In this article, we’ll look at what you need to know about the concept of a website feedback survey and provide you with step-by-step guidance for implementing them on your own site.  We’ll help you understand what questions to ask, where to place the feedback forms, and in what format. You’ll also learn how to analyse the feedback, considering drivers, hooks and barriers relating to how people interact with your site. Ultimately, you’ll be able to stop relying on analytics tools alone, and start to understand motivations and reasons behind your website visitors’ behaviour.

In your opinion, you might have the best website in the world, but that doesn’t matter if your customers don’t feel the same. As a website owner, you know the ins and outs of your website, and this familiarity can make you blind to any issues that might affect your customers. Do you know if users of your website are having positive experiences? Is your website easy to navigate and logically structured? Can your customers find everything they need? The key to finding out is simple: conducting a website feedback survey directly on your website.

In this article

    What is website feedback?

    Website feedback refers to online customer feedback surveys that are placed on a website. The purpose of these surveys is to investigate the effectiveness of a website and gain insights into any potential areas for improvement. Surveying site users with website feedback forms will enable you to improve the user experience for your audience, increase traffic on your site and increase revenues from online sales.

    Allowing you to collect Voice of Customer (VoC) feedback from visitors directly on your site, they provide you with meaningful data on the overall effectiveness of your online strategy. Furthermore, website feedback surveys are an important complement to the quantitative data that you can collect with analytics tools or visitor statistics and heatmaps.

    The nature of website surveys means that you’re able to capture relevant feedback at the most opportune time. As the customer is already on your website, they will likely be more willing to quickly answer a few questions relating to their experience. Even better, capturing feedback whilst they’re in the midst of the website experience will give you insights that are as accurate, reliable and timely as possible.

    Create a survey in minutes

    • Create surveys based on our templates
    • Send surveys via email, links, API or individual logins
    • Analyse responses with filters & AI

    Try for free Trial ends automatically

    How to use a website feedback survey

    Before deciding on the placement and format of your website feedback survey, you should carefully define your goals. What are you trying to find out and why? What questions do you need to ask to get the most useful feedback for improving your site?

    The key to collecting insightful feedback is not to overwhelm respondents. Don’t try to get feedback on lots of different things at once. Instead, you should focus on getting feedback on one element of your website at a time. Here are just some examples of different insights you can gain with website feedback forms:

    Design and layout

    What do visitors think about the design and organisation of your website? Is the navigation logical? Does the site contain everything visitors are looking for? Are there any issues to report with regards to design and layout?

    Purchase process

    Did customers find everything they needed? Was there enough information about the product(s) they wanted? Were they satisfied with the payment and delivery options available to them? How quick was the checkout process?

    FAQ section

    Does the support section of your website answer all the questions potential customers have? Are customers finding the content provided useful? Are you offering all contact channels they would like to see? How is the internal search function?

    Other aspects of your site to evaluate include:

    • Who your visitors are (e.g. customers, suppliers, influencers)
    • How often they visit your website
    • Whether they were looking for your page directly or found it with a search engine
    • Why they are visiting your website
    • How well it meets their expectations and whether they found what they have been looking for
    • Evaluation of your website’s features
    • Suggestions for improvement

    Drivers, barriers and hooks for a website feedback survey

    Ultimately, the feedback you seek and gain from website surveys can be divided into three different categories:

    Drivers

    Drivers are the factors that draw people to your website. Is it the range of products you offer? Are you solving a problem that nobody else is? Understanding what your drivers are allows you to confidently enhance the right elements of your website and product, ultimately bringing in even more prospects in the future.

    Barriers

    Barriers refer to the parts of your website that prevent some users from converting. Are there broken links on your website? Are the payment options available limited? Is the copy poor? Whatever the reasons are, website feedback allows you to identify them and take the steps towards improving.

    Hooks

    Hooks are the elements of your website that convert people into customers and then keep them coming back. Why did they choose to visit again or buy your product/subscribe to your service? Identifying your website’s hooks allows you to put your effort into the right places, ensuring that you maintain the business you already have and feel confident securing more.

    Where to place a website feedback form

    In order to get the most useful feedback, you will need to be strategic about where you place your website surveys. The location will be determined by what your goals are and the kind of feedback that is going to help you to achieve them.

    Identifying what drives customers to your website

    You need to know how customers got to your website and why. An obvious place for a website survey in this scenario would be your landing page. You should also identify your site’s other top pages, which are the pages that see the highest traffic volume. Essentially, you want to catch customers at the point they reach your website, and this can vary depending on what led them there.

    Website feedback sample questions:

    • What brings you to our website today?
    • How did you hear about us?
    • What made you visit us over another competitor?

