Strategy to find out about user goals after the product is made

Question

I'm a coder, I made a product long back and I just read my first UX book. I learned about 'user goals'.

I do not assume anymore that my product solves them.

1. I am unable to make a strategy for going ahead and fixing the entire website so it actually helps its visitors.
2. How can I setup a survey to honestly learn about user goals/expectations?

The product is non-profit/activism.

Answer 1

if you have sustantial traffic going into your website/ product you can do a log analysis of usage patterns on your application. The log analysis can give you ideas on the following:

1. why users visit your website
2. which features/ buttons that your website users click most often
3. where users drop off, this will show you where the gap in solving the problem is

If the traffic statistics are not sustantial to give you an idea of the above, you can talk to other people who had the same problem as you that led you to create the web application. The important points to take note when talking to people with the same problem would be:

1. what are the main causes that led to the same problem you and other users faced
2. how other users mitigate the issues currently without the use of the application

Hope these points help!

Answer 2

01. Fix the objective

• Understand the motives behind creating the product and what specific problems you tried to solve through the product

02. User research

• Understand the user base again. Cover user behavior, benchmarking and motivation.

03. Conduct a usability study

• Since the product is already released you can opt for this. This will help you to understand the current user behavior, what is redundant and what is useful, flaws inflows, IA etc.

04.Prepare a prototype and test

• Go for an early prototype and test it rapidly