Top 7 Product Research Tools to Explore in 2024
The quest for the perfect SaaS solution with excellent functionality and usability is typically filled with several twists and turns. However, efficient product research can make your innovation journey much more straightforward and less stressful, not to mention the cost benefits.
But here’s the million-dollar question — what product research tools should you use?
As fellow navigators in the world of software, we understand the frustration of endless searches for a tool that works. So, we’ve created a resource to help you shorten your trial-and-error process. In the following paragraphs, we examine 7 of the best product research tools today.
But first, a short insight into product research.
What is Product Research?
Product research is a systematic process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a product to inform decision-making throughout its lifecycle. In other words, product research involves exploring data related to your product’s scope, development direction, and the specific features that will make your target customers happy.
During the product research stage, you’ll typically investigate various aspects of your product, including its viability, target market, design, features, and even its competition. As a result, without the right product research tool, you may come up with misleading results.
There are generally four stages of product research:
- Pre-launch: Here, the focus is creating a solid foundation for the upcoming product release. You’ll typically need to do comprehensive market research to identify your target customers and understand their needs, ensuring your product aligns with the demand.
- Testing and feedback: During this stage, you’ll introduce prototypes or beta versions of your product to a small group of users for hands-on testing in real-world scenarios. This way, you can gather valuable feedback on features you need to fine-tune or issues you must address.
- Soft launch: Soft launch means releasing your product to specific markets or a limited audience. After the soft launch, you can leverage product research tools to keep track of user iterations and gauge market response before rolling out your product on a wider level.
- Post-launch: Post-launch market research typically never ends as it’s an ongoing process that monitors your product performance, customer feedback, and market dynamics after the official release. The insights you gain here will guide your marketing campaigns, product updates, and other long-term plans.
Top 7 Product Research Tools You Should Know
First off, here’s a quick summary of showcasing where each of these product research tools shines:
- Hotjar – Best for user behavior analytics
- Wistia – Best for embedded video analytics
- Optimizely – Best for A/B testing
- UserPilot – Best for product onboarding and flow
- Dovetail – Best for customer insights
- Ahrefs – Best for SEO & market analysis
- Product Hunt – Best for surveying new Products
1. Hotjar
Hotjar is a popular analytics tool that provides detailed insights into user behavior on websites. As a result, it’s a great tool to leverage during your product research. Through features like heatmaps, user analytics, and session recordings, Hotjar can help businesses keep track of and measure user interaction with their products.
In addition, this tool also offers you visual feedback options through surveys and an incoming feedback widget. This way, you can capture real-time user thoughts, preferences, and pain points directly on your website. With these qualitative insights, you can make data-driven decisions and targeted improvements to your product.
Features
- Heatmaps
- Session recordings
- Surveys and feedback forms
- Incoming feedback widget
- Behavioral insights
2. Wistia
Today, video marketing is the fastest type of marketing in the digital advertising landscape. Statistical projections predict that by the end of 2024, videos will make up 82% of Internet traffic. While these estimates are yet to be confirmed, there is no doubt that videos are everywhere today.
As a result, it is an excellent idea to have a product research tool that can give you insight into your video creations.
While Wistia is traditionally a video hosting platform, it also has several functionalities that you can leverage during product research. With this tool, you can collect hard data on user interaction with your video — watch durations, cut-off points, and more.
This functionality can come in handy in several scenarios. For instance, if you publish videos on your app or leverage videos for your product onboarding, having this product research tool can make all the difference.
Features
- Video analytics
- A/B testing for videos
- Viewer tracking and segmentation
- Lead generation tools
3. Optimizely
Optimizely is a powerful experimentation and optimization platform that can be instrumental in your product research. With this tool, you can carry out A/B testing on any two versions of your product to determine which is the more viable option.
In addition to its split test functionality, this tool also makes it very easy and seamless to read and interpret the data from your A/B testing. So, if you’re looking to conduct data-driven experiments and gather valuable insights for your product research, Optimizely is a great place to look.
Features
- A/B testing
- Multivariate testing
- Experimentation dashboard
- Insights and analytics
4. UserPilot
Another top-notch product research tool to consider is UserPilot. This tool allows you to take control of the onboarding process for new users of your product. Remember, onboarding sets the tone for your user experience and can go a long way in determining if your users stick with your products or not. Therefore, it is a good idea to invest in it.
With UserPilot, you can tailor your user onboarding process by segmenting users based on various criteria, such as demographics or specific behavior. This way, they can see only content that’s relevant to them.
You see, UserPilot was designed to help developers understand user behavior and improve their onboarding process. So, unlike other product research tools, it can help you conduct user-centric research and improve your product based on real-time feedback, ensuring a seamless onboarding process.
Features
- In-App guides
- User segmentation
- Behavioral analytics
- Customizable onboarding flows
5. Dovetail
Dovetail is an all-in-one hub that gives you insight into the aggregation of data from your product research, including user feedback, audience interviews, and more. With this tool, you can easily source user research data, organize it, analyze it, and collaborate with your team to determine the direction for product development.
As a centralized product research database, Dovetail is a good ally to have if you’re committed to user-centric product development. In addition, it also makes it easy to identify trends and make informed decisions based on hard data throughout the product life cycle.
Features
- Centralized research
- Text and data analysis
- Collaborative workspaces
- Usability metrics
6. Ahrefs
While this tool is more popular as a go-to for SEO and content marketing needs, Ahrefs also has powerful product research capabilities.
In this case, the market would be a specific keyword. Then, you can leverage Ahrefs to do a deep dive into competitor strategies, research your target audience, and run an in-depth keyword analysis to learn more about the demand for your product.
By offering valuable insights into search engine performance, backlink profiles, and content strategies, Ahrefs becomes a strategic asset for businesses seeking to refine their products. It also offers you marketing insights based on thorough research and competitive analysis.
Features
- Keyword research
- Competitor analysis
- Rank tracking
- Organic traffic analysis
7. Product Hunt
Product Hunt is a dynamic platform that serves as a valuable product research tool, offering insights into emerging technologies, innovative solutions, and market trends. The platform hosts a very active community of early adopters and enthusiasts, who like to try their hands on new products. By launching their products first on Product Hunt, businesses can reach early adopters much quicker.
With this tool, you can get real-time feedback on your product from an engaged community of users even before your product launches. In addition to providing insight into how customers receive your product, users on Product Hunt can also help you identify potential areas for improvement.
The best part? You can even win yourself some free customers if your product makes it to the top of their weekly or daily rankings!
Features
- Product discovery
- Community feedback
- Upvoting and rankings
- Launch announcements
Now That You Know
Product research is a strategic investment that empowers businesses to create products that align with their customer needs and market trends. As a result, we recommend making effective and comprehensive product research a non-negotiable aspect of the development process.
We hope that the product research tools we’ve shared in this blog help you on your way to creating a viable and innovative product that resonates with your target customers!
