A website has many uses for a business. Whether it is allowing customers to order online, blogging, or expanding your online presence, a website is imperative for expanding your market and reaching new audiences. One thing that many web designers and business owners overlook is the usefulness of guaging customer feedback on thier site. Like most techniques, there is a right way and wrong way to do this. When guaging feedback it is important to not overwhelm the visitor with too many questions and ask the right questions that return helpful results.
What Are Good Questions?
Asking the right questions is necessary for gaining useful feedback from visitors on your site. One key to asking good questions is being sure that the question is open ended. An open ended question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. If your question begins with who, what, when, where, or how it is likely an open ended question. An example of this is Youtube’s feedback questions. Every once in a while when a user watches a video Youtube will ask them a question. It says something along the lines of “How are your videos playing today?”. The user is then given multiple choices in how they can respond. The question cannot be answered with “yes” or “no” so it is open ended. If Youtube had asked “Are your videos playing well today?” the user would only be able to answer with yes or no and the feedback would not be near as beneficial. Youtube would have no idea what is wrong with the video. Is the video laggy or will it not play at all? Are videos getting stuck or is there something else wrong? They would have no way of knowing with the “yes” or “no” answers they have recieved. With the open ended question, they will be able to get more details regarding the issues the user is facing. This means they will be able to fix the problem faster and enhance the users experience.
Now that you know the importance of open ended questions you may be asking “what questions should I ask?”. The answer to this question varies depending on the goal of your site. Youtube’s goal is to offer quality videos to thier users and increase revenue for companies that invest in paid ads. If videos are not running well, they will lose customers so asking how thier videos are playing can yield great feedback. If you own a pizza shop that allows people to order online, it would be smart to ask about the timelyness and quality of the food. Once the food is recieved, send an automated text message to the customer asking a question or two about thier service.
When to Ask for Feedback
Timing is very important when asking for user feedback. You do not want to overwhelm your customer with questions and hurt their experience on your website but you do want to be able to get enough information from the feedback so positive changes can be made. Asking the right questions, as discussed above is half the battle. The other half is knowing when to ask. The best time to ask for feedback is directly after they have finished using your service. Asking for feedback too soon does not give the user a chance to utilize your service and therefore their feedback will not be useful. Asking for feedback too late will result in the user forgetting much of their experience with your business which will diminish the usefulness of feedback. The perfect time to ask is right after the user has finished using your service. YouTube asks customers for video quality feedback directly after they finish watching a video. They avoid asking too soon and impeding on the user experience of watching videos while also not being too late and asking well after the user has forgotten how the video quality was.
In conclusion...
The goal when asking for feedback on your website is to elicit useful responses from users that are open ended and goal oriented while not impeding on the users experience. Make sure you are not fishing for the responses you want to hear and instead are asking questions for the purpose of gaining honest feedback from your visitors. After you have gained feedback, be sure to put what you have learned in to use and work towards making your business better for your customers.
