Understanding your audience’s needs and preferences is a key component of any successful WooCommerce business.
Surveys are perfect tools for this, providing valuable insights that can improve your product, enhance customer service, and ultimately create a more effective eCommerce operation overall.
But what approach should you take to run these surveys?
From traditional methods to modern tactics, there are numerous ways you can reach out to your customers for their opinions, but we’ll be focusing on online forms.
In this guide, we’ll explore these different methods individually to help you choose the best fit for your business needs.
Why Use Surveys to Grow Your Business
You may be wondering why it’s essential to use surveys in your WooCommerce business.
Surveys offer you an incredible opportunity to understand the thoughts, feedback, and suggestions of your customers.
They can highlight what’s working well and illuminate areas that need improvement. You can gather valuable insights straight from your customers’ perspective. It is through these findings that you can adapt and refine your approach for success.
With the right survey choices, your business really has the potential to grow and thrive.
What is the Best Survey Method?
Choosing the best survey method boils down to knowing your audience and understanding your research objective. For instance, if you’re interested in qualitative data from a specific group, structured interviews could work well.
However, if you are looking for broad statistics across different demographics, online surveys might be best and apply more to your internet business.
Looking for a more interactive option?
Think about using tools like a PDF forms creator. This can enhance the user experience while still allowing you to gather valuable insights. Not only that, but you can make your surveys printable, which is valuable if you’re meeting stakeholders.
7 Different Ways to Run a Survey (With Pros and Cons)
This section will guide you through ten survey methods, including their strengths and pitfalls. By the end, you’ll have a clear idea of which approach suits your WooCommerce business best.
1. Brand Awareness Survey
A brand awareness survey allows you to understand how well your business is recognized within its target customer base. You can ask about your logo or other branding pieces.
On the positive side, it helps in assessing the effectiveness of marketing strategies and outreach attempts. The survey results can provide a clear picture of where your brand stands and which demographics are aware of it, aiding in future targeting maneuvers.
But, conducting a brand awareness survey could yield subjective responses from consumers due to disparities in their perception of what constitutes ‘awareness.’ If these surveys aren’t designed correctly, they might fail to capture nuanced aspects of brand recognition.
2. Matrix Question Survey
Matrix question surveys can prove extremely beneficial for your business due to their ability to provide meaningful insight into several different dimensions of a customer’s experience. They allow for detailed responses and critical comparisons without elongating the survey time.
However, there are negatives as well. They might come across as confusing or intimidating to some customers due to their grid-like structure and multiple variables. Additionally, respondents may display a tendency towards neutral answers or repeatedly select the same column (a response bias known as ‘straight-lining’), which could lead to inaccurate results.
3. Poll-Style Survey
Poll-style surveys can offer a quick, easy, and interactive way for your customers to provide feedback. They are simple to implement on numerous platforms like websites, emails, or social media channels. Their main advantage lies in their brevity and ease of participation.
The poll style is best for short surveys with questions that have multiple answers. With that said, these answers should also be short. Don’t write more than one word or simple phrases.
However, they also come with drawbacks. Due to their simplified nature, the obtained data may lack the depth or specificity that more detailed survey methods could yield. Also, the results can be skewed if participants don’t necessarily represent the targeted demographic. Multiple choice options might also lead to oversimplified answers that overlook nuanced perspectives.
4. Questionnaire Survey
A questionnaire survey offers a structured means to gather precise data from your customers.
The strengths of this survey type lie in its ability to extract quantifiable data suitable for statistical analysis. It allows comprehensive coverage of a topic and enables comparison across different groups or time periods. This survey needs to provide clear instructions to be effective.
On the downside, questionnaires can be time-consuming for respondents, especially if they are long and intricate, potentially leading to response fatigue or abandonment. Customer misinterpretation of questions is another potential pitfall if not worded clearly and accurately.
5. Customer Satisfaction Survey
A customer satisfaction survey can be a powerful tool to understand your customers.
These are some of the most popular online surveys you’ll come across, and for good reason. They provide direct insights into what’s working and what isn’t. This model excels in identifying gaps in your service or product quality, serving to enhance overall customer experience.
However, it’s not without its cons. Biased question phrasing can lead to skewed results, while open-ended items may create difficulties during analysis due to non-standardized responses. Also, disgruntled and unhappy customers may use these survey platforms more frequently than satisfied ones, thus featuring potentially skewed views of overall satisfaction rates.
6. Lead Generation Survey
Lead generation surveys strategically help your business gather follow-up sales contacts.
They assist in determining which site visitors or existing customers might be interested in future products or services. Therefore, they serve as an excellent way to convert prospects into customers and monitor market interest over time, helping you drive more sales.
As a drawback, asking overly personal questions or making excessively long surveys could deter respondents from completing them, thereby negatively impacting data quality and lead conversion rates. Also, it’s worth noting that transitioning from survey participation to purchasing is not necessarily guaranteed and requires effective follow-up communication strategies.
7. Net Promoter Score Survey
The net promoter score (NPS) survey is a useful barometer for gauging customer loyalty to your
WooCommerce business. It’s simple, straightforward, and quantifies word-of-mouth reputation through a single question: “Would you recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”
From there, the survey would ask the participant, “What do you like most about us?” It’s a good idea to leave this step optional to avoid fatigue. Finally, ask the participant if they’d be willing to provide a detailed testimonial and have a section where they can leave their email.
However, the oversimplification of NPS surveys is also their main criticism. While it’s easy to measure and track over time, it doesn’t delve deep into operational or individual product feedback. Therefore, this might leave you with an incomplete picture or not provide specific, actionable steps toward improving customer satisfaction, so it isn’t always the best choice.
In Conclusion
Now that you have an understanding of the various ways to run surveys for your WooCommerce business, it’s time to take the next step.
Remember, your customer’s feedback is a gold mine of information that can help drive your business success. Don’t let this opportunity slip away.
Start deploying these survey methods in line with your brand and customers’ preferences. No method is universally perfect, so feel free to experiment and find out what works best for you.
