8 Ways to Get Feedback from Your Customers

Did you know that 54% of consumers have higher expectations for the customer experience today than they did one year ago?

Getting customer feedback is table stakes. Knowing how your website, product, or service is performing is key to long-term business success. It tells you what needs to be improved and allows you to meet customer expectations. It also helps strengthen customer loyalty by showing them that they are being heard.

But how do you collect feedback? Here we’ve rounded up eight ways you can gather customer insights, best practices for each tactic, and what they can tell you about your site.

1. Use popup surveys

Popup surveys show up in the middle of the screen and require the user to take action — whether that’s answering the question or closing the window. These surveys can be effective, but they run the risk of annoying people and causing them to leave your website.

To minimize the intrusion and improve the chances of a response, keep questions simple, clear, and concise. Yes-or-no questions typically work well with this tactic. You can also work in a delay, so the survey isn’t the first thing a visitor sees when they land on your content.

2. Add feedback widgets

A feedback widget is a button that appears at the edge of a web page. When someone clicks the button, they can rate their experience or answer an open-ended question. Due to their placement and ability to ask open-ended questions, these widgets are helpful in revealing unknown problems.

Just like the popup surveys above, it’s important to keep widget surveys as short as possible. For example, you could ask, “Did you find what you were looking for?” as an open-ended question. If the user wasn’t able to find the checkout page or a link was broken, they would be able to easily tell you through the widget.

3. Create homepage poll surveys

Homepage surveys are ideal for getting a visitor’s first impression of your website. However, if they’re too complex or disruptive, they can end the customer journey early.

You can set up a quick poll that isn’t too invasive but still gathers valuable feedback. For example, you could ask a question like, “How helpful is our homepage?” and have users select their responses from a scale of 1–5.

Pro tip: Using a tool like JotForm’s Survey Maker can simplify the process of creating feedback surveys since they are easier to customize and embed on any website

4. Check community forums

A feedback forum is a community platform where users can collaborate, chat, ask questions, report issues, request product features, and seek customer support. Providing a forum on your website for customers to communicate can reveal invaluable insights. It’s essentially a community dedicated to discussing your product or service.

To get the most out of a forum, be sure to make it easily accessible to your customers. Allow anonymity to ensure honest feedback. Involve your team and have them participate in the forums. This way, they can interact with customers, report relevant feedback, and provide customer service as an added bonus.

5. Encourage product reviews

Whether you sell a physical or digital product, allowing reviews on your product or affiliate pages is a great way to learn about improvements that can be made. With reviews, you can read exactly what the customer liked or didn’t like about the product. It also makes future customers more confident in purchasing products when they see social proof.

To increase your chances of getting reviews, be sure to send emails to customers who have recently ordered from or interacted with you. Politely ask them to review the product and provide a link. Making the review process as simple as possible will improve your odds of getting a response.

6. Send follow-up emails

Sending an email asking for a product review is great, but you can also use the follow-up email to gather additional insights. Try writing an email that includes a specific feedback request.

A successful customer feedback email begins with an enticing subject line to get the person to open the email instead of just sending it to their junk folder. Once you’ve selected an attention-grabbing subject, be sure to tell them why they’re receiving the feedback request — for example, because they signed up for your newsletter or recently purchased a product from your site. You should also thank them and let them know their responses will be used to make improvements for your customers. You can create templates for these types of emails so you can adjust slightly for each recipient, such as changing the customer name or product purchased.

7. Add customer contact forms

If you don’t have a customer contact form on your website, then you’re missing out in more ways than one. This can be one of the most valuable pages on your website. If your site lacks a contact form, you could be leaving potential customers or partners without a way to easily reach you.

Treat the information and leads you get from the contact form as a source of feedback. For example, you may find that someone has contacted you through the form because they couldn’t find your phone number on your site. You could take this feedback and move your phone number from the footer to the top of the web page.

Customer contact forms should be easy to find, and they should explain why the person should contact you. It also helps to redirect to a thank-you page once the customer has submitted their details.

Always include a comment field for open-ended responses. Most important, leave out any unnecessary details. Do you need the customer’s last name? Or will a first name suffice? Anything that isn’t necessary shouldn’t be a required field. This makes it easier for the customer to fill out.

8. Check onsite analytics

A final method for gathering feedback doesn’t involve engaging with the customer at all. Using website analytics to monitor your pages can unearth insights that aren’t possible with a simple yes-or-no popup survey or an email. Reviewing your on-page analytics can show you a lot about how people are navigating and interacting with your website.

For example, you can use Google Analytics to show useful things like which affiliate links are being clicked the most and how visitors are discovering your website. While this can’t give you email addresses or contact information for users, it can help you track how visitors engage with your website.

No matter which tactics you use to gather customer feedback, it won’t do you any good if you don’t put them to use. That’s why it’s important to evaluate the insights, look for problems, and fix them.