An effective website feedback survey helps website managers identify areas where their team excels while pinpointing areas for improvement. Creating and maintaining an effective customer feedback loop can be difficult and frustrating as it’s easy to overlook critical factors and miss important steps. If you are looking to design, improve and maintain a successful website feedback program, here are some important questions to consider.
1. How many survey responses do I need? The more the better! Even though many consider a .01% response rate to their website survey to be acceptable, the truth is that 1% to 5% response rates are regularly achievable. Maximizing your response rates depends on the website survey feedback invitation, and ensuring that the respondent has the ability to provide feedback when they want to is critical.
But remember, not all feedback options are the same! Often companies ask their respondents to complete the survey via email, long after their website visit. This introduces a number of data quality issues including recall bias, so it’s important to offer options that do not undermine the quality of your data.
2. When is the right time to invite customers to share their feedback?
It’s important to get the timing of the invitation right; an immediate invitation might be frustrating to your customer, so it’s best to consider its timing based on data detailing how long customers tend to spend on your website. Currently, the general consensus is to have your feedback invitation pop up right away, however, this approach can distract the customer from their primary purpose and cause frustration. Thoughtful consideration of the customer’s reaction to the survey along with how quickly to launch the invite goes a long way to ensure the most helpful feedback. Customers have different expectations for different companies across different industries, so by monitoring, learning and optimizing your team can develop a survey feedback invitation cadence that doubles your response rate!
3. What do I need to include in my invitation?
A website survey provides a rare opportunity to have a personalized interaction with your customer. For starters, make sure you add specific details about their current visit and reassure them that their feedback will be acted upon. This approach has 2 immediate advantages: first, it helps customers feel known and appreciated. Secondly, it shows the customer that you care about what they have to say. But avoid the temptation to “oversell” in the invitation; instead, focus your messaging on the importance of the personal relationship that you have with the customer and how this invitation to learn more will allow you to improve their experience and deepen your brand’s relationship with them.
4. What is the right (or best) number of questions to ask the customer?
More than 3. Fewer than 10. There is a big misconception when it comes to website surveys that the shorter the survey the better, and the higher the response rate. Remember: the goal is to capture actionable feedback – not simply to hit the highest response rate or garner a high score. If I sent you a 1-question survey that asked about your customer satisfaction, customer effort score (CES) or NPS, what actions would I be able to take to improve my website’s performance based on your response to that 1 question? The answer is none. This is not to say that you should ask 50 questions, but you do need to choose a set number of questions that provides responses that can be turned into specific actions. Not taking the time to carefully consider the 5 to 10 best survey questions for your audience undermines the fundamental goal of this effort: to help your website manager make better-informed decisions about the actions needed to improve the customers’ experience of your website.
5. What are the most important considerations when designing the look & feel of a website survey?
The best interfaces collect a reasonable amount of customer feedback with the least amount of customer effort. Even in a survey, your brand should provide a great customer experience – from the amount of time, it takes to complete the survey, to the number of clicks to get through it, to its visual look and flow. Why? Because it’s important to provide your customers with the best brand experience possible, and having the right survey interface will help improve both response rates and the overall quality of your feedback.
With the bespokeCX system, any website manager can have easy access to a survey platform that provides the know-how to build the best website survey. This is not a replacement for your current website systems, but rather a plug-and-play enhancement that seamlessly integrates with your data stack, requiring no technical or IT resources to maintain. bespokeCX collects and consolidates customer feedback and details from all of your CX tools in order to provide you with a plan of prioritized actions for improving your website’s customer satisfaction. To learn more, visit their website bespokecx.com. #CX #CustomerExperience #Website