18 Website Survey Questions Examples, Plus How to Start Asking Them

It's a tough thing — you know that “asking” is important because it gives you valuable information about how people experience your website. But at the same time, it can be hard to know which questions will get you answers that are actually meaningful.

That pain point is why we decided to create this guide with 18+ website survey questions examples that you can use to start generating meaningful insights from your visitors.

Beyond that, we'll also share some tips for where and when to display your website feedback survey, as well as some tools that you can use to start putting these survey question ideas into action.

Let's dig in…

16 general website survey questions to start asking your visitors

These website survey questions can provide valuable information no matter what your website is about.

1. How did you hear about us?

Analytics tools can give you a lot of quantitative information about where your website's visitors come from, but they'll never be able to give you the qualitative data that asking this question provides.

Figuring out how visitors discovered your website/business lets you double-down on the marketing strategies with the best ROI, which helps your website grow.

2. How likely are you to recommend our website to a friend?

You've probably seen this before — it's a very popular survey question called Net Promoter Score (NPS). Because it's so popular, we'll spend a little more time on this question.

The Net Promoter Score question is designed to be a single customer satisfaction benchmark. Ideally, you measure it over time so that you can see how your efforts affect customer satisfaction.

If your Net Promoter Score goes up, your customers are happier. If it goes down…well, that's not good.

Net Promoter Score works by giving visitors a scale from 0-10 and asking them something like “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend X to a friend?”. If someone answers between 0-6, they're a detractor. Scores of 7-8 are passive, and scores of 9-10 are promoters.

To calculate your Net Promoter Score, you simply subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. As a result, your score can range all the way from -100 up to 100.

If you only plan to ask one question, this is one of the best general user experience survey questions to ask.

Ideally, you want to display the NPS survey soon after a customer interacts with your business.

Using an app like Getsitecontrol, you can display it right on a website (on a Thank You page, for instance). Alternatively, you can link to an NPS survey in one of your follow-up emails using a tool called Getform.

When a customer uses that link, the survey form will conveniently open in a new window, and they’ll be able to fill it out without having to take any extra steps.

3. What are you hoping to accomplish by visiting our website?

In order to improve your website's usability, you need to know exactly what it is that your visitors are hoping to accomplish.

Now, as the website's creator, you probably already have a pretty good idea. But asking visitors this question directly can help you flesh out your understanding with real customer data, which might give you some helpful insights into how you can refine your website's design and messaging.

4. Why are you leaving?

Obviously, this question requires that you use a tool that lets you trigger survey questions by exit intent (we'll explain how to do this at the end of the post). If you do have such a tool, this is a great way to figure out what's causing your website's visitors to leave.

Then, if possible, you can fix those leaks and boost your visitor engagement.

5. Are you having trouble finding anything?

This is one of the best website survey questions about usability to help you figure out how easily your visitors are able to locate information and perform important actions.

If you find that visitors consistently struggle to find certain information, you might want to rethink how you structure your website.

For best results, you should wait to trigger this question until you see that a visitor has spent a non-trivial amount of time on your site.

6. Is there anything missing on this page?

This question ties with the question above, but gets a little more specific by focusing on a single page.

The goal with this question is to find any mismatches between a visitor's expectations and what's actually on your page.

For example, maybe the way that you organized your content is logical to you, but if you find that many of your visitors think it's more logical to organize your content in a different way, that would be a good indicator that you need to rethink your content hierarchy.

7. How did your experience compare to your expectations?

This is another useful question for ferreting out any weak points in your website. You can actually gain two insights.

First, you get to understand more about the goals and expectations that visitors have for your site in the first place. This helps you figure out what you should be optimizing for.

Second, it lets you figure out some of the weak spots that need to be corrected in order for your website to better meet visitors' expectations.

8. Is our pricing clear?

If you have a pricing page, this is a great question to trigger when a visitor is browsing it. Beyond acting as a good website survey question about usability, this question also provides valuable information to your sales team and contributes to the feedback on your pricing strategy.

9. What should we write about next?

If you have an active blog, this is a great question to help you shape your content strategy. It lets you know which topics visitors would like to see more of, and that helps you create content to resonate with your visitors' needs.

