Using Surveys is a fantastic way to truly understand your visitors. It has been used for decades, and for a good reason. It’s the only way to collect quantitative feedback directly from the people who use your products or services.
What can you gain with surveys?
- Measure brand awareness
- Post event satisfaction
- Customer satisfaction
- Net promoter score
- Marketing
- Market research
- Research before A/B testing
- Research before personalization
- Display by geolocation
- And lots more!
Bestpractice
- Define a clear, attainable goal for your survey. Whether it is to understand what is causing your customers to leave or if what drives them to convert, a clear goal will help you form clear questions. For e.g. if the goal is to understand why a user is leaving the site, asking the same user what they enjoy the most won’t help you achieve your goal.
- Keep the more personal questions towards the end. Just like you see in checkouts with the most sensitive information (payment information) being towards the end, the same logic should be used with surveys .
- Keep your surveys short. A user filling out a survey is doing you a favour and expecting too much can lead to high drop-off rates. This is why it’s essential to only ask questions that will help you get a better understanding of your goal.
- Closed-ended questions vs Open-ended questions. Closed-ended questions: Easier for respondents to answer and will provide you with quantitative data. Open-ended questions: Can take longer to answer, but will give you qualitative data. Useful when you need to gain insight on opinions of a topic you’re not familiar with. Good as preliminary research.
Remember, if you are unsure of, for example, what questions to ask, or how to form your questions - you can always A/B test it to find out. At Symplify Conversion we can help you set it up and guide you in the process.
Strategies & tactics
On exit survey
An exit survey is a great way to gain insight into why users leave your site. Are the prices too high? The products are not appealing enough or perhaps are the users having a hard time finding suitable products? Asking the users will make it easier for you to know where to put your efforts to increase user engagement.
Post purchase survey
Just as an exit survey can help you understand why users are leaving your site, a post purchase survey can help you understand what made a user convert. Getting a better understanding on what motivates the users to purchase is valuable since it allows you to know where to focus. Was it the free shipping USP in the checkout that made the user convert? Perhaps it should be highlighted more throughout the funnel.
Collect data for new functions
Are you in the process of investing in new tools for your site and don’t know what to go with or if it’s something that is asked for? Ask your users! Getting qualitative feedback on what your users actually want will help you make smarter business decisions.
Offer incentives
Getting users to fill out a survey can be a challenging task. By giving the user an incentive like a discount code, free gift or perhaps an e-book can help boost the response rate. It’s also a good way to build your email list. However a tactic like this should be used wisely since it can attract bad participants.
Build strong hypotheses for your A/B tests
You might see in the quantitative data that you for e.g. have a low add to cart rate or a high basket abandonment, but not understand why. With surveys you can easily get qualitative feedback as to what is keeping users from adding items to their cart, or abandoning their basket. This will help you get a better understanding of what to prioritize and test on your site.
Collect user feedback on performance and technical issues
When analyzing your data you might notice spikes in KPIs like bounce rate, exit rate or checkout abandonments without having a clear understanding as to why. Surveys are a great tool to use to get answers on potential performance issues or issues with the checkout. For e.g. if you have discount codes that are not working or if your payment solution is causing issues.
Read how to create a survey here!