What are release notes? 

Just so we’re on the same page, let’s define release notes real quick.

Release notes are a big part of your release planning. They’re essentially a log of what you’ve been working on, but they’re more than just a list of changes. Good notes will also provide context about these changes. They build on ‘here’s what we’ve done’ and go into brief detail on why the user should care too. 

If you’re releasing new products or features, release notes can act as a mini product tour and introduction to the feature. If you’re just updating an existing feature, it’s a good chance to show what tweaks and improvements you’ve made and explain why this new version is better than before.

By writing release notes, you keep your customers up to date and informed about your product, making sure they’re aware of all the tools and functionality available to them. 

Why are release notes important?

We think release notes are super valuable for a lot of different reasons. As we’ve referenced before, release notes are a direct communication channel between your product and your users. There are a lot of good things you can do in this position. 

The most obvious benefit of release notes is that they’re a customer engagement tool. By writing exciting ones, you have an opportunity to get fatigued users back on board with your product. That’s just one of the many reasons why you shouldn’t underestimate release notes. They can also: 

• Drive feature adoption: If you’re putting out a new feature, release notes give you a chance to make a song and dance about it, helping users discover the feature and value proposition that they may have missed elsewhere. Plus, even writing about tweaks can help encourage users to try out a feature they may have ignored in the past. 
• Build transparency: Release notes give users a window into your development process. By sharing what you’ve changed, and why, it demonstrates that you’re listening to their concerns and have a strong customer feedback strategy.
• Reduce support burden: By clearly explaining what’s been fixed or changed, release notes can preemptively answer common questions that may have instead flooded your Support Team. This creates less confusion, meaning fewer tickets for your Support Team to handle. 
• Turn into marketing material: The key talking points from your release notes can be buttered up and turned into marketing material to generate more buzz about your product. They can be adapted to become email material or social posts. 

Who’s responsible for release notes? 

One of the main reasons why many modern release notes aren’t hitting the mark is because no one’s claiming full responsibility for them. They’re often not seen as a priority for anyone on your team, meaning that the task falls to the wayside, or gets passed from person to person.

Release notes should be in the domain of the Product Management and Development Team. These roles will have the deepest understanding of the changes taking place, the reasoning behind them, and the benefits they’ll bring to customers. This puts you in a good position to detail these changes and fixes.  

The key to creating good release notes is collaboration between Development Teams and Product Managers. There are going to be many different fingers in this pie, so the workflow needs to be effectively managed. You have to have really good coordination between the Development Team doing the release and the Product Manager, and potentially even the Product Marketing Team if they’re helping to craft the messaging. To boost collaboration, make sure you’re nailing your product team structure. 

The size of your company will also dictate who creates your release notes. It could be a technical writer if you’re in a larger organization, but usually, this task falls to someone in the Development and Product team who has the responsibility and the time to write really good release notes and have fun with it. 

Nine times out of ten, that will be the Product Manager. PMs wear many hats after all. Check out our full list of Product Manager tasks to see what else you may have to do :

Top tips for writing good release notes

Now that you know why release notes are important, how do you make them good? How do you make them stand out? Well, we’ve got some tried and tested tips, and a bunch of common characteristics of some awesome ones we’ve come across. 

Follow a release note template

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to write good release notes. In fact, overcomplicating things can have a negative effect. Instead, follow a template to ensure that your notes are consistent and cover all the key talking points you should focus on. 

When creating a template, you should make sure that it includes:

• An eye-catching introduction header 
• A summary of your main, most impactful changes 
• The impact this has on the users – why they should care
• A more in-depth overview of all the new features, enhancements, and functionality 
• Bug fixes 
• Known issues and limitations that you’re working on 

Don’t fancy creating your own template? No problem, we’ve got you. We’ve put together a template you can follow and edit to help you effectively craft your next release notes. Download it below:

Have a good structure

Your release notes need to be structured well, in a way that makes them easy to scan. In the age of short attention spans, you’re not going to get users reading large chunks of text. Instead, they’re going to be scanning headings, subheadings, paragraphs, and bullet points to get the picture. 

