The data you have in your hands about your business is a huge treasure.
To succeed, you need to make decisions based on good information, not just what you feel. As you run your business, you’ll get a lot of facts, so you need to know what’s truly important.
Sales, ad impressions, and all that are quite useful. However, let’s take a look at another type of data that ecommerce entrepreneurs often overlook.
One of the key pieces of information is the customer feedback from the shoppers you’re getting.
Customer feedback is great for boosting ecommerce sales and customer satisfaction. But remember, you need a high-converting store to make the most of it.
Importance of user feedback
User feedback is crucial to creating a product or service that people love.
You want to make sure that you're meeting the needs and expectations of your users. That's where user feedback comes in!
When gathering user feedback, you're showing them that you care about their opinions. And make sure they're happy with what you're offering.
By listening to your users through this feedback process, you can identify areas for improvement and make changes to your product or service. And ultimately provide a better experience for your users.
Not only does user feedback help you improve your product or service, but it also helps you build stronger relationships with your users.
Take the time to listen to their feedback, identify their pain points, and respond to their needs. By doing this, you're demonstrating that you value their input. It also shows that you're committed to providing them with the best possible user experience.
So, don't be afraid to collect user feedback!
Whether it's through a customer satisfaction survey, in-person interviews, or social media, every piece of user feedback can help you create a better product or service. Eventually, building stronger relationships with your users.
Qualitative feedback vs. quantitative Feedback
Learn to determine which information tells you what you are trying to know about your customer's experience - qualitative or quantitative feedback.
If you use analytics tools to find out how many good reviews the app experience is getting, you may only get half the story.
You may see a few people rating the service or giving a review and conclude that you’re failing.
Try using a method of collecting feedback that goes beyond the numbers and gives you more context. If you conduct a user test, you may realize that it came down to how your prompts are placed.
While shopping, a customer may get a request to rate their experience and ignore it because they haven’t completed the process yet. Place your question right after an experienced stage, like the checkout.
This direct feedback can help you find out whether a customer was satisfied. “Did you find what you were looking for?” “How was the checkout?” These are properly targeted and will tell you more than what a couple of 3-star ratings would.
Things you should remember while choosing how to get customer feedback:
Here are some things you should remember while choosing how to get customer feedback:
- How smooth or disruptive is the process?
- How long does it take?
- How much does it cost?
- Will the process tell you something you can act on?
- Is there something in it for the manager?
- Is it active or passive?
- Is it in line with your goals?
- Which method for what result?
Assess User Experience Feedback Passively
This involves things like setting session replays.
What it does is playback the user journey around your site. It tells you a bit about what gets the customer's attention, which sends them away.
Your users can also find out how smooth the shopping process is.
Try using user feedback tools if you want to find out simple answers like how attractive your pages are. You may also find out how long a customer can complete their mission.
Passive methods also help you avoid venting that is passed off as customer input.
Assess User Feedback Actively
Start a process that involves some sort of interaction. It can be through user feedback forms, surveys, interviews, or focus groups.
Feedback forms are useful user feedback tools that you can utilize when you want to know exactly what the customer has to say about your service.
You can also benefit from them by inserting questions about things you want to find out.
Post an objective-type question like “How can we make checking out better?”. Provide answer options that include things you may be thinking of introducing.
A customer can then check a box:
“Offer more payment options”
“Display receipt preview”
Having an excellent Shopify theme is the first step to delivering a great user experience on your Shopify store. Click here to get Debutify, the highest-converting free Shopify theme.
Collect User Experience Feedback Through Existing Channels
Your business may already have other ways through which information from customers is received.
Browse through the responses on your social media posts. Take note of the person who asked for another size or color and the one who said your app is slow.
Comb through the email threads with customer support where shoppers are asking about their orders. Talk to the support teams handling your calls and find out what customers keep asking them.
Now you know how to collect feedback and make a good user experience out of it. You can also participate in live chats if you already have such an option in place.
Remember Your Goals
Are you trying to get a 5-star rating? Want to reduce complaints?
Shorten the time it takes for a customer to make a purchase.
Once you know what exactly you are trying to change, you can proceed to the data.
Group Your Data
Identify which information is more of the numbers stuff and put it on one side.
Pick the information that is more of advice, suggestions, or requests and give it its own place.
The data can be placed into more particular categories like the product, customer service, marketing, and sales.
This is in the case where you have asked questions about several different parts of the business.
Start To Act
Are customers saying it’s hard to find what they are looking for?
Try looking up products and introduce helpers like search filters, tags, and categories. Customers can find footwear.
But can they easily pick out newly-released models from the old ones? Can they pick from particular locations? How about placing date and source options? Your customers are asking for a certain payment option. Work on making it available so you can make your customers happy.
Place notices nearby about how they can now pay with a particular account. Remember, customer satisfaction is key.
Return To Follow Up
So you’ve introduced that new feature that shoppers were making noise about.
The product that was unavailable is now fully stocked. Pick out those who made requests and reach out to them.
