Install This Customer Feedback System on Your Website

When it comes to optimization, one of the most important practices that all marketers need to undertake is gathering actionable insights.

The optimization process (a simplified one at that) involves these steps:

1. Identify the purpose of the page (what action do you want users to take?)
2. Gather actionable insights
   1. Form your hypothesis
   2. Survey people who took the desired action you wanted
   3. Survey people who didn’t take the desired action you wanted
3. Compile your research into an actionable report
4. Develop test hypothesis and start testing

In this whole process, Step 2, Gather actionable insights or feedback is probably the most important, as it allows you to identify sources of friction that stop customers from taking action.

Feedback can be broken up into 2 types:

1. Customer Surveys: These are surveys that are used to get feedback from people who have already converted or taken the action you want them to take. It occurs after the fact and they may not necessarily remember how they felt when making their purchase or taking the action.
2. Web Surveys: These are surveys which collect feedback from users while they are on and using your site. They are usually pop up boxes that appear to visitors based on some set rules you provide, be it time spent on a certain page, or scroll depth. Number of pages or even just landing on specific pages. Web surveys can be used to understand why people are not taking a particular action.

So how can you implement a web survey to your visitors to identify your friction points and boost your conversion rates?

Step 1: Who

Qualify your customer: You want to make sure the people you are asking are individuals who would actually have taken the action you wanted them to take. Look at your metrics and see the common traits of people who took the set action and try and target similar individuals. Maybe they visited a specific number of pages, or stayed on your site for a set amount of time.

For instance, you could target individuals who added items to their cart, but didn’t buy. These individuals showed intent by adding a product to their cart. With an average abandon-cart rate of 69.89% (Baymard Institute), finding out why and fixing it would do wonders for your conversion rates.

Step 2: Where

Now you know who, you have to ask them at the right time. Don’t ask a user why they haven’t taken an action when they just landed on your site.

A better time might be the last stage of your conversion funnel, or when they are about to leave your site (exit intent). A browser determines exit intent by tracking the movements of your mouse and is triggered when you move your mouse cursor outside of the upper page boundary.

Step 3: What 

Ok so you know who and you know where. So now what do you ask them? There is no best question to ask and it differs from person to person depending on what your objective is. As a rule of thumb, try and understand 2 things:

1. Why did they come to your site? Does your site match their needs? If not are you attracting the wrong traffic?
2. What are the friction points that are preventing them from taking the action you want them to take? 

Here are some examples of questions to ask:

• Why are you here today? (identify their intent)
• Were you able to find the information you were looking for? (identify if there is any missing information on the site)
• What made you not complete (INSERT ACTION) today? (identify sources of friction)

You will have to experiment with these to see what works. The one question a lot of us marketers use that works regardless of audience is: “Do you have any questions you haven’t been able to find answers to? (Y/N)”

After they have answered ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ ask for an explanation. This structure works because it’s easy to answer a yes or no question. Once you have responded to it, a psychological trigger called ‘commitment’ compels you to complete what you started, and answer the question.

This format works because its easy to answer a Y/N question and once you have answered it, there is a psychological trigger called commitment that compels you to want to complete what you started and thus answer the question.

Another good question especially for ecommerce stores is “Is there anything holding you back from making a purchase today?” Find the one that works for you.

Step 4: How

There are multiple ways of implementing this. Personally I like HotJar because there is a free version you can use and it’s quick and easy to set up, but there are other tools like Qualaroo and Webengage. 

In Hotjar, 

1. Go to Polls under the Feedback heading on the side dashboard
2. Click “+ New Poll” 
3. Enter the name of your poll
4. Your Question. 1 is your question with a yes no answer. Click on the dialogue box next to the Yes so that they can enter in text if they select yes. The second question is to ask them if they would like a response to their question or comment. Yes they can leave their email address. No they keep it moving.
5. Configure how you want it to look
6. Set up your targeting (desktop, tablets, or phones) and specific pages you want this to appear and to which users.
7. Set up the behavior of the poll. When do you want it to show and how often will visitors see this.

Once done, set to active and launch and you have your very own feedback loop.