The Ultimate Guide to Using Net Promoter Score for Your Website

If you aren’t familiar with the topic, don’t let it scare you. Below, we’ll discuss the theory and dive into step-by-step methods to calculate Net Promoter Score for your business using Getsitecontrol website surveys.

Ready? Let’s get into it!

What is the Net Promoter Score?

Simply put, a Net Promoter Score is an index ranging from -100 to 100. This index measures how many customers are willing to recommend your products or services to others.

You’ll often see this term shortened as NPS.

What is your Net Promoter Score used for?

Your NPS sheds light on your customers’ overall satisfaction level and tells you how loyal they are to your brand.

Unlike other benchmarks used to measure opinions about your products or services, your NPS measures overall customer satisfaction about your brand, not just about a specific product or a single experience they’ve had with you.

How to calculate your Net Promoter Score

By now, you’re probably itching to know what your Net Promoter Score looks like. Here’s how you can calculate it.

Step 1 – create an NPS survey for your website

If you want to know what people think about your business, the only way to know is to ask them.

The term “Net Promoter Score” might sound intimidating, but it’s quite easy to calculate. All you need is a survey with a single question to ask your customers:

On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?

And building this type of survey is ridiculously easy with the Getsitecontrol survey popup builder. After you have registered an account and installed it on your website by following the instructions, you are ready to create your first form.

When you get started with this tool, you have two options: you can build a form “from scratch”, using one of the default templates offered, or you can use one of the more elaborate templates that you can find in the template gallery.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the default templates are categorized by popup type: slide-ins, modals, sidebars, bars, panels, or fullscreens.

In the gallery, you can find the most suitable templates for your purpose in the Feedback section:

I have decided to use one of the templates from the gallery as a base. To do that, you just need to click on the desired template in the gallery and then hit the Take this template button to open the template in the dashboard.

As you can see, this template already contains a survey form. In the next steps, we’ll see how to adjust it to be our NPS survey.

Adjust content and appearance

The first step would be to delete everything that you don’t need. You can do that from the Design tab by clicking on the element that you wish to delete, and then hitting the remove button in the top-right corner.

Then, it’s time to add or edit the fields that you need. In this case, I have chosen to keep the drop-down list that was already there, but I could also have used some radio buttons for our options.

Because this is a 1 to 10 scenario, I’ve added 10 drop-down options. Note that you can randomize the order of your answers, but in this case, I want the answers to remain in the right order.

Once you have all the elements that you need in your survey form, you can start modifying the content. Below, you can see how I have slightly edited the copy of the text fields and the button text to suit my taste:

Once you have finished editing the copy, you need to decide what happens after people complete your survey.

In the template we have chosen, there is already a submission success page ( Page 2 in the dashboard). This is what your respondents will see after clicking the primary button on the first page. You can edit this page as you prefer by following the same steps we described earlier.

It’s now time to make your survey look pretty! You can customize every detail of it, from the colors of your text and buttons to the images and fonts. In the Theme section, you can play with styles, colors, and fonts.

If you think a different image would improve the appearance of your survey, you can replace the image of the template. If your template doesn’t have any image, you can add one by using the + Add image button:

If your image doesn’t quite fit the size of the form, use the Size and spacing section to adjust it.

You can easily switch back and forth between mobile and desktop modes to ensure your popup looks great on all devices.

And that’s it for the design! Easy, right?

Now, there are 3 more tabs available for you to set up the NPS survey:

• Targeting
• Notifications
• Integrations

Set up page and audience targeting

Targeting settings define what activates the widget on a website. They are straightforward and easy to use – no coding or special knowledge required.

But, to create the most effective targeting conditions, you need to know to whom and when you want to show the survey first. It does not make sense, for example, to show this type of survey to someone who has just landed on your website, as they wouldn’t have an opinion about your business yet.

It’s definitely more sensible to engage returning visitors, or to conduct the survey after a purchase.

