Surveying for Sales

By Staff Writer

When visitors feel they are involved and included in your site, they are more likely to return—and more likely to become loyal customers.

Making visitors interact with your site is rapidly becoming a requirement for a successful online business. When visitors feel they are involved and included in your site, they are more likely to return—and more likely to become loyal customers. You have valuable options to learn more about your customers at your disposal: the quick site poll and the business feedback survey. Offering you both long-term and immediate benefits, these are easy ways to develop relationships with your clients and customers, which can lead to an increase in your sales.


Take a Poll

Who can resist the lure of a request to give an opinion? Whether it’s a profession-related or leisure query, a poll will grab your customers’ attention. They’ll stop, consider, and participate (and likely have fun in the process). By responding, customers—first-timers especially—subtly cement a formative relationship with your site and are more likely to remember you in the future.

Bring them back by posting the poll results the next day. Or increase your newsletter opt-in rate with an offer to send them results when your next e-issue goes out. By showing your interest in your site visitors, they’ll show more interest in you. Plus, the better you know them—even if it’s just their vacation plans—the better you can plan your next targeted marketing campaign.

Do you need polling ideas? Consider asking about news events, seasonal topics, or industry issues. Your response rates will give you a good idea about what your site visitors find the most interesting. When you write your poll questions, keep your wording brief and easy-to-read and limit yourself to no more than two questions for optimal response rates. And don’t forget to change your poll. Not only does a new question slightly change the face of your site, it also sends the message that you’re active and up-to-date.

Writing your poll coding from scratch isn’t easy for novices, but free templates are readily available all over the Web. Generally, all you need to do is fill in blanks and paste template code to your site. Good places to start are freepolls.com, sparklit.com, and bravenet.com.

Survey Says

Would you like to know what customers think of your new product? Want feedback on your level of customer service? Would you like to predict what your hot sellers will be during the holidays? A Web survey is a great way to learn more about how you’re doing in your customers’ eyes.

By gaining insight to your customers’ buying patterns, interests and lifestyles, you can better target your sales copy and marketing campaigns.

By gaining insight to your customers’ buying patterns, interests and lifestyles, you can better target your sales copy and marketing campaigns to better fit your customers. You may even discover new segments of your customer base, allowing you to tap into greater profits. Best of all, your potential increase in income comes with little investment. Setting up an online survey is not only inexpensive, but it also offers you feedback within hours.

Writing Effective Questions

If you want an effective survey that will help you increase sales, you’ll need to pay close attention to your questions. Get the best responses by keeping in mind these tips:

1. Order your questions sensibly. Go from broad to specific questions.
   
   
2. Keep your queries specific. Avoid writing questions that make assumptions. For example, you shouldn't ask "Is your dog male or female?" without leaving room for the possibility that respondents may not have a dog.
   
   
3. Leave out the jargon. Keep your wording straightforward and easy-to-understand, avoiding technical terms, acronyms or industry-specific phrases.
   
   
4. Make the choices clear. Make sure that each answer is different enough for respondents to have a definite choice in their answers.
   
   
5. Don’t get too personal. Don’t risk stepping on toes with sensitive or embarrassing questions regarding income, family life, religious beliefs, political views, etc.
   
   
6. Other? Cover all your bases by offering an extra option where necessary.
   
   
7. Don’t pack too much in. Keep your survey goals in mind and scale back the number of questions so respondents don’t get bored or overwhelmed.

The key to pumping up sales on your site is building a better relationship with your visitors.

The key to pumping up sales on your site is building a better relationship with your visitors, and-as with building any other relationship-the easiest way to get to know them is by asking questions. Get your site queries up and running and you'll be on your way to lifelong customer relationships.and profit growth.