You need to write in a way where users can get the gist when scanning. Make sure that your headings are descriptive, sell the benefit to the user, and that your release notes follow a logical order. This keeps things professional and effective. 

Don’t be too vague

This is one of the biggest mistakes release note writers make. You want to make sure that your notes provide enough detail and context to make them worthwhile reading. Just saying ‘bug fixes and performance improvements’ is not nearly enough. That doesn’t really tell anything. How has the performance improved? What bugs have been fixed? Why should the user care? 

Now there is a fine balance to achieve here, as you don’t want to swing the pendulum the other way and be too detailed, letting convoluted Developer speak into your answers. A good approach is to say what you’ve done, why you’ve done it, and how it affects the user, and then get out of there. 

Make your release notes customer-centric 

Your release notes aren’t for Developers – they’re for actual normal people . Keep them front and center when crafting your release notes. Think of the big questions they’ll be wanting to find out. What’s changed? Why does it matter? How do these changes make things better? 

Put yourself in their shoes when writing and write with empathy. Make sure not to load the copy with jargon and industry speak, as that’s going to be off-putting and not as engaging. This is something to be mindful of when building your notes from internal comms made from your project tools. You don’t want this high-level information penetrating through to your customers’ release notes. 

Use visuals

Really want to get the most out of your release notes? Capture user interest with visuals. A picture speaks a thousand words, and in the world of release notes, a screenshot is worth even more. 

Visuals are an easy way to demonstrate exactly what’s changed, be it a UI tweak, improved workflow, or a new feature. Shots of your product are a great way to introduce it and make your release notes more dynamic. 

Want to go even further? Introduce video and product tours to your release notes, allowing them to reduce your time to value. 

Use your brand voice 

Release notes don’t have to be this dry document filled with serious phrases and robotic information. It’s not a terms and conditions document – you’re allowed and encouraged to show some life in the work. 

Sprinkle in your brand voice. They should read like the rest of your company’s communication, as it helps with your customer perception and product positioning. 

Want to learn more about product positioning? We have an awesome webinar with April Dunford that goes through how you can better position your product. Check it out :

If your brand is quirky and fun, your release notes should be too. Keep it conversational, sprinkle in humor if appropriate, and just make sure it aligns with your brand’s personality. By doing this, you can make your release notes something that people actually look forward to. 

Examples of good release notes 

Our top tips for writing good release notes aren’t baseless. We’ve checked out some of the shining lights that are putting out stellar release notes, assessing what makes them so good and effective for their brands. Here’s a look at what these release notes are doing well!

Figma: 

Figma is a collaborative design tool, used by people with many different types of roles. Different Figma users will use the platform in different ways, having unique goals and needs from each other. This means that not every update is going to be relevant to their needs. 

Figma understands this, so in their release notes, they organize them into different categories, tagging the releases based on features and certain use cases. This allows users to filter through the changelog and find updates on products and features that are most relevant to them. 

This approach ensures that users aren’t overwhelmed or bombarded with information they don’t care about – they can instead showcase changes that are most relevant. 

HelpScout: 

HelpScout understands that release notes are a great opportunity to improve feature adoption. To do this, not only do they add information and context to their new releases, but they also identify features that specific users aren’t making use of. Here, they personalize the experience by reminding customers of useful functionality that they’ve not made use of yet. 

By doing this, the help center and live chat software provider keep release notes personal and turn them into a supercharged marketing opportunity. 

They also enhance them by making good use of images and videos, making them more engaging while providing a unique way to teach about and showcase their new changes.

Mixpanel: 

Mixpanel, the product analytics software has an interesting and effective approach to release notes. They keep these notes in a changelog but include a link on their main website’s navigation to make it quick and easy to keep up to date with their updates and changes.

This links to a landing page that has a blog-like appearance, making it easy to quickly see the main details about each new release. Plus, if you want to learn more, there’s a CTA of ‘learn more’ that takes the user to the full changelog for them to dive deeper into the changes. 

These blog pages are also tagged and organized into different sections, making it easy for users to find release notes that suit their needs. 

