The websites you build for yourself and your clients can be thought of as virtual storefronts. Just like at a physical store location, a negative or confusing interaction on your website can create distrust between new customers and the brand and/or product it showcases. One way to ensure you generate as many positive customer experiences as possible is to create and deploy a website feedback survey. Doing so provides you with valuable intel that can drastically improve your online customers’ website experience.
A successful website feedback survey is well designed, well informed, succinct, and easy to navigate. Customers should feel empowered by a feedback survey rather than intimidated or annoyed by it.
In this post, we’ll cover the key aspects of a website feedback survey and provide some helpful tips for creating one that customers will actually want to complete.
An effective website feedback survey is, first and foremost, well designed. When a customer is invited to take an online questionnaire, they will be disinclined to complete it if it is not visually inviting. When designing a beautiful website feedback survey, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind.
Firstly, website feedback surveys should have a clean layout. Overly ornate fonts and icons can be distracting and should be kept to a minimum. However, a clean layout does not necessarily mean plain. You want the survey to feel connected to the rest of the website. Therefore, it’s a good idea to use similar design elements and colors to give your questionnaire a bit of personality.
Secondly, there are essentially two ways to incorporate a feedback survey into a site. You can build out a survey form yourself or integrate with an online survey tool such as SurveyMonkey or other SurveyMonkey alternatives. As a web professional, the route you take should primarily be driven by what your client’s budget will allow. If they can afford for you to create a custom survey that is entirely unique to their business and tailored to maximize user engagement, you’ll want to suggest this option. If your customers lack the budget to commission a custom website feedback survey, a SaaS tool like Survey Monkey or a similar tool will still provide you with some of the valuable feedback you’ll need to make ongoing site improvements.
Ease of use is paramount when developing a website feedback survey. Customers should be able to navigate through questions without disruption or frustration. There are several ways to create an easy-to-use website feedback survey.
Firstly, consider a survey that participants can scroll through, rather than click through question to question. When participants can sense the end of the survey isn’t far off, they will be more likely to engage with it. A scrollable survey is more visually appealing and allows participants to easily go back and change their answers if they so desire.
Secondly, use a mixture of multiple choice options and open answer questions. When filling out a website satisfaction survey, participants can become daunted by the prospect of having to type up too many answers. Consider mixing in multiple choice questions or questions that use a stack ranking to gauge interest or satisfaction. This will ensure that participants move through the questions quickly and easily.
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Getting a website visitor to focus on a website feedback survey is no small task. How and where a questionnaire is presented can have a significant impact on engagement.
Firstly, ensure consumers have enough time to engage with the site itself. A pop-up on a timer is one strategy you can implement to catch potential participants, but you don’t want it to trigger as soon as the customer hits the page. Set the timer to one minute less than the amount of time the average visitor spends on the site. This provides the user with the opportunity to experience the site fully before they answer your website feedback survey.
Secondly, make the website feedback survey visible on the bottom of each of your site’s pages. There are easy ways to invite potential participants to engage with a website satisfaction survey. A simple “How are we doing?” or “Have any feedback?” on a button that links to the survey will help potential participants know where to go and offer feedback on their experience.
An easy way to attract potential participants to complete your website feedback survey is to incentivize them. This can be done in a way that will help generate future business and invite customers back to the site. As you consider ways to incentivize visitors to partake in a feedback survey, keep in mind the reason consumers are coming to the site in the first place. Is it for a product? Service? Or simply for information. Plan your incentive accordingly.
Here are a couple of ideas:
A website feedback survey is an effective way of collecting information, building trust, and improving the site you are managing. As you develop the survey, keep in mind it’s design, ease of use and placement on the site.
Ultimately, a quality web survey acts as a handshake between the business or brand the site represents and the customers who visit it. A well developed website feedback survey says to a consumer: “I trust you, and by giving you my trust it is my hope that you, in turn, will trust me.”