10. Which of our competitors did you consider before choosing us?

This one is a useful competitor research question to help you figure who you're actually competing against.

Sure, you've probably done your own competitor research. But who you think you're competing against might not always match up with who your visitors think you're competing against.

Asking this question helps you find those mismatches and tailor your messaging to beat out your real competitors.

11. Compared to our competitors, is our product quality better, worse, or about the same?

This question provides another chance to get insight into your competitors. Only this time, it's a little bit more aggressive by asking your visitors to actually compare how you're doing against your competitors.

As with the other question, you can use these responses to figure out what you're doing well, and which weaknesses might cause people to go to your competitor(s) instead.

12. How easy was it to use our website? Did you have any problems?

This one is one of the best usability survey questions to figure out how easily your website's visitors can accomplish their goals. It can help let you know what you're doing well…or what you need to do better to improve your website's usability.

13. What is a feature you wish our website had?

You have to be careful with this question because sometimes visitors will suggest that you add everything and the kitchen sink to your website.

But as long as you keep a discerning eye and avoid scope bloat, listening to feature requests is a great way to figure out ways to improve your website or service.

14. If you could change one thing about our website, what would it be?

This question dovetails with the previous question, but it's a little more pointed. First, you're no longer asking for a “new” feature. Instead, you're asking visitors how to improve something that you already have.

Second, you're forcing people to narrow things down by only asking for one thing. If you notice a pattern in users' responses, you might want to consider making the change.

15. Are there any features that you don't find helpful?

This is similar to the previous question, but a little more general by asking about multiple features.

16. What is the most useful feature of our website?

The previous two questions help you find what you're doing wrong — this one does the opposite, helping you discover what visitors love about your website.

If you notice a pattern here, you can consider adding that feature more prominently in your site's copywriting and messaging. After all, if a lot of visitors love one specific feature, that feature is probably a good incentive to dangle for prospective visitors/customers.

Two eCommerce survey questions to help improve your store

These last two questions are more focused on getting valuable insights to improve your eCommerce store sales. They still might provide value for other types of websites, but eCommerce is the main focus.

17. What was the one thing that almost stopped you from buying today?

If you run an eCommerce store, this is a great question to ask a shopper immediately after they've finished their purchase.

It lets you know about any weak points in your sales funnel that might stop you from getting the sale.

18. How can we help you complete your purchase?

Tied with the question above, this is another great one to ask. You can use exit-intent trigger to display it. This way, if a user seems like they're going to leave the checkout process or close out their cart, the question will pop up.

This exit-intent survey will help you find leaks in your checkout process that are negatively affecting your conversion rate.

How to Make Sure You Display Your Website Survey Questions at The Right Time and Place

Up until now, we've shared a lot of suggestions for website feedback survey questions, as well as some tips on when to trigger certain questions.

However, what we have not covered is how you can actually do that. For example, how do you trigger a survey right as a visitor is about to leave (exit intent), or how do you only display a website feedback survey after a visitor makes a purchase?

To help you create targeted website surveys, you can use website survey forms by Getsitecontrol. The tool lets you display targeted survey questions anywhere on your site.

You can create simple multiple-choice questions:

Or, you can create open response text boxes or rating options:

More importantly, you can control exactly where and when your survey questions appear.

For example, if you wanted to ask the “Is our pricing clear?” question from above, you could use Getsitecontrol's Targeting rules to only display your question on your pricing page.

Or, if you wanted to ask the “Why are you leaving?” question to visitors who are about to leave your site, you could select the following condition: Start to display the widget when the user is leaving the website.

Invite your customers to take a survey via email or social media

We’ve talked a lot about surveying people while they are on the website. But you may also want to survey those who have made a purchase or joined your email list and social media.

This is when Getform comes in really handy. It allows you to share a form via a direct link, so that you can paste it to your Instagram bio or send it to your email subscribers.

Once the recipient clicks the link, a fullscreen survey form pops up as a new window, and they will be able to fill it out right there.

With Getform, you’ll be able to fully customize the form, add any field types, place your logo and even adjust the style of the text to match it with your branding.

A direct link to a survey form allows for sharing it with a wider audience, meaning you’ll get more insight for your research.

And that’s about it. By combining these rules, you can make sure that you only display your questions to visitors who will provide meaningful insights.