Linear: 

The software development and planning app wonderfully handles release notes, adopting a presentation style that many users will be familiar with. Although their release notes are within a changelog – a standard channel for them – they organize their new entries in a way that looks like blog posts on a website. 

This makes each release note both informative and more enjoyable to read, as they weave their brand voice into the copy, while also going into detail about the benefits of the changes. They’re a great example of striking the perfect balance between technical detail and user-friendly language, a tough tightrope to walk. 

How to deliver release notes

Release notes can be delivered to customers and users in many different ways. The primary place where most Product Teams put their release notes is in a changelog, which is a help-center-like space, usually within your software’s app, that users can search through to find your entire history of releases. Your changelog is important, so make sure to check out our article on the best changelog tools for Product Managers : 

Having a changelog in your app makes it easy for users to see what’s new every time they log in, and this archive can track how things have evolved. 

Of course, you’re going to want to direct users to this changelog, or pull out key points and release them in other channels to help spread the word about your updates. Some other places to deliver release notes, and how you’d use them effectively, include: 

• Email updates: you’re going to want to give the core changes and big fixes some attention through your emails. If you have a newsletter, adding some information about your newest releases is a great thing to do, especially if you accompany them with case studies. Emails are a direct channel to your customers, so they can be a great way to ensure that more people see your product updates. 
• Blog posts: You can turn key release notes into blog posts and other website copy, particularly if the update is substantial. A blog post gives you more freedom to explain the changes, provide more information on the benefits, and go into more detail that may not have been possible in a changelog. 
• Tutorials: You can edit release notes and turn new feature updates into detailed tutorials and product tours so that users can see the new feature in action and learn how to best use it to improve their processes. 
• Social media: Sometimes, you can share your release notes as a simple post on your social channels, helping to build more excitement and engagement about the features you’re creating.  

How often should you be sending release notes? 

Best practice is to add a release note to your changelog every time there is a meaningful update to your product. Now, many products have new updates and fixes released daily, meaning that if you follow this advice, you need to be publishing release notes every day. 

We think this would actually be overkill. If you have a fast release pace, the sweet spot is to craft release notes every week or so to ensure customers aren’t bombarded with changes. Let’s be honest here, some changes are bigger and more important than others. If you post daily, there’s not a lot of time for those notes detailing massive changes to breathe. They’re just going to be buried under new post after new post. 

So, to find the right schedule for you, here are some factors to consider to help you decide when to write and send a release note: 

• Is it a significant change? Major new features or big time improvements call for immediate release notes.
• What’s your development cycle? If your Development Team ships updates frequently, users will expect more regular notes.
• What’s the impact on the user? If an update changes something fundamental for users (like an interface tweak or new feature), they need to know about it ASAP.
• How urgent were the updates? For critical bug fixes or security patches, don’t wait. Send out notes immediately to keep users informed.
• Who’s the user? Some users, like SaaS customers, expect frequent updates. Others, like enterprise software users, might prefer fewer, more substantial updates. Tailor your release notes cadence to your audience.

Shout yourself out

Release notes don’t have to be a dusty, forgotten part of your product development process. In fact, when done right, they can be the ultimate weapon for driving engagement, transparency, and feature adoption. So, whether you’re fixing a pesky bug or launching a game-changing new feature, your release notes are the key to getting your users excited, informed, and ready to take action.

By investing a little time and creativity into your release notes, you’ll be turning a routine update into a powerful communication tool. Plus, great release notes can help you build trust with your users by showing that you care about their experience, while also giving your Support Team a much-needed break by answering common questions before they arise. It’s a win-win!

To make good releases, you need good Product Management software. Ready to take your Product Management to the next level? With ProdPad, you’ll have everything you need to manage roadmaps, organize your ideas, collect customer feedback, track Ideas, and so much more – all in one place. Give our free trial a go today and streamline your product process from start to finish.

The post How to Write Release Notes in 2024 [With free template] appeared first on ProdPad.

Why should you run product price testing? 