You can use the audience targeting control ( Display widget if) to target returning visitors, and the page targeting control ( Display widget on) to display the widget on any specific page – for example, after checkout:

Another possibility would be to display the survey upon Exit intent to those who are leaving from the key pages of your website. You can find this option among the start conditions ( Start displaying widget):

Finally, since you probably don’t want to survey the same person multiple times, scroll down to Stop displaying widget and select forever upon action. This way, you make sure the survey won’t be displayed repeatedly to those who have already submitted their responses.

Receive submission notifications

You can opt in to receive email notifications when a visitor fills out the survey, and if the form contains an email capture field, you can even add an autoresponder. The latter is handy if you want to send a submission confirmation email to the respondents without using a 3^rd-party email marketing tool.

Integrate the survey with your EMS

If you already use an email marketing software, you can easily integrate it with your survey. This means you can automate the follow-up with your customers based on the answer they gave you, and add tags to properly segment them in the future.

All of this will take you less than 5 minutes. And once ready, just save the widget and activate it in the dashboard – the NPS survey will go live instantly.

How to email your NPS survey to customers

If you want to invite all customers to participate, you can email them a direct link to your NPS form. Use Getform, a free and intuitive online form builder, to create a fullscreen Net Promoter Score survey and paste its link to an email newsletter. You can also share it directly via social media or messengers.

Once your customers click the link, the form will open in a new window, where they will be able to fill it out in a distraction-free environment.

And just like that, you can collect valuable data from website visitors and the customers you reach directly using your marketing channels.

Track survey responses

When your survey has been running for a while, it’s time to check how it’s going. To view the responses to your survey, click on the Statistics button below it in the dashboard. In the Statistics tab, switch to Responses, and there you have it!

Step 2 — categorize your customer responses

Based on the responses you get from your customers, you will segment them into 3 separate groups:

• Promoters: 9-10

• Passives: 7-8

• Detractors: 0-6

Promoters are your most loyal customers. They’re the ones who tell their friends and entire entourage about your site, and they are by far your most valuable crowd.

Passive customers can easily be swayed to switch over to a competitor if given a good enough reason to, but can also be turned into promoters if nurtured in the right way.

Detractors are a risky crowd. They have had a negative experience with your brand and are unhappy in some way. Detractors tend to speak out in negative terms about your brand, thus harming your reputation. Furthermore, they also increase customer churn — the percentage of people who stop doing business with your company within a given period.

Later in the article, we’ll talk about ways to fix relations with detractors and possibly even turn them into passives.

Step 3 — calculate your Net Promoter Score

Take the number of customers from each group and find out what percentage they represent.

With these numbers, do the following:

1. Subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters

2. Don’t count the passive customers in the equation

For example, let’s say you surveyed a total of 50 customers. If 15 of these customers are detractors and 23 are promoters, this means you have a 30% detractor and 46% promoter rate, respectively.

To calculate your NPS, you would subtract 30 from 46.

46 — 30 = 16.

In this case, the NPS is 16.

What is considered a good NPS score?

The quality of your Net Promoter Score depends on your industry.

For example, these are the averages for the following industries:

• Online shopping: 39

• Software and Apps: 28

• Department and specialty stores: 58

• Travel Website: 16

See how the average varies drastically?

Your Net Promoter Score should be at least in the average of your industry or higher. Naturally, some industries have customers that are very difficult to please. The lowest NPS average is 2 for Internet service providers. Think back on how often people say positive things about their Internet service providers, and you’ll see why.

On the other hand, online shopping has an average of 39, because people typically love receiving new things. So, if you own an ecommerce store, your customers should enjoy making purchases, and if they don’t, you’ll sink below the average and lose out to your competitors. Ouch!

For department and specialty stores, people are generally quite happy, since these types of stores are very niched down and provide exactly what people are looking for. They have the highest NPS average. If you’re in that industry, your bar is high.

Why is NPS important?

