How Ecommerce Surveys Can Help You Grow (+38 Questions to Get You Started)

Let’s dive into how ecommerce surveys work and what questions you can ask your customers.

What is an ecommerce survey?

An ecommerce survey is a set of questions designed for the customers of an ecommerce brand.

Those questions can have several purposes, including:

• Improving the user experience of your website
• Finding new product ideas
• Understanding the desires and pain points of your customers
• Figuring out how to improve your existing products
• And much more!

Ecommerce surveys don’t only have to be for paying customers, either. You can send surveys to your email subscribers who haven’t purchased any of your products to understand what they’re looking for.

Why should you run a customer survey for your ecommerce store?

There are several reasons why you should consider running an ecommerce survey for your online store.

First off, it’s important to understand your customers’ perspectives on a variety of topics around your brand. For instance, you may like your new website, but perhaps your customers find it clunky and confusing. Or maybe you think your customers want you to launch a new Winter collection, but what they really want is all-year access to their favorite products.

Surveys can also help you collect valuable feedback about your products that you wouldn’t otherwise get. If you need to know specific details about a product, you can be as specific as you want in your questions.

Customer surveys can even help you with your marketing campaign. That’s because you can use them to collect voice-of-customer data and find out exactly what types of conversations are happening in your customers’ heads.

This data can give you a competitive advantage against other brands in your industry.

Plus, the same data can help you identify customer trends so that you can make predictions for future products and sales forecasts.

Finally, surveying your customers can help you retain their loyalty. If there’s something they dislike about their shopping experience with you, surveys will help you address those issues and make sure your customers stay with you in the long term.

4 Ways to run surveys to get a pulse on your customers

So how can you make sure your customers get your survey and answer your questions?

Let’s cover the best four ways you can share your surveys depending on the situation.

1. Website pop-up survey

One of the best ways to run an ecommerce survey is to display a popup on your website.

Knix shows a great example of what a short pop-up survey can look like directly on their website.

Pop-up surveys work especially well if you only have a few questions. Plus, they’re easy to set up with a tool like Getsitecontrol.

For example, if you’d like to place a pop-up survey similar to the one on the Knix website, you can use this template:

One important thing to keep in mind when you create website popups is their mobile-friendliness. Because your customers are doing you a favor when they’re taking your survey, it’s important to make it as easy as possible for them to get it done.

If your survey feels clunky on mobile devices, there’s a good chance people won’t complete it.

2. Email campaign

Let’s say you have a really important survey, and you want to get feedback from people who have already interacted with your business.

Instead of running popups on your website, you can create a standalone survey page and send an invitation to your email subscribers.

Keep in mind that if you’re asking questions about purchasing experiences, you should only send the survey to those who have purchased from you. Make sure you have a segment in your email marketing software to separate buyers from non-buyers.

You could also send a survey to all non-buyers to figure out what’s stopping them from making a purchase. Perhaps you could find out what new products they’d love to see in your store.

3. Post-purchase survey

It’s crucial to keep a pulse on what your customers think about your products. And while it’s important to ask for public reviews, you should also conduct surveys in which your customers can provide feedback that won’t get published anywhere.

You’ll usually get much more honest feedback than you would in a review. Plus, reviews don’t let you ask targeted questions.

There are two ways to conduct a post-purchase survey. First, you can survey customers right after they’ve made the purchase . For instance, you can display a survey popup on the Thank you page or the Order status page.

You can also send a survey to your customers via email soon after they’ve made the purchase. Those types of surveys are usually designed to get information about the purchasing experience, not the products themselves.

At this point, customers usually won’t have received their products yet. So, in this type of post-purchase survey, you can ask questions about the ease of use of your shopping cart, whether the customer was able to find what they were looking for, etc.

The second way to conduct a post-purchase survey in ecommerce is to ask questions some time after the purchase. In this case, the survey can be about the products themselves, not the experience of purchasing them.

In order to get valuable feedback on your products, you should wait an appropriate amount of time after purchase to send this type of survey.