Imagine you’re baking a cake. You wouldn’t just throw it into the oven without checking it and measuring its progress with a timer. The same goes for your pricing. Product price testing ensures that your pricing is right – stopping you from scaring customers away with a large price tag that makes them nervously look for the ‘cancel subscription’ button.

Conducting product price testing helps you be confident that you’re pitching your product at a price point that accurately reflects its market perception and value proposition. How much your product is worth will change as it and your product grows, so you need to monitor this and stay aware of any big changes. 

Let’s illustrate this with a story:

Say we start a new side business – go us – and release a new product. Let’s say a video streaming service called ProdTV, where users can watch our great catalog of webinars (which you can check out below) alongside other blockbusters.

Now as ProdTV is new, and because there are already a few industry giants knocking around showing the latest movies and must-see TV, ProdTV decides to follow a competitor-based product pricing strategy and undercut the market, charging less than these big players. 

Now let’s say over a few years, people grow to love ProdTV. It’s got an equal viewership to the competitors and has managed to bag some exclusive, high-rated content that everyone is loving. Shows that are so good that people are willing to pay way more than the original budget-friendly price to watch. Do you think sticking with that budget price point is still right? 

Of course not. Now it’s time to change the pricing, and perhaps follow a value-based product pricing strategy that positions ProdTV as a premium option. Product price testing allows you to not only see when it’s right to switch things up, but it can also help you determine what the best prices are. 

Because if we go back to that example, and decide to increase the costs to where it’s way more than other streaming services, ProdTV may start to alienate existing customers and lose viewership quickly. Without effective product price testing, ProdTV could get the change wrong, piss all their viewers off, dramatically lose revenue, have their exclusive shows canceled, and die a horrible death. 

Now, don’t worry, we won’t be launching ProdTV any time soon, but if we were, we’d be using product price testing to make sure that we find that pricing sweet spot. A full list of reasons to test your product pricing includes:

• You avoid guesswork: Testing helps you make data-driven pricing decisions rather than relying on assumptions.
• You can maximize profit potential: product price testing allows you to find the sweet spot where your price meets customer willingness to pay, optimizing your margins.
• You adapt to market changes: Regular testing ensures your pricing remains competitive as market conditions and customer preferences shift.
• You have better customer insights: Pricing tests reveal how much value customers place on your product and what drives their buying decisions.

How often should you run product price testing? 

If we go back to the wise words of Patrick Campbell, product pricing guru, then we need to be changing or augmenting our pricing every three months or so. This means that we should be testing our prices this often too. 

Now we get it, many Product Managers can feel a tad uncomfortable making or recommending changes to their pricing this frequently. If you’re not used to it, it can feel daunting. Now our first bit of advice is to suck it up, put on a brave face, and test and experiment regularly, but if that’s not you, here’s the lowdown of the minimum testing frequency you should hit. 

If you’re a fast-moving startup or in a super-dynamic market, you still might want to price test every few months. This lets you keep pace with competitors and adapt to customer trends quickly. On the other hand, if your product is more established or in a slower-changing industry, a yearly or biannual review should be enough to keep things fresh without causing chaos.

Alternatively, you could also follow the trigger approach to help you determine when you should run product price testing. This approach is all about reacting to various big changes, such as a new competitor entering the market, shifting demand, a big change in AARRR (Pirate Metrics) or customer churn, or if you release a large product update. Basically, if something big happens, it’s a good time to test. 

Of course, you don’t want to overdo it with your product price testing and do it too regularly, as that’s going to burn you out and, if you’re making constant tweaks, that could potentially irritate your customers. It’s a bit like exercising, you want to do it frequently enough to stay fit, but not so much that you hurt yourself. Keep a regular schedule, but always be ready to react when the market shifts.

What are the different product price testing methods? 

There are quite a few different ways to price test. We recommend using any of these price testing methods to get a nice broad range of results. As you’ll soon see, many of these testing methods are customer-centric, leveraging customer feedback to allow you to get direct insight from your users to help determine the best price possible. 

