If you run a Shopify store, buyer feedback is the best way to get into the minds of your customers. It reveals how customers feel about your service and what you can do to keep them happy.
By setting up a post-purchase survey for your store, you can collect the priceless info you need to boost customer retention and loyalty.
The result will be more repeat sales and a well-tuned store that rivals your biggest competitors.
In this post, you’ll learn how to create a compelling post-purchase survey for your Shopify store. The best part is that you don’t need to write code or hire developers.
Our method is simple, fast, and super-effective at getting customers to open up. It remains one of the best ways to ensure a successful post-purchase experience.
Before we begin, you should know why every quality Shopify store needs these surveys.
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Why is Post Purchase Survey Important for E-Commerce Business?
Below are five key reasons to gather feedback from closed leads using eCommerce survey questions.
1. Improves Customer Retention
Gathering client feedback is an effective customer retention strategy. Top e-commerce store owners have used it for decades.
Existing customers convert way better than new prospects. In fact, convert at the rate of 60-70% while new ones do so at 5-20%.
The art of successful customer retention is tied to the ability to recognize the needs of the average buyer.
A good example is JBL. Their UX team used a post-purchase survey to get customers to upgrade their warranty.
They also used the same campaign to get them to refer friends.
2. Breeds Customer Loyalty
You’ll be surprised at how many shoppers don’t mind a mild bump in the road so long as you make an effort to satisfy them.
Customer loyalty will likely fall when you stop showing you care.
Imagine this:
You bought a product on Shopify store X. Unfortunately, the delivery took longer than promised.
What’s worse is that you had no idea where your order was while you anxiously awaited its arrival.
Store X sends you a survey asking about your experience. In your response, you mention how unpleasant it was not knowing the status of your delivery.
A week later, you get an email notifying you that store X now allows customers to track their orders immediately after purchase.
No doubt, you’ll feel special knowing the store actually listened to your feedback and acted upon it.
3. Identifies Glitch Areas
Part of what makes successful stores is the ability to improve continually by fixing glitch areas.
You can identify weakness in business through any of the following methods:
- Test users
- Consultants
- Website auditing tools
- Self-audit
All of the methods above consume too much time and money. And there’s no guarantee that the problems you detect are relevant to your target audience.
Thankfully, a survey is a cost-effective and speedy way to identify flaws in your online store and business model.
The Udemy e-learning platform used a simple survey to find out if their auto-captioning system worked.
4. Outclass Your Competitors
Personalization is fast becoming the backbone of e-commerce. When you discover that 80% of shoppers prefer to buy from stores that offer a personalized experience, you can see why the strategy is so vital.
If you tailor each customer’s purchase to their own tastes, you’ll stand out from the competition in business.
YouTube is one of the biggest online media platforms in the world. Why? It leverages personalization through surveys.
Here’s an example of a survey used to improve video recommendations.
5. Boosts ROI Using Marketing Attribution
If you run a small to medium-sized Shopify store, you probably don’t have the budget to pay for high-tech marketing automation tools. The best of these applications can perform marketing attribution.
It allows you to know which methods or channels are more profitable. By reshuffling your resources, you’ll focus more on profitable strategies and boost your Return on Investment.
A post-purchase survey could work just as well as these expensive marketing automation tools.
With a simple question like: “where did you find us,” can be very useful. With it, you can discover which of your channels (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, or email marketing) is bringing in the highest number of hot leads.
Now that you know why you need a post-purchase survey for your Shopify store, let’s get down to creating your first survey using our 3 easy steps below.
Step 1 – Select the Right Time and Place for a Survey
Your timing has to be impeccable if you hope to get the most out of your survey. Where your survey pops up is just as important.
Choosing the Right Time
The term “post-purchase” already makes it clear that the survey has to come after the customer buys a product. It’s left to you to decide how long to wait before requesting they take the survey.
However, there are a few reasonable options you may want to consider:
- Immediately After Checkout: You can ask for feedback by using a typical eCommerce “Thank You” page survey. It offers almost zero wait time between checkout and the review request.
- Soon After Purchase: You can send automatic emails to notify customers that their order is on the way and ask them to fill out a survey.
- Right After Package Delivery: You may offer the customer a survey after the product has been delivered to their shipping address.
Of the above options, showing the survey after delivery is the most effective. It allows you to get feedback on the entire post-purchase experience (checkout to shipping to delivery).
