Conversion Rate Optimization (or CRO) is the act of incrementally improving your website in an attempt to increase the number of visitors that complete a desired action. One method of improving conversion rate is to send surveys to your site visitors. Then, leverage the data from survey responses to make website improvements. But how do you send surveys to site visitors and what survey questions improve CRO?
Why Ask Open Ended Questions?
Open ended questions are going to provide you with the most value. Open ended questions are when the respondent types in a response, instead of clicking pre-configured options. The reason why these provide more value is because you learn how your audience speaks. They may use terms to describe benefits in a different manner than you ever have. Update your content to reflect the same language your audience uses. Write the benefits on your homepage using the same words your visitors use to describe them.
The downside is that open ended questions are more work to analyze. To get the most value, you’ll want to read each response. Of course, looking at a graph is much faster. If at all possible, you should read each response. If that isn’t feasible, you can try to find common themes by loading the results into a word art tool. That will display the results in a word cloud. In the word cloud, the topics that come up the most will be larger so it’s easy to find trends.
Qualitative vs Quantitative
In general, surveys are qualitative data because they are subjective responses. Yet, depending on how you create the question it can be more qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative data is an observed or reported experience. Whereas quantitative data is a measurable metric.
Survey Questions to Ask
Qualitative Survey Questions
Why did you decide to make a purchase?
This can help you understand what led to the buying decision. Was there an initial problem that triggered the purchase? Did something on the website convince the person to complete the transaction? This can help you understand if purchases are due to use cases you’re already aware of, or new ones. If it’s a new use case there may be optimizations to increase the chances of that use case converting others.
If you didn’t purchase, what stopped you?
This question can help you better understand obstacles and frustrations your visitors face. Once you understand what’s stopping people from buying, you can begin improving those areas.
Were you able to complete your task? And if not, why not?
Not everyone comes to your site with a goal to purchase. They may be researching a particular question, or looking for a video or a download. Understanding what people are looking for and if they were able to find it can help you optimize your site navigation.
Quantitative Survey Question
By far, my favorite quantitative question to add to a survey is the Net Promoter Score (or NPS). To get the NPS you ask How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or a colleague? The answer is a number scale of 0-10. Ten is the highest and most likely. Zero is the lowest and extremely unlikely.
If someone answers the Net Promoter Score with a nine or a ten, that means they are a promoter. They had a good experience and they will positively promote your brand. If someone answers with a seven or eight they are passive. The experience was fine, there were no issues, but they aren’t going to go out and talk about your brand. And anyone who answers six or lower is a detractor for your brand. These people will be negative word of mouth for your brand. People are more likely to talk about bad experiences than good experiences.
Ideally you want your NPS in the nine or ten range. If the NPS is six or below you want to talk to your audience and see what you can do to improve the experience.
Survey Tools
There are a few different tools you can use to collect survey responses. You can use Google Forms or Survey Monkey to create stand-alone forms to send to people. This will work best if you already have an email list you can use to contact your audience.
You can also gather survey responses directly on your website through Hotjar and Qualaroo. This is the route I take because it’s nice to get feedback from website visitors. Sometimes people who sign up for your email list do not reflect the same people who visit your site. You want to hear from the people who don’t stay and don’t convert as well as the people who do.
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