3Cs of Online Measurement: Customer Feedback

The third leg in the journey to becoming a more data-informed marketer is Customer Feedback.

As mentioned in the first post in this series, analytics click data effectively tells you what is happening on your site. But without direct feedback, understanding why visitors act as they do must be inferred which is less than optimal in data analysis.

Website surveys can help fill this important gap by providing valued insight into what visitors are trying to accomplish and what’s preventing them from fulfilling those tasks.

Fortunately, survey platforms have evolved from the days of the annoying popups that used to appear in the middle of your visit like a pesky fly at dinner. Generally, they are much more sophisticated and much less obtrusive.

Some survey platforms have even advanced to the point of becoming more hybrid solutions that blend real-time data insight with direct marketing principles. Providers such as Qualaroo.com offer smart technology that can be applied to nurture or nudges visitors through your site in a relevant way based on their feedback. So by leveraging web survey technology to ask demographic or firmographic-related questions or to discover a visitor’s unique needs, Qualaroo can help you serve just the right offer or content to funnel them toward conversion in an optimal way. As a direct marketer, that’s pretty powerful stuff!

Survey platform Qualaroo

Page-level vs. Site-level Surveys

Website surveys are generally either page-level or site-level. Page-level surveys typically collect data for a focused purpose or task, such as generating user-ratings on features, reporting issues with functionality or learning whether a page was helpful. In-page surveys are great at measuring the effectiveness of individual pages, content or tasks. But since the invitation model is generally passive, it can be difficult to get a large enough sample to validate the findings.

If you are able to generate enough feedback, page-level insights can be a gold mine of actionability, especially in helping identify break downs in the path to conversion or reasons for high bounce rates on key pages.

Site-level surveys, which usually have a more proactive invitation model, offer macro insight about intent and experience. Since visitors often leave sites without completing their desired task, site-level surveys can prove highly valuable in learning why visitors left your website or uncovering performance shortfalls in general.

The preferred method for data collection on site-level surveys is a two-step, permission-based approach, in which users are asked when entering your site for permission to participate in the survey at the end of their visit. By giving visitors the option to “opt-out” initially, you avoid the negative perceptions that come with the interruptive middle of the session pop-up.

While human nature is such that we want to know as much as possible when presented the opportunity, don’t let your thirst for knowledge translate into question overload. The most effective exit surveys are usually boiled down to just a few questions. What was the purpose of your visit? Were you able to complete your desired task? If you were not able to complete your task, why not? How likely are you to return to the site?

Remember, the last thing you want to do is burden a user and damage your brand.

Conclusion

There is probably no more efficient method for listening to your audience directly than surveys. Web survey platforms are generally very affordable, with some providers (uservoice.com and iperceptions.com) even offering basic tools for free. And the setup is relatively easy, meaning little to no support from IT is needed.

Although they won’t answer all the questions, survey do fill an important gap in web analytics picture and help explain the elusive “why” of user behavior.