10 Ways to Collect Customer Feedback for Your Website
7 minutes reading
“This product has completely transformed my daily routine! I’ve tried countless alternatives, but the quality and effectiveness of this one is fantastic. From the moment I started using it, I noticed an immediate improvement. The sleek design and intuitive features make it a joy to use, and the customer support is outstanding. I can’t imagine my life without it now!”
“I had high hopes for this product, but it was a complete disappointment. It didn’t work as promised, and the quality was far below what I expected. The instructions were confusing, and customer service was unhelpful when I reached out for assistance. I regret my purchase and wouldn’t recommend this product to anyone.”
How will you interpret the above two customer feedbacks? Or is it necessary to go deep into each feedback to find the strengths and weaknesses of your product or service? The answer is yes.
Here the first customer had a positive experience using the product. The bolded words in the feedback provide you with customer sentiments. Check out the words like transformed, fantastic, immediate improvement, and outstanding customer support. These words indicate that the customer is content using this particular product.
But when you come to second feedback, words like disappointment, confusing, unhelpful, and regret indicate that the customer is not at all satisfied or happy. You can identify the areas in which immediate improvement is needed and act upon it instantly.
Collecting customer feedback is very important for your business success. Here we provide some of the best ways to collect and manage customer feedback for your website. Keep reading for more insights and use these strategies to enhance user experience, and improve your site’s performance and customer satisfaction.
What is the importance of collecting customer feedback?
No matter whether a product or service undergoes a million tests before its launch, once it reaches the customers new problems or issues can arise. Your customers are a vast group of audience from different backgrounds and places. Hence the type of issues they face also differs. The only way to narrow down your customer concerns is to collect timely feedback and analyze them with utmost care.
Suppose a company launches a smartphone with all the new features and releases it after fair testing. When the users start using it, they face operating system crashes and constant battery draining. While the smartphone was tested no such problems were detected.
Now, the company has no proper feedback system in place. So the customers are posting bad reviews and negative comments on other platforms. As a result, the brand’s reputation becomes tarnished and they start losing customers.
Would the scenario be the same if the company implemented a proper feedback system in the first place? No, right? After the purchase, if customers could provide direct feedback to the company and is addressed right away, customers would have developed trust and they themselves would have recommended the smartphone to others.
How can customer feedback help in customer acquisition?
The first thing any customer would look at before purchasing is product reviews. They will be going through all the positive and negative reviews to decide whether to buy the product or not.
According to a study by Invesp, 90% of consumers read online reviews before purchasing a product. And 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. They will also check whether the brand is responding to or resolving customer feedback. If the customer concerns are timely addresses, the new customers are likely to gain trust in the product or service and tend to take action.
Customer feedback can thus acquire more customers and better sales. Your customers will become your marketers. The better the customer feedback, the better the reputation of the brand.
10 Ways to collect customer feedback for your website
Surveys and Questionnaires
Surveys and questionnaires help gather qualitative and quantitative data. It can offer insights into customer experiences, preferences, and areas of improvement. You will be able to understand your customer’s opinion on usability and design to content and functionality with these tools.
The best way to leverage surveys is to directly embedding on your website or sending them via email immediately after a customer interaction or purchase. This can increase the response rate as well as the completion rate. Timing is important, ask users for feedback when their experience is fresh in their minds.
You can use pre-built templates from SurveySparrow or Google Forms to easily design, distribute, and analyze surveys.
Feedback Forms
To collect customer input directly from your website, consider using feedback forms. It helps to gather the thoughts, opinions, and concerns of your customers easily.
Wondering where exactly to share feedback forms? Consider placing them in promising locations, such as the footer, contact page, or after user interactions, like completing a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. This increases the accessibility of the forms and the users can easily provide feedback at any point of interaction with the brand.
Create feedback forms that are user-friendly and straightforward. Use different types of question forms such as rating scales, multiple choice, and open text fields to ask only relevant questions.
Live Chat
Customers usually prefer immediate assistance and support for their queries. Live chat is a powerful tool that can collect live feedback from your customers and provide timely resolutions. It helps visitors to interact with customer support and also share their experiences.
Train your team in customer service and ensure that they are well knowledgeable about your products and services. You can analyze new trends and identify common issues when your customers ask the same questions frequently.