Testing demand elasticity

Before checking out the various price testing methods, we need to talk about demand elasticity. This term describes how much your customer demand changes when a product price changes. It can tell you a lot about how important your price is when it comes to feature adoption and user retention. Here’s how to work it out:

So if you increase your price by 20% and lose 8% of your customer base, your elasticity of demand will be -0.4. 

This is actually pretty good, as any score between 0 and -1 shows that you have inelastic demand – customers are less sensitive to price changes. If you get a score below -1, it demonstrates that you have elastic demand, meaning that your customers are super sensitive to price changes. 

If you get a score of -1 exactly, it means that you have unitary elastic demand. This shows that the change in demand and price is proportional. If you change the price by 10%, your demand will also change by 10% the other way.

Having a good grasp of your demand elasticity can help you decide which price testing method is best and if you’re in a good position to change pricing.

Van Westerndorp price testing

If you’re keen to check if your product pricing is hitting the mark, you can use Van Westerndorp analysis to figure out your ideal price point, based on customer feedback. 

In this type of analysis, you ask customers four simple questions to help you get an idea of the value of your product and how your customers perceive your pricing. 

To get started, you first need to pick the customers you want to ask. You can do this as a general survey, or make use of your Customer Advisory Board to get results from a core group of users you trust. When you’ve chosen your customers, ask them the following four questions:

This question helps you see what price point would be too cheap in the eyes of your customers. Although everyone loves a bargain, there is a lower limit where users may start to question the value of your product. It’s like buying a burger for 25¢, would you trust it to not make you sick?

This question allows you to establish the lowest price that users would pay for your product, and at what price point they’d be the happiest to pay. This price allows you to get a minimum idea of what your customers think you should be charging for your product.

This question lets you know at what price point customers will start to struggle to justify paying for your product. At this price, if you’re able to show the value of your product and create a wow moment when users are testing it out, you may still be able to convert the customer. This price usually indicates the most expensive price you can charge before the majority of your customers start to seriously question the price.

This final question lets you work out what price would be too expensive and indicates a price point that you should avoid for fear of putting your customers off. 

With these four questions asked, you can then plot your answers on a Price Map. Here, the x-axis represents the range of answered prices and the y-axis is the percentage of customers who answered for each price. This then creates a line chart for each question, allowing you to spot areas where they intersect and overlap. These areas of intersection illuminate things like the optimal price point. The sweet spot.

This optimal price point is represented where the line charts of Too Cheap and Too Expensive intersect. This helps you see what your prices should be in the eyes of your customers. If they align with your costs and other factors, then it may be a good idea to alter prices to this sweet spot. 

Gabor Granger price testing

This product price testing model is pretty similar to the Van Westerndorp approach. In both, you’re asking direct questions to your customers about your price, creating surveys that allow you to dive deeper into the percentages to find a good price range. 

In the Gabor Granger (no it’s not a Harry Potter character) method, you ask a series of questions about your product, asking customers how likely they are to buy your product at various prices. Your surveys will look like this:

The purpose of this test is to see if you can raise the price of your product without hurting your sales too much. You’ll plot your results on a graph, with your tested prices on the x-axis and the demand percentage on the y-axis. 

This graph is going to have a line that curves downwards as your proposed prices become less and less attractive. When reading the graph, you want to analyze the steepness of the curve, as a flat drop suggests that your customers have inelastic price sensitivity. You also want to find the price where you have the highest revenue potential. This is done by multiplying each price by the percentage of customers that would pay it.

Conjoint price testing

This product price testing method is a bit more subtle than the previous two, as instead of just asking about price as the major deciding factor, you’re also including other attributes of your product that users will assess to see if it’s worth it. 

Here you combine different product characteristics – with pricing being one of them – to present a selection of complete products that your customers will then choose from. For example, say you sell smartphones. In your conjoint price testing, you’ll create multiple different options with varying attributes. This can be a great way to get really useful feedback.

When getting customers to vote on their favorite, it’s best to do a few rounds of different options. It’s best practice to have around 10 to 15 different screens like above, all with varied choice sets that are arbitrarily put together to get as much information as possible. 