Study the behavior after putting in place solutions.
Are the session replays smoother? Do customers have more thanks for giving? Getting better ratings?
This is the crucial part. It's when you find out whether your solutions, especially those you came up with, are working. One important area you can’t afford to skip is how to carry out good user feedback collection.
Keep Questions Brief And Clear
This is extremely important for things like forms and pop-ups that appear in the process of shopping. Use questions that can easily be answered with a yes or no. “Want to see more phones?” “Check another section?”. These kinds of questions tell you how a customer behaves while also trying to make things easier for them.
Here’s a great focus group manual on Shopify to help validate your business.
Minimize The Number Of Steps
If you have a second question to ask when someone chooses no, you don’t have to make a second step. Place its answer options on the first page. “No, show me other models” is better than “No” and then another page with a new option. You don’t want a customer saying, “Not another question!”
Pay Attention To Positioning
Do you want to be asking someone to take a survey right when they are about to pay?
Or would you rather ask them whether they want to add anything else?
Will a poll get more participants on your site or on your social media pages?
Pick the right place and time to collect user feedback and ask your questions. A detailed customer survey is better off sent via email with a link to participate.
Make Solutions Easy To Find
You don’t want customers to feel like all you do is ask questions and never solve anything.
Find out which parts of the user journey can be improved in a matter of minutes and have solutions ready.
Pick those customer queries that are common but also simple in nature. Assign them to live chat-bots so that customers have a quick response.
In conclusion, growth and customer retention through improved ecommerce customer experience are more than just listening. You must create room for your voice through the goals you set and the experiments you run. You also have to give room to the voice of the customers, and not just the voice you like.
Be willing to listen to different groups. The occasional customers, the loyal and frequent ones, the happy ones, and the disappointed ones.
Improving the customer experience also won’t be a one-time thing. It is a continuous process. Do not relax simply because a customer is praising you.
Gain a good command over the tools and methods. Humans have a lot to offer, but so does technology. Find a way to make both work for you and support each other.
Lastly, remember that the user experience doesn’t begin when a shopper attempts to buy.
It goes all the way back to the first contact with your brand. Keep an eye on things like how many ads and messages you throw at your customers.
Check out this piece for some pointers on how advertising affects the user experience for your store. The overall cycle for improving your user experience looks a bit like this:
- Pick an area and set a goal
- Study the process
- Create and run a test
- Measure the results
- Refine the solution
- Repeat as you build the plan
User feedback and user experience are key to ecommerce success, and a great theme is key to delivering a great user experience.
5 Ways to collect user feedback
- Online surveys: You can create a survey using a tool like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey and send it to your customers via email or social media.
- In-person interviews or focus groups: You can gather a small group of customers together in person and ask them questions about your product or service.
- Telephone interviews: You can conduct interviews over the phone to collect feedback from customers who may not be able to meet with you in person.
- Social media: You can ask for user feedback on your social media accounts or use social media monitoring tools to track what customers are saying about your brand online.
- Customer service interactions: You can gather user feedback from customers during customer service interactions, whether they take place over the phone, via email, or in person.
It's important to choose the method that works best for your business and target audience.
You may want to use a combination of these methods to get a well-rounded view of how customers feel about your company.
Different user feedback tools you can use
Getting feedback from your users is essential to understanding their needs and improving your product or service.
Luckily, plenty of user feedback tools are out there to help you collect and analyze feedback from your users.
SurveyMonkey
One popular tool for gathering feedback is SurveyMonkey.
With SurveyMonkey, you can create custom surveys and questionnaires to get feedback on everything from product features to customer support. You can also track response rates and analyze results in real time.
Hotjar
Another great tool is Hotjar, which provides a range of features to help you understand user behavior on your website.
With Hotjar, you can see how users are interacting with your site, including which pages they visit, where they click, and where they drop off. You can also create feedback polls and surveys to gather feedback directly from your users.
UserTesting
If you're looking for a tool that provides more comprehensive user feedback, consider UserTesting.
With UserTesting, you can conduct remote user testing to see how users interact with your product or service in real time. You can also get feedback from a panel of expert testers to help you identify areas for improvement.
Zendesk
Finally, there's Zendesk, a customer support platform that lets you manage customer interactions across multiple channels, including email, chat, and social media.
With Zendesk, you can track customer inquiries, respond to feedback, and analyze customer sentiment to identify areas for improvement.
Unleash The Power of Customer Feedback!
Customer feedback is a powerful tool for improving your user experience and creating a better product or service.
By actively seeking out and listening to feedback from your users, you can identify areas for improvement, address pain points, and ultimately provide a better experience for your customers.
There are many ways to collect feedback from your users, including surveys, in-person interviews, social media, and customer service interactions.
Whatever method you choose, the important thing is to make sure that you're actively soliciting and responding to feedback from your users.
Doing so will build stronger relationships with your customers, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive greater success for your business.
So don't underestimate the power of customer feedback - use it to your advantage and watch your user experience (and business) thrive!
Trisha Ballesteros