Fake Door Follow-Up

A fake door test puts a button, menu item, or CTA for a feature that does not exist yet into your product. When a user clicks it, you know they wanted that feature badly enough to take action. The follow-up survey captures why they clicked and what they expected, giving you demand validation data before you write a single line of code.

This is one of the lowest-cost ways to test product ideas. Instead of building a feature and hoping people use it, you measure intent first. The fake door tells you how many people want it. The follow-up survey tells you what they actually need.

When to deploy a fake door follow-up

When evaluating a new feature idea. Before committing engineering resources, place a fake door in the product where the feature would naturally live. If 5% of users who see it click through, you have a signal worth investigating. If 0.1% click, the demand is not there.

When choosing between multiple feature directions. Run multiple fake doors simultaneously to compare demand across different feature ideas. The one with the highest click-through rate has the strongest pull.

When entering a new market segment. If you are considering features for a new audience, fake doors help you validate whether that audience exists in your current user base and what they expect.

When validating pricing page features. Place a fake door for a premium feature on your pricing page to gauge willingness to pay before building the feature or creating the pricing tier.

Fake door follow-up survey questions

When a user clicks the fake door, they see a brief message explaining the feature is coming soon, followed by a short survey.

1. Thanks for your interest in [feature name]. What were you hoping to do? | Open text | Required
2. How important is this feature to your workflow? | Critical / Very important / Nice to have / Just curious | Required
3. How are you currently handling this without [feature name]? | Open text | Optional
4. Would you like to be notified when this feature launches? | Yes / No | Optional
5. [If Yes] What is your email address? | Email input | Optional

Question one is the most valuable. It reveals what the user expected the feature to do, which often differs from what you had in mind. Question two separates serious demand from casual curiosity. Question three uncovers the workarounds users have built, which tells you both the severity of the problem and what your solution needs to replace.

Designing the fake door experience

Make it feel natural. The button, link, or menu item should look like it belongs in the product. If it looks like an ad or a separate promotion, users will ignore it regardless of interest level.

Be transparent when clicked. The moment a user clicks, be honest. "This feature is coming soon. We are exploring it and would love your input." Never let users think the feature exists and then surprise them with a dead end. That destroys trust.

Keep the survey to two minutes. The user clicked expecting a feature, not a survey. Respect their time. Three to five questions maximum. The survey should feel like a natural part of the "coming soon" experience, not an imposition.

Track who saw the door and who clicked. The click-through rate is your headline metric. But you also need to know the denominator: how many users saw the fake door and chose not to click? This gives you the true demand signal.

Analyzing fake door data

Click-through rate. This is your primary demand indicator. Calculate it as clicks divided by impressions. Compare across different fake doors to rank feature demand.

Intent categories. Group the open-text responses from question one into categories. Users clicking the same button may have very different expectations. If 60% expect one thing and 40% expect another, you may need to build two features or clarify the positioning of one.

Urgency distribution. The "how important" question separates features users need from features users think would be neat. A fake door with high click-through but mostly "just curious" responses is a weaker signal than one with moderate click-through but mostly "critical" responses.

Workaround analysis. The current workarounds reveal the competitive landscape. If users are managing with spreadsheets, your feature needs to be easier than a spreadsheet. If they are using a dedicated tool, your feature needs to offer integration advantages.

Email capture rate. Users who provide their email are your early adopters. They have self-selected as the most interested segment. When you build the feature, these are your beta testers and launch announcement list.

Common mistakes

Leaving the fake door up too long. If users keep clicking a fake door and getting a "coming soon" message for months, it erodes trust. Set a time limit: two to four weeks of data collection, then remove the door. Either build the feature or decide not to.

Not acting on the data. A fake door test that produces strong demand data but gets ignored is worse than not testing. If you run the test, commit to using the results in your prioritization decisions.

Testing too many doors at once. Running five fake doors simultaneously in the same product area confuses users and dilutes each signal. Test one to two features at a time in distinct areas of the product.

Ignoring low click-through. A fake door with very low click-through is a valid result. It tells you that the feature you thought users wanted is not actually in demand. That is valuable information that saves you from building the wrong thing.

Not segmenting. Overall click-through rate hides segment-level variation. A feature might have low overall demand but very high demand from your most valuable customer segment.

Set up this survey in Formbricks

Formbricks supports fake door follow-up surveys triggered by custom events. When a user clicks your fake door element, fire a custom event that triggers the Formbricks survey. The survey appears in context, immediately after the click, so the user's intent is fresh.

The template includes the "coming soon" message, the follow-up questions, and an optional email capture field. All responses are tied to the user's profile, so you can segment demand by plan type, usage level, company size, or any other attribute you track.

You can run multiple fake door surveys simultaneously with different triggers, making it easy to compare demand across feature ideas from a single dashboard.