A wide range of useful resources to help you with both CRO and analytics.
In the first blog of this series, we discussed the five tools and techniques that are essential to starting a successful CRO programme, as detailed in our infographic, The Periodic Table of CRO Success Factors. (For a quick recap, these are: Surveys, Maps, A/B Tests, Heuristics, and Existing Data.) Today, we’ll take a look at the first group – CRO survey tools.
Survey tools are fundamental to a robust CRO process.
The end goal of any CRO programme is to make it as easy as possible (and dare we say, enjoyable) for visitors to become customers. To start your CRO off on the right foot, you need to be aware of the areas that hinder conversion, as well as those that help.
Surveys fall into two major subsets: On-site survey tools and email survey tools.
Both are equally important, and when properly implemented, they furnish you with the data that’ll form the foundation of all subsequent CRO efforts. The bottom line? CRO survey tools are critical as they enable you to establish the areas that require improvement based on feedback from the people that matter the most – your website visitors and customers.
Surveys allow you to collect visitor feedback moments after the fact.
The beauty of employing on-site surveys is that they allow you to easily gather feedback from visitors at any point in their time on your site. This is when their user experience is top of mind, and as a result, their feedback is more likely to be ‘unfiltered’ or marred by outside influence or perceived expectations. Importantly, on-site surveys enable you to gather information about specific pages or elements of your site.
For example, if you’ve added a ‘quick checkout’ option, you can run a survey that specifically enquires about a visitor’s experience using that function. Another benefit of on-site surveys is that they enable you to target certain users based on their online activity, for example, new or returning visitors – furnishing you with further invaluable insight that you can incorporate your optimisation roadmap.
On-site polls are particularly useful when you need to establish or investigate a particular visitor behaviour or conversion pain point.
If a certain product category is converting at below-average rates, for example, you can ask visitors why they aren’t buying the product in question. For example, if you’re an online florist, but your potted Orchids aren’t selling, you could ask visitors:
Similarly, if you’re experiencing a high shopping cart abandonment rate, cut to the chase and ask visitors why they’re leaving. Regardless of the problem or area you want to investigate, hone in on the problem and ask visitors directly about it.
When running on-site surveys, we use Qualaroo, but there are numerous on-site survey tools on the market, including free options like Qeryz and Freesurveycreator, as well as paid tools including:
Email survey tools give you access to a wealth of consumer sentiment, insight and opinion, as well as demographic data.
Whereas on-site survey tools gather data about specific visitor actions or areas of your site, email surveys lend themselves to capturing detailed information from existing customers and potential customers alike.
The efficacy of your email surveys hinges on the questions you ask. If you want to gather attitudinal data, it’s advisable to use open-ended questions as this avoids influencing the respondent’s answer, while closed-ended questions are useful for gathering demographic data.
Examples of open-ended questions:
(Source: E-commerce Website Optimization).
The types of questions you need to ask are situationally dependant: what is it you want to know about your customers and their experience? There are multiple email survey tools that enable you to easily implement this crucial CRO tool, including:
When used in tandem, on-site polls and email survey tools provide you with a solid, data-based foundation for your subsequent CRO efforts.
Ready to see how survey tools could be used in your business? If you’re looking to drive profits and growth or get clarity and insights from your data, start with a free consultation.
FREE EBOOK
Posted in: CRO Tools and Resources
If you’re serious about initiating change within your business, we’d like to offer you a 60-minute Initial Strategic Review.
“We’ll share what we’ve learned from decades of experience working with businesses using optimisation, innovation and experimentation to achieve business goals like yours”
The world’s leading companies are using experimentation to generate better results for the whole business.
Download our latest ebook to discover how businesses have made the shift from CRO to experimentation and how you can too.