What’s an appropriate amount of time? It depends on several factors, including:

• How long shipping takes
• What type of products you’re selling
• How long it takes for your customers to use the product enough to give valuable feedback on it

For instance, you can expect to ask for feedback soon after your customer receives an article of clothing. But if you’re selling health products, you may have to wait a while for your customers to experience the products’ benefits first.

4. Survey after a customer service interaction

Similar to how you would send a survey after a customer purchases or receives a product, you can survey them after they’ve had an interaction with one of your customer service reps.

You can either send an email with a link to the survey, or you can create a pop-up survey if they’ve been chatting with the agent directly on your website.

38 questions to include in your ecommerce surveys

Now you know how to send ecommerce surveys to your customers in a variety of scenarios. But what types of questions should you be asking them, anyway?

The questions you’ll ask will depend on what your survey is about. Below are six scenarios with a total of 38 questions you can ask your customers.

1. Customer experience survey questions

Customer experience questions should relate to how it feels for your customers to shop on your ecommerce website. You can also ask other questions that pertain to how your customers interact with your business online.

• Did you experience any problems or difficulties while navigating our website?
• Can you describe your first impression of our website?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to shop on our website again?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend us to friends and family?
• Who are you shopping for today?
• Did you find everything you were looking for?
• How satisfied are you with the availability of our products at the moment?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your checkout experience?
• Are you satisfied with the available payment methods offered? If not, please tell us your preferred payment method.
• Is there anything that almost prevented you from completing your purchase today? If so, please let us know what happened.

2. Product quality survey questions

How do your customers feel about your products? How can you improve your products to provide a better experience for your customers? These are general questions you can use to get a sense of how your products are performing.

Keep in mind that you can ask more specific questions about your products, too. Since these are designed to be used by all ecommerce stores, they’re very general questions.

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with the quality of the products you received?
• How would you rate the product you received?
• What do you like the most about the product you received?
• How likely are you to recommend the products you received to a friend or family member?
• What could we improve about the products you received?
• Were there any products you disliked in your order?
• How likely are you to purchase the products you received again?
• Did you feel our product descriptions from our website were an accurate representation of the products you received?
• How would you rate our products compared to our competitors?

3. Customer support survey questions

Customer service is a key part of running an ecommerce business. In fact, 81% of consumers are likely to make another purchase if their customer service experience with a brand is positive, according to Zendesk.

Here are some questions to help you improve your existing customer service experience.

• Was your issue correctly solved by our customer service representative?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your overall experience with our support staff?
• How many sessions did it take to solve your issue?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how was your wait time?
• How helpful was your customer service representative in helping you solve your issue?

4. Product development survey questions

Need to come up with new product ideas? There’s no source of inspiration better than your existing customers. Instead of assuming what they want to buy, just ask them!

• What do you feel is currently missing from our catalog of products?
• What is your favorite product from our store and what do you like the most about it?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to purchase [new product idea]?

5. Brand-related survey questions

These are powerful questions you can use to not only improve your brand, but also to give opportunities for your customers to opt into your email marketing campaigns.

• Would you like to learn more about our loyalty program?
• Are you interested in signing up for our email newsletter to receive exclusive offers and discounts?
• In your latest order, you checked out as a guest. Would you like to create an account to save your information and order history?
• What made you purchase from our brand instead of from a competitor?
• Do you currently follow our brand on social media?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our brand to friends and family?

6. Shipping survey questions

Finally, you should survey your customers about their shipping experience. This can help you figure out whether your current shipping solution is adequate or if you need to find a better solution to get your products in the hand of your customers.

• Were you satisfied with the shipping options provided? If not, please explain how we could improve.
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the packaging in which you received your products?
• How long did it take for you to receive your order?
• Did you receive your product at the correct address?
• Did your product arrive in good condition?

Create compelling ecommerce surveys for your website and email list

Now you have all questions ideas and scenarios you need to create your own ecommerce customer surveys! When you regularly survey your customers and keep tabs on their experience with your brand, you’re able to keep improving your business and sustain long-term growth.

Getsitecontrol can help you create beautiful pop-up surveys without writing a single line of code. Try it out for free to see how easy it can be to launch your first ecommerce survey.