From this data, you’ll want to work out the utility scores and preference scores. These tell you how important each attribute was to the pricing. This isn’t something you can do with good old-fashioned brain power. You’re going to have to utilize conjoint software to pull out the data for you. 

Once analyzed, you’ll be able to see the utility scores for all the price points you mentioned. With this, you can then choose the price with the highest as your benchmark, knowing that this is what your customers consider the optimal price. That said, it’s also worth checking out what other factors had a high utility score, as this can influence how you design and create your product in the future. 

Of course, you need to make sure that the best price utility score is balanced with your cost structure and profit margins.

Common product price testing mistakes 

Don’t fall into the trap of getting product price testing wrong. Many things can go array, which can then spoil your results and give you an unreliable price point that doesn’t work. Keep your eye on some of these potential issues to make sure that you get price strategy testing right. 

• Using a small sample size: Testing with too small a group can give you unreliable results that don’t represent your actual customer base. You need enough data to back up your decisions and avoid misleading conclusions.

• Testing too many variables at once: If you tweak too many elements (like price, features, and promotions) all at once, it’s hard to know what’s really affecting customer behavior. Stick to isolated changes to get clearer insights.

• Overlooking long-term data: Focusing only on the immediate sales data after a price change can lead to misguided decisions. You need to look at long-term trends to understand the real impact on customer lifetime value and brand loyalty.

• Ignoring competitive factors: Failing to account for competitor pricing and market trends can leave your testing out of sync. You don’t operate in a vacuum – what your competitors are doing should shape your testing strategy.

A (bad) word on A/B price testing

You may have spotted that we didn’t include A/B testing as a potential method. This is a pretty big omission as you’ll find it on many other lists going through the common testing methods. 

Now A/B testing is great in multiple contexts. It can help you pinpoint the right version of your product, determine the perfect customer demographics you should target, and way more. We love A/B testing, putting two ideas against each other is a great way to figure out what’s best. That all said, it’s not great for product price testing. 

The main issue is that if you do A/B price testing wrong, it can be very unfair. If you’re testing two different prices, you’re going to end up with some customers paying more than others for the exact same thing. If word got out about that (and you can bet it will), you can imagine how that’s going to hurt your brand reputation. It can also dissuade potential buyers from purchasing. 

And another thing, think about what happens once you choose the price you want to charge out of the two A/B options. What happens to the others? They’re still going to be paying an outdated price, which causes headaches. Do you just leave them paying the wrong price? Do you try and get them to change? It’s tricky, and it’s best to be avoided. 

And another, another thing, it can be really hard to get enough data from A/B testing to be worthwhile. You need to get a lot of people involved in your A/B testing to get results with statistical significance. If you don’t get enough people purchasing your product with your A/B prices, it’s just going to be pure chance, which can skew your results. 

And another, another, ANOTHER thing, getting an A/B test up and running takes a lot of time and resources. This can be a pretty large and likely meritless effort. 

Phew . Feels good getting that off our chest. In short, we think A/B price testing can do more harm than good, especially if it’s done clumsily. The other pricing strategy testing methods provide great insight and should eliminate your need to do A/B testing.

To the lab!

Testing your product pricing is a worthwhile endeavor, something that you should be doing regularly. Get your best lab coat on, put on your safety goggles, and get ready to geek out over some data. Testing will help you confidently find the optimal price point for you, taking away any guesswork and replacing it with hard evidence. 

By measuring how customer interest shifts with price changes, you can see whether your product has wiggle room for price increases – or if even small bumps will scare customers away.

Remember, pricing isn’t static – markets shift, customer preferences evolve, and what worked for you yesterday might not hit the mark tomorrow. You’ve got to be open to change; an outdated pricing strategy could hold you back. 

But that’s not the only outdated thing that can hold you back as a Product Manager. If you’re using traditional time-based roadmaps or generic task management software, you may be struggling to keep up with the times. It could be time to revamp and move on to a future-proof option like ProdPad. Our solution is constantly innovating to keep up with customer needs and market trends. Come have a look at ProdPad yourself and see how it can make you a better Product Manager.

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