User experience survey questions sample: best questions for mobile app UX that drive actionable feedback

To design impactful mobile apps, it’s crucial to ask the right user experience survey questions at just the right moments. This guide brings you the best questions for mobile app UX surveys, crafted to help you uncover what users truly feel about your app.

Unlike static forms, conversational AI surveys—especially those delivered as in-product surveys—connect with users on a personal level and surface deeper insights by chatting naturally instead of forcing users through rigid checklists.

Let’s explore how to turn every interaction into valuable, actionable feedback.

Core questions for different stages of the mobile app experience

Great mobile app user research covers every phase of the journey. Here’s how I split my question sets to capture insights at every touchpoint—and why each one matters.

• Onboarding Experience

  • Single-select: “How easy was it to get started with the app?”
    Reveals overall clarity and guidance. Simple ratings let you spot barriers quickly.

  • Open-ended: “What, if anything, confused you during the signup process?”
    Catches nuanced hiccups—AI follow-ups clarify what tripped users up.

  • Single-select: “Did you complete onboarding on your first try?”
    Pinpoints if dropoff is a real problem.

• Feature Discovery & Adoption

  • Single-select: “Which new feature did you try most recently?”
    Quantifies feature reach—you’ll know what’s being noticed.

  • Open-ended: “What motivated you to try that feature?”
    AI follow-ups get to the real motivation behind taps and clicks.

  • Single-select: “Was anything about the feature unclear or surprising?”
    Targets friction and helps prioritize fixes.

• Daily or Routine Use

  • Open-ended: “What part of your daily routine does our app fit best into?”
    Exposes real-life use cases—crucial for refining value propositions.

  • Single-select: “On a typical day, how many times do you open the app?”
    Correlate engagement patterns with feedback for actionable upgrades.

  • Open-ended: “When was the last time you felt frustrated while using the app?”
    Avoids NPS fatigue and pinpoints design pain points for analysis.

• Churn Risk

  • Single-select: “Have you considered switching to a different app recently?”
    Early warning on retention risk—sets up tailored AI probes for “why.”

  • Open-ended: “What might make you stop using this app?”
    Invites specific situations or triggers that drive churn—AI can dig deeper if sentiment is unclear.

Why this approach? Mixing single-select for speed and benchmarking with open-ended questions for depth delivers a holistic view. AI follow-ups always push further. For example, after a user reports confusion, the survey can instantly ask, “Can you recall the specific step or screen where this happened?” to clarify the root cause.

This dynamic style isn’t just a modern trend—in-app surveys drive response rates up to 13%, dramatically surpassing the industry’s 1-3% average for regular mobile surveys [1]. Prompt, focused questions keep users engaged and insights clear.

How AI follow-up questions turn simple taps into rich insights

Automated AI follow-up questions change the feedback game. Instead of relying on one-way, fixed forms, these smart prompts adapt live based on what your user just said or chose. That means one tap often uncovers the story behind it in a natural, effortless way.

Let me show how this unfolds in practice:

• Initial question: “How easy was the onboarding process?”
  User response: “It was a bit confusing.”
  AI follow-up:

  Can you describe the specific step that made things confusing? Was it something you expected to be more clear?

• Initial question: “What, if anything, frustrated you while using the app this week?”
  User response: “App crashed a couple of times.”
  AI follow-up:

  Was it during a specific task or feature? Which device were you using?

• Initial question: “Have you explored the new chat feature?”
  User response: “No, not yet.”
  AI follow-up:

  Is there something that’s holding you back from trying it, or did you just not notice it?

• Initial question: “What would make you recommend our app to a friend?”
  User response: “If it synced with Google Drive.”
  AI follow-up:

  Can you share more about why Google Drive integration matters for your usage? What tasks would it help with most?

These follow-ups are the heartbeat of a true conversational survey—building trust and prompting honesty, rather than treating feedback like a chore. This is all possible thanks to automatic AI follow-up questions that probe naturally, surfacing the “why” others overlook. No wonder AI-powered surveys lead to higher quality, more expansive answers [6].

Research shows that AI-driven conversational surveys consistently generate responses that are more informative and relevant than static ones [5]. It’s the difference between collecting opinions, and actually understanding your users.

Event-based targeting: Ask the right questions at the perfect moment

If you want feedback that’s both honest and actionable, timing is everything. Event-triggered surveys let you reach users right after key moments—when their opinions are fresh and specific observations are top of mind.

Here are event-based targeting examples that can be implemented with code or no-code workflows:

• Trigger: User completes onboarding → Survey: “How did your setup experience go? Anything unexpected?”
  Insight: Pinpoints onboarding gaps and real-time friction.

• Trigger: First use of a premium feature → Survey: “What’s your first impression of this feature?”
  Insight: Records initial sentiment and barriers to premium adoption.

• Trigger: User hits an error (e.g., app crash) → Survey: “Sorry you hit a snag—can you describe exactly what you were doing?”
  Insight: Uncovers hidden bugs and context-specific blockers.

• Trigger: User revisits the app after 30 days of inactivity → Survey: “What brought you back today?”
  Insight: Reveals drivers of return behavior and what kept them away before.

• Trigger: User abandons purchase flow → Survey: “Was something missing or confusing during checkout?”
  Insight: Surfacing conversion pain points instantly.

Code events let you monitor technical triggers, while no-code solutions can work off analytics, push notification logs, or visual actions without extra dev work. Surveys appear as unobtrusive chat widgets—seamless, context-aware, and never in the way. You can design your own event-triggered feedback flow instantly with the AI survey generator.

Getting the timing right supercharges retention. Users who engage with contextual feedback like this can boost three-month retention rates by 400% [3].

Ready-to-use mobile app UX survey templates

Not everyone wants to start from scratch. Here are three proven mobile app UX survey templates I lean on, complete with AI follow-up logic—and a quick look at the difference between traditional forms and real conversational surveys.

Now let’s break down the templates:

• Feature Adoption Survey

  • “Which feature did you try most recently?”

  • “What was your first impression?”
    

    AI follow-up: Tell me what was surprising or different from what you expected.

  • “Is there anything you wish this feature did differently?”
    

    AI follow-up: Describe a real-life situation that would have gone better with your suggested change.

  Prompt: Draft a feature adoption survey for a new app release, focusing on onboarding, surprise factors, and changes that would boost user engagement.

• App Performance Survey

  • “Has the app been working smoothly for you?”

  • “Have you encountered any bugs or issues lately?”
    

    AI follow-up: What were you doing when you hit the snag or slow performance? Any patterns you’ve noticed?

  • “Did support resolve your issue promptly?”

  Prompt: Build a mobile app performance survey focused on bugs, response times, and user confidence in reliability.

• User Retention Survey

  • “Have you thought about taking a break or quitting our app?”

  • “What would make you stay longer or come back more often?”
    

    AI follow-up: Can you think of a reward, feature, or fix that would keep you engaged another month?

  • “What do you value most about our app, even if you don’t use it daily?”

  Prompt: Write a user retention survey designed for reactivation campaigns, focusing on pain points and reasons to return.

All these templates can be customized quickly in the AI survey editor, letting you tweak the language, logic, and follow-up tone with just a chat message to the AI. No technical setup, no stress.

Transform mobile app feedback into actionable UX improvements

The best surveys are only the start—specific, open feedback is most powerful when distilled into insights you can use to drive change. AI analysis finds the patterns and sifts through the noise, saving you hours of manual review. Here’s how I structure effective mobile UX analysis:

Summarize the main reasons users get frustrated during onboarding, highlighting the most common triggers and suggesting