who wish to can share their suggestions without having to use a translation app or browser extension.

Every tool will offer different languages. Feature Upvote, for example, is headquartered in Spain with customers all over the world. It is available in 18 languages, including Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.

🚧 User experience: Does the tool put up unnecessary barriers in front of users?

You’ll miss out on a lot of good feedback if it is too hard for people to use your feature voting board. So before signing up for a feature voting tool, try submitting an idea or upvoting a feature on their own feedback board.

The biggest hurdle to watch out for is needing to create an account to upvote a feature idea. From our experience, a user who only wants to vote for a suggestion will not bother doing so if it requires them to create a password, verify their email address, etc. They’ll get frustrated and leave.

Feature voting without signup required
Feature voting in Feature Upvote: no signup required. Try it out on our demo board.

Common objections to feature voting

“Feature voting is subject to bias. People will upvote what’s already popular.”

Yes, requests that are already popular are likely to get more votes.

Unintentional bias is a problem not just with feature voting boards, but with any voting system. Even in national electoral systems, there is evidence that candidates listed first on the ballot get more votes than they otherwise would.

And yet, people don’t give up on national elections because of this issue.

Here’s how we see it:

Firstly, most people visit your board to request a specific feature that they want. They’re not going there just to browse. They will use the search bar to look for their suggestion, then either upvote it or add it themselves if it’s not there yet.

Secondly, your feature request board is not a binding vote where the item with the most votes wins. It is simply one input into your decision-making system.

Remember, you don’t have to have a perfect system, you just have to have a system. Feature voting, even with unintended biases, is better than merely guessing what features your users want.

“Customers don’t know what they want.”

Too many times, I’ve heard the allegedly Henry Ford quote, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

There’s no evidence Henry Ford ever said this, or even thought it.

However there is some truth in the non-quote. Users are much better at reporting problems than they are with coming up with solutions.

The goal of a feature voting board is not to innovate; the goal is to identify what issues people have with your product as it currently is.

Users rarely come up with innovative, groundbreaking feature ideas. They will suggest iterative improvements, like adding PDF export when you already offer CSV export. Or that you make it possible to change the layout of an element that’s already in the interface.

If you’re looking for novel feature ideas, these come from within your product team.

“Feature voting is too simplistic. It ignores things like market potential, confidence, effort, and ROI.”

Feature voting does not aim to reduce product management to building the most popular features. Votes are only supposed to be one input into your decision-making process.

You should not base your decision solely on what’s most popular. But it is an important input.

For example, consider two feature requests; both have 100 votes, but one can be done in one afternoon and the other in one month. Will you prioritise them the same way?

But if the one that can be done in afternoon has just one vote? You should probably ignore it, and work on the harder, more popular one.

Feature voting answers one question: how many users will this feature help relative to other ideas?

Feature voting tool: Feature Upvote

Want to try a feature voting tool that checks all the boxes and doesn’t break the bank? Try Feature Upvote. We offer a 30-day trial with all features included. Set up a board in seconds and explore the functionality.

No credit card required. All features included.