Ask your eCommerce customers what they think via a website survey?
One of the best tools you can add to an eCommerce (or lead/transactional website) website is Live Chat.
Not only does it improve conversion and help your customers with their questions, it quickly and inexpensively allows you to poll your customers about why they might not have proceeded to the sale.
You can discover some real nuggets of gold and if coordinated, this should feedback into the website and its ongoing development.
Live Chat however, is not the tool for throwing a wide-net to your users in order to gain feedback and insight into your website; indeed, whilst I said that the knowledge you get from Live Chat should feedback into your website, the fact is that this rarely happens.
The person talking to customers is often not part of the website improvement cycle or at least not formally.
Introducing the survey
A/B Split testing. Google Analytics. Crazy Egg.
The number of hours we spend guessing how users use our website. Pondering about button colour.
‘Shop Now’ or ‘Buy Now’. ‘Shop Right Now’ or ‘Start Shopping’.
Why not just ask your customers rather than theorising?
After-all, they’re the ones using the website. They’re the ones who buy or bail, who look at your trust symbols and promotions.
A survey is an inexpensive and quick way to poll your users. If you pitch it right, and at the right time in their cycle/relationship with you, you’ll get a great and positive response.
Plonking a survey into the middle of your website isn’t the answer however. All that will do is interrupt users, especially those that might have purchased.
Instead, embed the survey on ‘Thank you’ or ‘Payment Confirmation’ page. That way, you know they’ve purchased and having just experienced your website and given you their trust, are likely to be happy to answer a few quick questions.
After all, why wouldn’t they want you to improve.
You can also email your existing customer-base, though the response much lower and the answers less fresh.