Choosing the Right Place
You may place it either as a survey pop-up on the website or as a link in an email. It’s harder to get people to click an external link in their email without an incentive.
Hence, having the survey on your website or tracking page is more likely to get you a response.
When customers come to check the final status of their order, they’ll find your survey request and respond appropriately.
No-code applications like Trackmage are super-effective here. They allow you to execute the tracking page + feedback collection strategy easily.
Step 2 – Install a Post-Purchase Review Application like Trackmage
Now, you know the best time to send a survey and get the complete info you need. It’s time to get a tool to make it all possible.
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Tool to Collect Customer Reviews
When it comes to picking an app to build a post-purchase survey for a Shopify store, you need to consider the following factors.
- Versatility:
You don’t want to have to install different software for order tracking, email notifications, and review collection. It’s best to get a tool that’s a one-stop shop for all of that. Installing too many Shopify plug-ins could cause technical problems for your store.
- Real-Time Data:
You also don’t want to show surveys to customers days after delivery. Chances are, they’ll be less interested in leaving feedback by then. Pick an app that works with real-time data and updates delivery status regularly.
- Reliable Database:
The surveys are worthless if you lose their data soon after collecting them. Get software that allows you to store and sort data safely.
Trackmage is the only software that checks all three boxes for Shopify and WooCommerce stores. It also comes with several other perks:
- Allows you to export positive reviews straight to your Shopify product page
- Allows customers to post positive reviews on social media
- Allows for custom email notifications
- Instant installation on Shopify and WooCommerce
Trackmage has everything you need to leverage post-purchase surveys for Shopify and WooCommerce.
How to Install and Use Trackmage
Follow the steps below to set up Trackmage on your Shopify store and start collecting surveys or reviews.
– Setting Up Your Account (Skip if you already have one)
- Sign up for Trackmage using your Google email, Shopify account, or other email
- Provide your names and password
- Provide a subdomain for your first order tracking page
- Check your inbox for email verification (Your account is live!)
– Building Your Tracking Page
- Log in to your Trackmage account
- On your dashboard, click “Tracking pages”
- Review the pre-built default tracking page design
- Customize the page to your taste using the Visual Builder
- Go back to the dashboard and click “Automation”
- Go to “Email”
- Enable customer shipment status notifications via the settings
– Integrating Trackmage with Shopify
- On your dashboard, find and click “Connect Your Store or a Funnel”
- Select Shopify from the several integration options that come up
- Click “Install” on the integration creation page
- Log in to your Shopify account if needed
– Importing Shipment Data into Trackmage
- Back in your Trackmage dashboard quick start menu, click “Configure your Orders and Shipment Import”
- A pop-up will appear, so choose between New Parcel (manual) or File Upload (automatic) form of shipment imports
- Upload your shipment CSV file from Shopify into the box on the pop-up
Activating and Using the Review Option
- Go to your tracking page from the dashboard
- Click on the edit icon
- Toggle the button marked “Reviews” (it should show the green color)
- Hit Save (You’re all set up!)
Step 3 – Ask the Right Questions
What questions should an eCommerce site ask in a survey to get valuable insights from its customers? We’ve provided some tips below:
Make Them Quick and Easy to Complete
Only ask one thing at a time. A question should never require the user to provide multiple answers. The more concise your question, the easier it will be for the customer to understand it.
That way, they can provide an accurate answer. Try to include some questions that require simple yes or no answers.
Some great post-purchase survey questions to ask are:
- How was your purchase experience?
- Were you satisfied with the overall shopping experience?
- How can we improve?
- How did you find us?
- Did the product meet your needs?
Ask Targeted Questions
You shouldn’t ask more than two questions that require free-text answers. These are called open-ended questions and should be used in moderation when it comes to post-purchase surveys.
You can grasp the differences between open-ended and closed-ended questions with this text from St. Olaf College.
Time Survey Questions Properly
Plant the survey where it’s most useful for you. We recommend that you do this at the end of the cycle, which is immediately after delivery.
Final Thoughts
Simply follow our step-by-step eCommerce survey guide above to create an effective customer survey for your store. In summary, you’ll need to:
- choose the best time and place to show your survey
- install and integrate a feedback or review application
- create a list of questions to ask.
Some post-purchase survey best practices include the following:
- Ask concise and targeted questions
- Don’t include more than two open-ended questions
- Combine email notification, order tracking, and review collection with an application like Trackmage
You may use the info you find from the customer survey to fix faults, discover profitable channels, and build customer retention.
