|
By John Weisenberger
When I think back to all the times I've missed
opportunities in life because I was too afraid to ask
potentially embarrassing questions, it makes me wonder how
much more I could have learned and accomplished if only I'd
had the nerve to ask more questions.
Whether it's a fear of looking stupid in a seminar, or the
fear of rejection when asking someone for a joint venture
agreement, the end result is the same: you've placed a
self-imposed limitation on your ability to learn and
understand because of the fear of what others might say.
Now don't get me wrong, we all care about what others think
of us so this reluctance to ask for feedback regarding our
personal, or business, performance is not abnormal. That is
unless it paralyzes you into avoiding any type of feedback
and/or causes you to limit your interactions with other
people.
So regardless of what your comfort level is about exposing
yourself, and your business, to the opinions of others,
soliciting feedback on your performance is something you
absolutely must do if you want to succeed in building any
type of online business.
And now that you know how important this feedback is, how
you can efficiently gather those opinions from your Website
visitors is what the rest of this article is all about.
Ask and you shall receive.
So how much do you really know about the individuals who
visit your Website? For instance, can you answer all of the
following ten questions about your Website's visitors?
1. Are you visitors primarily male or female?
2. How old are they?
3. Are they married, single or divorced?
4. Where do they spend the majority of their time online?
5. What do they think of your Website/product?
6. Why did/didn't they buy your products?
7. Do they feel you are overpriced, underpriced?
8. How do they think you could improve your product?
9. Is there anything else they need that you could provide?
10. Would they consider buying from you again?
If you're able to answer all of the questions above, you
probably already have a system of testing, surveying and
tracking that collects key information about your visitors,
customers and/or subscribers. That's a good thing provided
you take the necessary actions to improve on the areas you
discover are not up to expectations.
If you can't answer all the questions above, you could be
missing critical information about why your visitors are,
or are not, making your business their final stop for
whatever it is they're searching for.
For example, perhaps they're not buying due to something as
simple as not being able to easily locate your price on
your sales page. But how would you know if someone didn't
tell you?
So how can you find out what your customers want? Simple,
ask them! You can easily accomplish this by asking them to
complete a survey questionnaire. This questionnaire can be
located on your Website, or it can be sent to a targeted
list of people using email.
Either way, you can use a questionnaire to uncover what
your Website visitors are looking for and why, or why not,
they decided to buy it from you.
When you're ready to develop your survey, here's four
simple tips that can generate higher response rates and
higher quality results.
Tip #1: Make your survey a prize giveaway
We have discovered that more of our Website visitors
respond to our surveys if we give them some enticement or
reward for filling out the survey form. One way to do this
is to offer them a chance at receiving some type of prize
if they complete the survey.
Mention this prize drawing on your Website or in your
initial survey invitation email that you send out to your
mailing list and you'll see a much improved response rate.
Now although a prize drawing will be enough to entice some
percentage of your Website visitors, a better incentive is
to just offer some type of free gift for the first 50-500
people to complete your questionnaire.
We've found this method works quite well if your visitors
believe the gift is worth their time and effort to complete
the survey questionnaire. For an example on how you could
do this, take a look at the recent survey we conducted at
http://www.RomanceBiz.com/Survey
Which ever method you choose, adding any free prize or gift
will go a long way towards increasing your survey's
response rate.
Tip #2: Don't send all you invitation emails at once!
When you survey your customers using email, never send all
your invitation emails out at the same time. Start with a
small percentage of your mailing list. As you survey your
customers you may find that you have a specific issue that
you need to explore in more depth--such as a question which
is not clear enough and generating the wrong answers, or
perhaps a reply form that isn't working properly.
If you send out all your survey invitations at the same
time, you'll have no chance to correct potential problems
and no one will give you a second chance. It's best to
start small, test/evaluate and then go full scale.
Tip #3 - The less your respondent has to type, the more
results you'll get.
If you can construct a survey where all your respondent has
to do is click a few boxes, you'll find that the response
rate is higher than if you ask your respondent to actually
type something.
This is known as the "hand to keyboard factor" and if your
respondent has to move their hands to their keyboard, they
will have to think more and are less likely to want to
continue. Check boxes, radio buttons or drop down
selections are the best way to go to reduce this potential
negative.
Tip 4 - Get Their Name Again
Make sure you ask the person for their email address or
some other way of identifying them--even if you are not
giving away a prize or gift. This way you can generate your
initial mailing list from your Website visitors or a
sub-list of all the respondents from your larger email
list. This information will be extremely useful for future
promotional mailings.
If you keep these four tips in mind when developing your
next customer survey, your response rates will be much
higher and the quality of the feedback you receive will be
much better.
Just remember, the only sure way to discover what's
working, and not working, in your business is to ask your
existing, or potential, customers. If you do, they're sure
to give you all the feedback you'll need to let you serve
them better. And that's the surest way to increase your
Website's sales!
|