    Identifying barriers to conversion on your website

    On the other hand, you may want to gather feedback specifically from customers who are facing barriers to conversion. In these cases, seek to place your website surveys on those pages with high exit rates. This will help you to gain qualitative feedback to explain the high exit numbers, giving you tangible insights that can help you to improve your site. You could also place surveys on churn pages, where existing customers go to cancel their subscriptions or membership. If you understand why customers are choosing to leave you, then you can learn how to improve your custom retention going forward.

    Website exit sample questions:

    • We’re sorry to see you go. What made you cancel your subscription?
    • What stopped you from signing up/making a purchase today?
    • Did you find everything you were looking for today?
    • What other products would you like to see on offer?
    • Which is your preferred delivery/payment method?
    • What can we do to improve this page?
    • Do you have any other comments or suggestions?

    Identifying what customers love about your website

    If your aim is to understand how to keep customers coming back to your website, you should place feedback forms on pages that you know receive high traffic and have high conversion rates. You should also consider including surveys on post-purchase or successful sign-up pages. Including surveys in these locations will help you to identify what you are doing right so that you can continue to win over other customers in the same way.

    Furthermore, although you’re likely to be dealing with satisfied customers in these locations, you might also be able to identify any hesitations they may have had before purchase/sign-up. This is a great way to learn how you can make a purchase or sign-up decision easier and quicker for future customers.

    Conversion sample questions:

    • What was the main reason behind your subscription/purchase today?
    • Did you have any questions before placing your order/signing up?
    • How would you improve the purchase process/sign-up process?
    • Do you have any other questions about your purchase/subscription?
    • What do you like the most about our website?

    General website feedback

    Sometimes you just want to know what people think about your website as a whole. Perhaps you have upcoming plans to actively improve the site and would like customer feedback in order to get it right. Or maybe you have already made improvements and are interested in understanding how they’re being received. In these scenarios, you can use a general website feedback form. So this type of survey could be included as a small widget (e.g. a ‘Feedback’ button at the side of your site) that customers can choose to click on, whichever page they are on. Alternatively, you may choose to include one only on your landing page, or on the pages that see the highest traffic volume.

    General website feedback sample questions:

    • What was your first impression of our website?
    • On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our website to a friend or colleague? (You can also follow up with an open-text question allowing them to explain their score. This is where valuable qualitative data lies).
    • What is it you like the most about our website?
    • What do you like the least about our website?
    • How would you rate our website on a scale from 1-5?
    • Do you have any other comments or suggestions?

    4 smart ways to collect website feedback

    There are different survey types that lend themselves to the different locations on your website, allowing for different levels of user interaction:

    1) Pop-up surveys

    These are typically recommended for surveys on your home page or landing page. Pop-up surveys should appear a set amount of time after the customer’s arrival on your page or when they come back to the landing page after having explored another part of the website. This way, they have had a chance to explore and form an impression of the website before they are approached for feedback. Alternatively, it can appear when the visitor shows intent to exit the site.

    The danger of pop-up surveys is that they might be perceived as too aggressive and disruptive, causing the visitor to leave your site, particularly if they cannot easily close the survey. If you choose a pop-up survey, keep it short and quick to answer. Using a brief introduction to explain that the survey will help to make the browsing experience better, is also a useful way to get people to respond.

    2) On-page website surveys

    These are recommended if you want to collect feedback for one specific page of your website, e.g. your FAQ page or a post-purchase page. They typically appear at the bottom of the page and contain a limited number of insightful questions. For example: Are you finding what you were looking for? They are less disturbing to the visitor’s experience than pop-up-surveys, since they do not block the screen and let the visitor continue on your site.

    3) Widgets

    Widgets usually come in the form of small icons that open up a mini-app on your website. You can position them on your website, e.g. at the edge of the screen.

    Users can click on the widget if they have an impulse to give feedback about your site. They answer a short survey which we recommend should consist of a ranking question (e.g. How do you like this website?) and an open-text question that allows them to explain their rating and give suggestions. The survey can be closed again by clicking on the widget button and so does not interfere with the overall experience of the website.

    4) With a permanent feedback box in the Contact section of your website

    With a contact page approach you can collect feedback from website visitors who are already actively seeking a way to contact you. For example, a visitor may notice an issue with your website and rather than send an email or make a phone call, and it would be much easier for them to have access to a feedback form on your site.

    Start collecting your own website feedback

    Curious to find out how you can improve your website? Unsure of your own drivers, barriers and hooks? With the user-friendly and powerful survey platform from Netigate, you can collect 360º Website Feedback in an easy and time-efficient way. Contact our team today, or get started immediately with your free 30-day trial.