If you sell or manage a software-based product, you know that engaging with your customers is critical in determining the “path” of your product. It can be tough to know exactly what to work on next, and validating ideas in a manageable, quantifiable manner can be tough. Therefore, Feature Voting is a valuable tool in software development for several reasons. 

TLDR:

1. Customer-Centric Development
2. Resource Allocation
3. Reduce Guesswork
4. Customer Engagement and Ownership
5. Give Your Team A Voice
6. User Retention and Satisfaction
7. Competitive Advantage
8. Iterative improvements
9. Transparency = Trust
10. Capture Customer Data

Top 10 Benefits of Feature Voting for Product Managers:

Through years of feedback and collective research based on managing and selling our own products, we’ve rounded up ten of the most beneficial reasons product managers are implementing Feature Voting into their production pipeline. Check them out below!

1. Customer-Centric Development: Feature voting allows you to prioritize development based on the actual needs and preferences of your users. By letting customers vote on the features they want to see, you align your development efforts with the most important requirements from the user’s perspective.
2. Resource Allocation: Development is expensive and takes time, so it’s critical to validate that an idea is worth pursuing. Feature voting helps you identify which features have the highest demand, allowing you to focus on those that will have the most significant impact on user satisfaction and business outcomes.
3. Reduce the Guesswork: Sure, this is similar to the last entry, but it bears repeating from a mental/morale standpoint as well. Rather than relying solely on internal assumptions or guesses about what your product’s users want, Feature Voting provides concrete data from those actually using your product. This data-driven approach reduces the risk of building features that don’t resonate with your audience, but also gives you peace of mind in knowing an idea is indeed worthy of the development costs.
4. Customer Engagement and Ownership: Involving customers in the feature voting process makes them feel heard and valued. It fosters a sense of community and engagement around your product. Users who have a say in the development process are more likely to become loyal advocates for your software, and they get a kick out of being mentioned when one of their ideas has been implemented, and this boosts the chance of them sharing the news on their own channels!
5. Give Your Team a Voice: Feature voting can serve as a form of validation for potential new features amongst your team as well. This can be anything from running a feature idea past your developers, to confirming meeting topics for your team’s next standup meeting. In short, when you have a remote team, it can be tough to democratize and unify your company’s vision, and feature voting can be a powerful tool in giving every team member a voice.
6. User Retention and Satisfaction: Prioritizing features based on user voting enhances user satisfaction. When users see that you’re actively working on features they’ve requested, they are more likely to stay loyal to your software and continue using it.
7. Competitive Advantage: Listening to user feedback and implementing popular features can differentiate your software from competitors. It can position your product as more responsive to user needs, attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.
8. Iterative Improvements: Feature voting promotes an iterative development process. As users provide feedback and vote on features, you can continuously refine and enhance your software over time, adapting to changing user preferences and market trends.
9. Transparency = Trust: Publicly sharing the feature voting process and outcomes can build trust with your user base. It demonstrates your commitment to transparency and open communication, which can positively impact your brand reputation.
10. Capture Customer Data: The best Feature Voting toolsets let you note only capture individual votes on any given feature or idea, but they also provide detailed analytics on customer behavior. For example, PathPro captures the amount of suggestions made, whether a suggestion was “adopted” by your team as a valuable addition to the product, and quantifies all involvement to provide you with sophisticated data that goes far beyond simple upvote counts. 

In Summary: Incorporating feature voting into your software development process allows you to create a more user-focused, efficient, and successful product that meets the needs and desires of your target audience. PathPro is built entirely around the concept of capturing feedback from actual users, and implements focused, proven methods of building brand loyalty at a pristine level. Check out the PathPro demo right here.

Looking to add Feature Voting to your production pipeline? PathPro offers Feature Voting and other Customer-focused Product Management Tools that will have you up and running in no time. We even let you implement Feature Voting 100% Free with our Free Plan. There’s absolutely no risk,. no credit card info needed, and it’s free FOREVER. You can also test out our feature voting directly on  PathPro’s official Feature Voting Board!

Have other ideas on how Feature Voting can benefit product development? Sign off in the comments!