Your Net Promoter Score helps you quantify the loyalty among your shoppers instead of just guessing. And when you know exactly where you stand, you can take proactive action instead of passively waiting for customer churn to increase.

NPS allows you to identify the current trend in your customer satisfaction: is it currently positive or negative?

Are detractors increasing and promoters decreasing? If this is the case, something is definitely wrong, whether there is a problem with the quality of your products or services, or a lack of customer care. Whatever it may be, you have an urgent problem that you need to solve.

On the other hand, if your promoters are decreasing while your passive customers are increasing, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you are making buyers unhappy. However, you are at risk of customer churn. You need to do something to make these passive buyers adopt a more positive view of your business and choose you over your competitors every time.

Actions to take once you know your Net Promoter Score

To keep improving your NPS, especially if it is lower than it should be, you’ll need to start taking actions. But what can you do, exactly?

Here is one example. If you make one tiny addition to the survey – an email capture field – you’ll be able to reach out to all 3 groups and nurture them in a way that improves their loyalty, ultimately raising your NPS.

And every time your score goes up, this means you have more chances of getting referrals from happy customers!

More referrals = fewer resources spent on acquiring new customers.

How to fix your relationship with detractors

Detractors are not happy. But that doesn’t mean they will remain unhappy and keep spreading negative words about your business if you make an effort to change that.

All detractors want is to feel valued and have positive experiences when they decide to spend their money somewhere.

One way to handle it is to reach out to all detractors via email and ask them for more details about their experience. Make them feel heard and valued. For instance, if they received a broken item, offer to reship them another one for free. If they had a negative experience with a customer service rep, let them know you will work at improving this and offer them something in exchange (a coupon, for example).

Ask them what they would like to see from you specifically in the future.

If you think about it, having detractors is not always a bad thing — it’s an opportunity to learn how you can improve your business so that future customers get the best products and services possible.

How to nurture passives into loyal buyers

You already know that passive customers can easily be swayed one way or another. This means they are ripe for the picking – but don’t let your competitors harvest them before you can!

Nurture passive customers by giving them incentives, so that they will be willing to stay with your brand and eventually become promoters.

For example:

• Extend their free trial to give them another chance at experiencing your product

• Offer them an option for free shipping after they purchased once from you

• Send them coupons via email to thank them for their purchase

There are unlimited possibilities for helping passive buyers fall in love with your brand, but the key, just like with detractors, is to make them feel valued in a way that they cannot feel with other brands.

How to gain more value from promoters

When properly guided, promoters can generate a constant flow of new customers for you. In turn, these customers can become promoters themselves if you continue to nurture them.

For instance, you can implement a referral program only available to buyers after a certain number of purchases.

There are so many ways you can compensate your promoters for sending more business your way:

• Let them accumulate a certain number of points that can be redeemed for free products or a service

• Build a tier system that gives certain promoters permanent perks, like 10% off everything at all times or free shipping on all purchases

• Send them actual payouts so that they can make a living from promoting you and other brands

• Give them exclusive deals

• Give them early access to new products before everyone else

• Allow them to test new products and provide their feedback (this is helpful for you, too)

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

You don’t just want your promoters to feel valued — you want them to feel special, as if you couldn’t succeed without them.

People like being useful and building genuine connections with others, and you have the opportunity to do just that with those promoters. With a referral network, every promoter can generate more promoters, who then attract even more promoters — the possibilities are limitless.

However, you need to put in the effort to make these people loyal to you. Promoters are not made by magic.

Build a loyal tribe of buyers with your Net Promoter Score

Calculating and acting on your NPS helps you patch the holes in your customer experience. This will, in turn, help you maximize the value of each buyer and ensure you minimize customer churn.

Remember, you should be calculating the Net Promoter Score more than just once. Check in regularly with your customers to see the changing trends. This is how you will know whether your improvements are working.

Maintaining high NPS will require a consistent effort from you, but measuring it doesn’t need to be difficult. Now, go ahead and create an NPS survey to make the first step toward improving your customer relations.