Monitor and manage results

Understanding the results of your solutions, targeted campaigns, and sales figures is vital to making corrections in how you approach customers and solve problems with your solution. Monitoring and managing your solution is a continuous process.

This diagram shows a holistic view of the steps you need to consider when monitoring and managing your solution. Note that this does not always represent the order of the steps. For example, you might analyze metrics or collect feedback both prior to and after your release. Steps to monitor results include:

• Manage the release of your solution.
• Analyze available metrics to monitor the health of your solution.
• Collect and manage user feedback and reviews.
• Update your solution.
• Modify your go-to-market strategy.
• Test your updates and submit a new release.

Manage the release of your solution

Your customers’ first impression sets the tone for their perception of your brand, so continue to improve your UX to:

• Manage and monitor the health of your UX through customer support.
• Improve your market reach and AppSource ranking.
• Increase user engagement.

Continually review and modify your first-run experience to maintain a positive user experience:

• On a regular basis to improve the experience for new users.
• After updates or new features are added that may change how your solution is used by both new and existing users.

Analyze available metrics to monitor the health of your solution

You can view up to three months of data for your solution in AppSource on the Metrics page in the Dashboard when you sign in with your Microsoft account. These metrics can help you better understand your solution’s pre-download effectiveness, such as:

• How effective your marketing activities are in driving users to your listing.
• Whether your listing conveys your value proposition and drives downloads.
• Whether users are finding enough value in your add-in to convert from a trial to a paid version.
• How users are engaging with your add-in and your user retention.

You can better understand how your solution is performing post-download by looking at metrics that help you determine:

• Whether users are having trouble installing your add-in.
• How many times your add-in was used and the number of unique users.

This information can help you understand the overall health of your add-in, and when you combine it with customer feedback, ratings, and reviews, it can give you insights into issues that might be limiting your business growth.

For example:

• If you’re getting fewer browser hits than you expected, your marketing campaign might not be effective. Look into modifying your value proposition.
• If you’re getting fewer downloads than you expect based on the browser hits, you might need to modify your listing to be more effective.
• If your conversion rate is low, customers might not be seeing value when they use your add-in for the first time. Look into how you can improve the first run of your UX.

You can analyze the data you collect on your solution to help monitor the success of your marketing activities and campaigns by putting it into the following categories.

By knowing what measurements to look for and how to analyze the data, you can determine:

• The success of each external marketing unique campaign ID and how to change your marketing investments.
• The impact of your value proposition based on clicks and download rates to determine if it resonates with your target audience.
• The quality of your website or listing based on download rates.
• Where in the customer funnel customers are dropping off, to identify what changes you can make to minimize the drop.
• What functions within your app users access most often, to help you modify your value proposition and use case scenarios.
• What functions customers are not using, and whether it's because they aren't aware of them, or don’t see value in them.
• At what point users are willing to make a purchase or upgrade.

Collect and manage user feedback and reviews

Customer reviews are a valuable way for you to get feedback on how your solution is working, how customers are using your solution, which features they like, and what problems it helps them solve. Reviews can also provide insight into what is not working for your customers. You can also request feedback from users from within your solution.

When you request user feedback:

• Identify opportunities to ask for input.
• Ask for feedback that directly relates to the action they just completed with your solution.
• Don’t ask for feedback too often or customers won’t respond.

Use reviews and feedback to:

• Improve installation or correct other issues users are experiencing.
• Troubleshoot issues and provide technical support.
• Indicate to users that their feedback is important and is monitored.
• Reduce future negative reviews and comments.
• Connect with customers to discover what features to build and why.

Why respond to customer reviews?

• Help users with installation or other issues that can prompt negative reviews.
• Troubleshoot issues and provide technical support to your users.
• Encourage users to edit their rating when their issue is resolved, improving your global ratings over time.
• Indicate to users that their feedback is important and is monitored.
• Reduce future negative reviews and comments by resolving issues promptly.
• Connect with your customers and discover what features to build and why.

Update solution

After you publish your solution, continue to enhance it with new features and functionality, provide updates to debug, and improve the customer experience based on feedback and metrics.

The following guidelines apply to updates:

• When you add new features, your users will see the updates immediately. Beta test or sideload your updates to ensure that they don't disrupt your customers’ experience.
• Any security or privacy issues must be fixed in real time.
• Updates to paid solutions must not decrease the functionality.
• Price changes should not affect your existing customers.

Keep in mind that you can update your add-in no more than 10 times per month or 30 times per year.

Modify your go-to-market strategy

Track and analyze the effectiveness of your external marketing activities to determine their effectiveness with campaign tracking:

• Use a unique campaign ID to measure the success of each marketing activity.
• Optimize your marketing campaigns and focus on channels that give you the best results.
• Set up the required tracking parameters to enable In-Store Tracking.
• Customize the first-run experience based on which marketing activity triggered the customer’s interest.
• In addition, add lead management details to your CRM from AppSource through your Seller Dashboard.

Test updates and new releases

Before making your app generally available in the marketplace, use one or more of the following methods to deploy your solution for testing:

• Conduct a beta or pilot test with a select group of users to gather feedback.
• Sideload your add-in to test installation, user experience, performance, and functionality.
• Make your solution available as unpublished in AppSource. This way, only users with a direct link can access and test it.
• Use centralized deployment to publish your add-in within an organization.

Test, adjust, and modify your solution to ensure a smooth user experience when you make it available to the general market.