Surveys can help decrease virtual shopping cart abandonment because you’ll know what your customers are (or aren’t) finding satisfactory. But if you don’t ask the right questions, you won’t get the right answers. Without the right answers, you won’t be able to fix anything.
Asking the right questions will help you better know your customer and understand their needs. Ready to know what a good abandonment survey is comprised of?
Start with Basic, Demographic Questions
Your survey should begin with basic demographic questions to help define your target audience. Although you’ve likely already defined a target audience and know your typical customer, it’s important to remember this demographic can grow and change along with your company.
The people who were most interested in your products in your first year of business may not be the ones who are most interested in your products after two decades of business.
A few basic demographic questions to ask include:
• Age
• Gender
• Relationship Status
• Income
• Highest Education Received
• Location
Contact Information
Contact information is necessary if you want to be able to contact customers with further questions in the future. Many companies have found that making providing contact information optional is the best choice because it allows for more survey responses. The basic contact information you might request includes name, email address, phone number, and contact preferences.
Ratings
Asking for a few ratings can help you gauge the extent of your customer’s satisfaction or lack thereof. You can get an idea of how your customers feel about the different parts of their shopping experience through questions but there is one major issue with this. Many customers won’t provide detailed information or might be vague in answering questions because they want to finish quickly.
Ratings can give a definite answer on where customers stand without requiring them to write out detailed explanations. Many people will be more inclined to complete surveys that are simple.
Ratings you might ask for include:
• How was your overall customer experience?
• How engaging is the website design?
• How easy was it for you to use our website?
• How easy was the checkout process for you?
Clarifying Questions
Clarifying questions will expound upon the ratings you have asked for. Make them simple and craft them so you get the details you need without boring your customers. While the rating section should be mandatory, you can make the clarifying questions optional.
A few questions you might want to ask include:
• What did you like best about our website?
• What did you like least about our website?
• What areas do you think our company could improve?
• Did you find it easy to access the information you needed?
• What one thing would you most like to see added/changed on our website?
• What one thing do you think would make our checkout process better?
• Do you have any other questions or comments for us?
Always end your survey with a polite thank you to those who filled it out. This lets customers know their time is valued. You may also want to use the ending as an opportunity to let them know you hope to see them back in the future. Asking customers back after they’ve abandoned their shopping carts keeps the customer-business relationship open.
Conclusion
The information above can help you craft an effective shopping cart abandonment survey that will get more responses. Once you’ve gathered information on why your customers have abandoned their shopping carts, you can put it to good use by improving your website’s shopping experience. By tackling one reoccurring issue at a time, your business should start seeing a decrease in the number of shopping carts abandoned. Less abandoned carts mean more sales and a higher profit margin.