As an owner of an online business, you know that guessing is something that you should minimize to ensure that you’re going in the right direction. Especially when it comes to figuring out what your existing and potential customers are thinking.
Unfortunately, you’re not a mind reader, but knowing what your customers think gets you close to them. For example, it helps to understand the reasons why customers are behaving this way and what they want from your business.
To get a clearer picture of what’s going on, you can take advantage of proven methods of getting information directly from customers. They include:
- Feedback buttons
- Feedback boxes
- Live chat
- Website surveys.
In this article, we’re going to discuss them to help you approach customer feedback in the right way.
Let’s get started.
- Feedback Boxes
Anyone who is browsing the Internet regularly see websites have implemented these special buttons and boxes to make it easy to collect information from customers and help them to solve problems.
However, there’s one thing you need to remember: feedback buttons should be used to collect information about small things while boxes are there for more complex stuff.
The point of this box is to get feedback from visitors about a lot of things (a lot of customers don’t want to fill out all those fields, so be careful here).
How to design a feedback box for your website:
- Make it easily accessible (at the bottom of the page or on the sides)
- Minimize the amount of fields to fill out, better make them multiple choice answers
- Don’t do a lot of mandatory fields
- Don’t request contact information unless absolutely necessary!
- Feedback Buttons
Next, feedback buttons. Those are the buttons you see on the sides of webpages that need to be clicked on to leave comments.
In a good example of an effective feedback button, three options appear: Specific Feedback, Generic Feedback, and Contact Us.
This is a good move because it provides a customer with options and ensures that their question will be answered by a knowledgeable person.
Tips for feedback buttons:
- Make them stand out (most websites place them on sides on a white background just like Holland & Barrett did).
- Make it unobtrusive
- Don’t require a lot of information
- Don’t require contact information unless you have to reply to the customer later
- Live Chat
Live chat remains one of the most important ways of communication between businesses and customers. For example, Inc. wrote that 42 percent of customers said they preferred live chat function because they didn’t want to wait for a response from support team representative.
Besides, 44 percent of online shoppers view live chat as important during an online purchase because they can have their questions answered by a real person, uninterrupted, according to the same source.
That’s why so many websites have this feature. Clicking on the button launches the live chat. As soon as you type a message, the system will engage a chatbot, and later an operator if it’s not able to help.
Clearly, live chat is a must-do assignment for every online business. If you want assignment help with it, check out these tips for your site:
- Make it stand out (the example above is actually great because it has a vibrant color which is different from the rest of the website)
- Make it 24/7. Customers appreciate it when a business is always available for them, so try to provide a 24/7 support if possible
- Collect contact information only if a reply to a customer is needed
- Website Surveys
There are a lot of free survey tools out there, so you should absolutely poll your customers and get valuable feedback. For example, you can ask the visitors of your website about their experience with an updated version or certain products you recently introduced.
One option may be to post the message on the homepage. If a visitor clicks on “Yes,” a new window launches, and it shows questions after they close the website:
It shows a couple of questions on each page (the user has to click on “next page” to get to the next questions), and collects a diverse information.
While there can be numerous reasons for collecting feedback via website survey, here are some questions you can use:
- What products would you like us to offer?
- What are the features you would us to add to the website?
- Is our pricing policy clear?
- How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend/colleague?
- What else would you like us to know?
- If you could change something about our company, what would it be?
- Is it easy to browse and purchase from this website?
The Importance of Customer Feedback
It’s clear: collecting customer feedback is something that every business must do to survive and thrive. A good news is that you can easily collect it if you use the right tools such as those described above.
It’s important to ask the right questions in the right way, so hope the tips above will be useful for you to do this.
Lucy Benton is a specialist in digital marketing and content writing who currently works at A-writer.com. She focuses mostly on the worlds of technology, gadgets, and the Internet. If you’re interested in working with Lucy, you can find her on Twitter.