Email Feedback
Gather valuable suggestions on user experience via email feedback. You can reach out to your customers via email after a product purchase or a recent customer support interaction. This will help you to know customer satisfaction level and further scope for improvements. This way the company can build strong relationships with the audience and earn more loyal customers.
Craft personalized emails that directly address the recipient and acknowledge all their interaction with the brand. Send follow-up emails soon after registering or signing up to your website. Make your customers valued and your business can soar to heights.
Social Media Monitoring
Social media is the best way to gauge customer feedback. Most of your customers would be engaged in different social media platforms. Source out the platforms in which they are highly engaged and monitor their interactions. Social media monitoring involves tracking and analyzing conversations about your brand.
Use tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, or Brandwatch to monitor social media effectively. These platforms allow you to track mentions, hashtags, and keywords related to your brand, products, or industry. You can also create social media questionnaires using quiz makers to learn more about ongoing trends.
Usability Testing
Observing how users interact with your website is an important method for gathering customer feedback. You will be able to understand where your users are experiencing difficulty while ordering a product or interacting with your website. This will help you to identify potential issues that restrict user satisfaction and website performance.
Recruit a diverse group of users who align with the characteristics of your target audience. Ask these participants to complete different tasks on your website. Observe their behavior, and interactions during the testing sessions.
Once the testing is over, collect their feedback immediately. Encourage users to report even the slightest issues they are facing so that they will miss out on nothing. Usability testing can thus help you to resolve issues before going live.
Customer Interviews
Customer interviews are a qualitative method for gathering in-depth feedback directly from your users. This approach allows you to gain detailed insights into customers’ experiences, preferences, and pain points regarding your website or services. By engaging in one-on-one conversations, you can explore specific topics in more depth and obtain nuanced perspectives that other feedback methods might miss.
When conducting customer interviews, start by selecting a diverse group of participants who represent different segments of your audience. This diversity ensures you receive a broad range of feedback that accurately reflects the views of your customer base.
On-Site Polls
On-site polls provide a convenient method for users to share their opinions and preferences, allowing you to gather immediate insights into specific aspects of the user experience. By embedding polls on your site, you can capture real-time feedback from a broad audience, making it easier to identify trends and areas for improvement.
To maximize the effectiveness of on-site polls, keep them short and focused. Ask targeted questions that address specific elements of your website, such as design, usability, content, or customer service. Use a mix of question types, such as multiple-choice, rating scales, and yes/no questions, to encourage quick responses and higher participation rates.
Review Platforms
Review platforms are valuable tools for collecting customer feedback and gauging public perception of your website or products. By encouraging users to leave reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, or industry-specific sites, you can gather honest and actionable insights from real customers. These reviews can provide a wealth of information on user satisfaction, product performance, and areas needing improvement.
To leverage review platforms effectively, encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews and address any negative feedback promptly and professionally. Responding to reviews shows that you value customer opinions and are committed to improving your offerings based on their feedback. This engagement can enhance your reputation and foster customer loyalty.
Feedback Widgets
Feedback widgets are interactive tools embedded directly on your website that allow users to provide feedback quickly and easily. These widgets are typically designed to be unobtrusive and accessible, enabling visitors to share their opinions without interrupting their browsing experience.
To implement feedback widgets effectively, place them in visible yet non-intrusive locations, such as the side of a webpage or in a persistent floating button. The widget should offer a simple and straightforward interface for users to submit their feedback, such as a rating system, thumbs up/down, or a brief comment box.
The list still goes on
In addition to the above 10 ways, there are heatmaps, session recordings, NPS surveys, and focus groups to collect feedback.
Heatmaps can visually present where exactly the users click, scroll, or hover over. By analyzing this you will get to know the most engaging element as well as problematic elements of your website.
Session recordings provide you with the replay of individual user sessions that allow you to identify user behaviors.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys ask users how likely they are to your website to their friends and family. You can identify promoters, passives and detractors using NPS surveys.
To gain qualitative insights conduct focus group sessions and gather in-depth feedback. It helps to collect customer preferences, concerns, and expectations in a more interactive way.
Collecting customer feedback enhances user experience and website performance. By using the above feedback collection methods, gain valuable insights and make data-driven decisions. Meet your customer expectations and enhance customer satisfaction.