You may know the ins and outs of your business, but it can be hard to see your e-commerce store with fresh eyes. The best way to get into the mindset of a consumer is to get answers from them directly.

E-commerce surveys are a wonderful way to do this. These surveys help you tap into your audiences’ minds to hear more about their opinions surrounding your brand.

Reasons to create an e-commerce survey

There are many reasons to use e-commerce surveys, but these are the three most common reasons sellers use them:

Get competitor analysis feedback

First, surveys can help you learn about how consumers think of your brand in relation to your competitors. This can help you narrow down your niche and also focus your attention on areas for improvement.

Uncover cart abandonment issues

The second reason is to learn about one of the most common e-commerce problems: cart abandonment. Cart abandonment occurs when a customer adds items to their cart but leaves your site without purchasing.

You can use a survey as an opportunity to understand what your business could be doing better. Many sellers that utilize this method find a few common reasons for cart abandonment. These tend to include shipping costs or time, UI issues, or pricing compared to competitors’ products.

Analyze website performance

Website performance has a lot of influence over customer conversions on your e-commerce store. If there are slow page load times, confusing navigation, or other issues it can deter customers from making a purchase. The third reason to use a survey is to gauge whether your customers are experiencing any of these roadblocks.

When to use e-commerce surveys

There are endless places on your site where you can implement a customer survey. Placements can be strategic to gain information about the common pain points above (competitor analysis, cart abandonment, and performance), among others. Here are the 6 of the most important places for surveys:

After the user has viewed a few pages (for website feedback)

When you are testing different things on your e-commerce website, it is important to get customer feedback. This can help you understand the impression they get of your brand after going through your site. This type of survey is usually triggered when they have viewed most of the homepage or several other pages. This would be a great time to include competitor analysis questions. An example is “On a scale of 0-10 how likely are you to recommend this to a friend over other stores?

When a user exits the site from the cart page (for cart abandonment feedback)

As discussed earlier, cart abandonment is a big issue for e-commerce stores. Set yourself up for success by running a survey to gather information on why users are abandoning their carts instead of following through with a purchase. This survey would pop up when users try to leave the site with items still in their shopping cart.

Before the user exits the website (for exit motivation feedback)

Expanding on that, it could be helpful to understand why consumers are leaving your site for any reason. It could be anything from competitor price comparisons to bad experiences with your website design. You can trigger a survey to open when customers are exiting your site, so you can better understand why they are leaving.

After contacting customer support (customer support feedback)

When a customer has a problem it is never ideal, but with quality customer service you can still turn that into a positive experience with your brand. It is very important to have top-notch customer service, so implementing a survey for those who have contacted your customer service will help you better understand how you can meet customer needs. This will help to gather information about website performance, which is one of the three common survey uses discussed in the last section.

After purchasing (post-purchase feedback)

This type of survey will help you understand how easy or difficult it was for a customer to buy something from your site. It can also help you identify any areas of friction that made it hard for customers that might have caused others to exit the site. This survey would typically be sent to a customer after they have completed a purchase on your site.

After receiving their product (product feedback)

By asking customers for a review of the product you can get an idea of how they feel about their entire experience, from online purchasing to product quality. This type of survey would most commonly be sent out to the customer via SMS text or email after they have had their product for a period of time.

Tips to create the best post-purchase survey

Post-purchase surveys are a great way for those just starting out with surveys to learn about blindspots within their customers’ online journey. Use these tips to build your first survey!

Keep it short

Your survey should only have a few questions and take very minimal time to finish. If there are too many questions customers may leave the survey. This will limit the amount of information you can collect.

Keep it low effort

If the questions are too complicated or require too much typing, many customers may not finish the survey. Also, keep questions simple so your customers don’t get confused and provide incorrect answers.

Focus on the timing

Make sure you are placing your survey in the most optimal area for what you are wanting to learn. Additionally, make sure you aren’t cutting off any important steps where you place your survey. It’s important to catch your customers at a convenient time so they aren’t distracted from making a purchase.

Think about incentive

Put yourself in the mind of the consumer. Why would they want to fill out your survey? Consider adding some sort of incentive for them like a small discount or free gift with purchase in exchange for their answers. This will help you to get more customers interested in giving their feedback while also promoting future sales.

10 questions to include in an e-commerce survey

• How satisfied are you with your experience?
• Did you face any challenges using our website?
• How well did our store meet your needs?
• Is there anything missing on this web page?
• On a scale of 0-10 how likely are you to recommend this to a friend?
• How easy is it to navigate our website?
• How do you feel about the pricing of our products?
• Which other options did you consider before this product?
• Do you follow along with us on social media?
• What other products would you like to see in our store?

Utilize these questions to create a strong survey that will help you gather insight into customers on your e-commerce site. You will be able to better serve your audience when you are able to look at the customer journey through their eyes.

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