Back to the Feedback – Are you Remembering to Survey?

Feedback from your customers is priceless. Not necessarily glowing testimonials – there are enough fake ones out there that even honest ones are viewed with skepticism – but the behind the scenes feedback from people who use your website. You want a wide range of responses, so sometimes you have to sweeten the pot – not everyone has time on their hands, and many people hit the ‘no thanks’ button when asked if they would take a survey than not. Giving an incentive can draw in others who would be willing to spend the time if you made it worth their while.

Completed surveys and polls can also build your email list. If you start to notice a reduction in the number of information boxes you are getting filled out on your home or squeeze page, you need to do a giveaway to get people involved.

Offering a gift card in return for filling out a short survey can work wonders, but there are lots of scams out there so make sure you make it clear they don‘t have to complete any offers. Work up a list of questions and be sure to have a comments box big enough for detailed ideas on how visitors think your site could be improved. The questions should be specific enough to get good information, but general enough to be answered creatively. Who knows, you could save yourself thousands in consulting fees, because you visitors are the ones who know bets what they would like to see out of your site!

It’s hard to put a value of this type of feedback, but take a shot at it. Pretend each response is worth on average $10. If you offer a $50 gift card to the winner of a drawing, and get 20 participants, you have a return on investment of $200, or 400%. If just one of those people has a terrific idea, you could see your investment back tenfold.

In addition, you can boost your email address file book by 20 new people, and you will have a more detailed profile on each than many in your file. After the initial survey, follow up with smaller promos with even cheaper rewards; a t shirt, a cozy, a key chain. These surveys can be formulated from info from the previous responses, to fine tune and put out one of the ideas to see what others think of it. Make the value of the gift correspond to the length of the questionnaire or survey, and people will be willing to give input.

This type of feedback is the best kind, because you get it directly from users of your site – they want it to be more user friendly, and you do too, so you are both working toward the same goals!