How we use your feedback
We get a lot of end user feedback from you about all the things you'd like to see added to help you use Shopmonkey (features), what existing function could be made better (enhancements) or something that isn't just working as expected (bugs).
For the bugs, it's often straight forward: we need to work on a fix. Often the issue is related to different or unexpected scenarios, some combination of shop configuration that we've not seen before or a mistake that was made on our side. That's on us and we appreciate your help and patience as we work on those issues.
For enhancements and features, it can be a lot harder. How do we prioritize your feedback and how do we decide what we work on first? We can't possibly do everything given the sheer number of requests. For example, in 2022, we received well over 1,000 request for improvements. This is pretty amazing feedback and shows the dedication of our user community in helping us make Shopmonkey better.
We have a number of distinct internal processes that we use to take the input from all the various stakeholders, both internally and externally, and make decisions and tradeoffs on our short term work priorities and mid to long term roadmap. This can sometimes be a frustrating task because we are trying to balance the needs of so many different voices and priorities. And we want to do everything we possibly can to help your Shop thrive (that is our motto, by the way).
But one of the most important mechanisms we employ is User Research. I thought I would let our resident Lead User Researcher, Marlana Coignet, tell you a bit more about the process in this short video:
As Marlana outlines, User Research is critical to our process both before and after we prioritize work. Sometimes we think we're going to do something but we decide not to after your feedback. In other cases, we get your feedback on something that completely changes our priorities.
There's a famous Henry Ford saying: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses". We believe our role is not to just give you what you ask for, but to really understand what "job you're asking Shopmonkey to do for you". And to do that, we need to really understand your business, your needs and how we can solve them for you - as well as many others that have similar needs. One mistake we're always trying to avoid is building something that doesn't serve your needs or misses the mark. We also want to make sure when we do build a new feature or improve something already there, we want to ensure we get it right. User Research is how we do that.
So if you have your own ideas you'd like to share with us and would like to get earlier access to provide direct input, consider joining our User Experience Crew:
https://shopmonkey-io.typeform.com/to/J4OrKcYa
We promise not to flood your inbox with requests. Your participation in this program helps us build better products for you.