CRO & Profits - The Power Of Post Purchase Surveys

Paddy here from PM Digital & Welcome to our first newsletter and email of CRO & Profits. Your new weekly source of top-tier CRO strategies and insights specifically tailored for e-commerce brands.

First topic of the newsletter is an interesting one and one that is very underutilised by many brands. Also check out the last part for a little case study 👇

THE POWER OF POST PURCHASE SURVEYS 🔋

Understanding your customers’ experiences is pivotal. That’s why post-purchase surveys are a no brainer. They provide direct insights that can lead to a complete adjustment to your marketing and sales strategies.

What questions should you ask your customers?

Think about what information you need to know that would help in making a decision for your brand and think about how you can improve their journey on the store.

Two things we get clients to set up -

1. Post purchase surveys

2. Survey for customers who have previously purchsed

Always defer the questions the two audiences.

On average, KnoCommerce suggests that the ideal number of questions is around 5.5— keep this one our little secret! 🤫

We recommend two platforms - choose between KnoCommerce or ZigPoll - both are Shopify apps and very easy to setup!

🧠 Overall Themes to think about:

LTV/retention

Audience building

Attribution

Product development

Pricing

Marketing

❓Topics to base your questions on:

Purchase Motivation

Customer service

Product feedback

Website journey

Reasons for purchase

Future purchases

Additional feedback

💬 Here are a few examples you can use for post purchase surveys:

• What made you buy our product?

• Did anything nearly deter you from buying from us today?

• Who is this purchase for? (give them options)

• How long do you expect to use the product you just purchased?

• Did you know we recently launched (a new product)?

• Which of our benefits do you find most appealing?

• Do you prefer to mix and match your bundles or buy a pre-made collection?

• What gender do you identify as?

• Was there another brand you were considering up until the moment you decided to buy with us?

• How would you describe the prices for our products?

• How will our product make an impact on your lifestyle?

• What's one thing we should never stop doing?

• If you don't mind, would you select your age range? (give them options)

🔥 TIP - Give customers incentives to fill this in - £5 -10 towards your next order.

Set the discount to ONLY customers who have previously purchased - this will then give them another reason to buy a second product down the line and also will lead to an increase in AOV/LTV.

🤔 Why post purchase survey questions and how can they be effective?

Well, here is proof in the pudding. We recently installed a post purchase survey for an apparel niche client after onboarding with us.

One of the questions: - “Was there anything that nearly deterred you from buying today? If Yes, What was it?“.

Second customers to fill them in answered “Confusing size charts”.

So we checked their product page, and yep, there it was, no size charts were on the product page. The only place a customer could find it was in the footer taking them to a different page which is not helpful.

Next steps we are taking and always recommend for size guides - make this as simple as possible to understand for customers and have it above your CTA or around the buy box of your product page.

CHECK OUT OUR CASE STUDY - $307,000 EXTRA PROJECTED REVENUE FOR ONE CLIENT BASED OFF ONE SPLIT TEST

AND Yes you read that right. $307,000 in projected revenue for one client based off our third split test we ran for them within our CRO program.

This client generates multi 8 figures per year within their online and retail store in the US and they have a development team within their business however, this is not a way in which you get a direct ROI from the changes and are essentially guessing. You need to fix the long hanging fruits, simplify everything then you must get underway with testing.

Within 72 hours this clients first test was up and running.

Within 2 weeks they received an audit going over their whole website, setup, analytics, offers and low hanging fruit we could fix and implement asap.

When testing it isn’t about volume, it is about quality so we get enough data to provide a winning test. Always let the test run for at least 14 days so you can gather enough data and get statistical significance.

All is not pretty though, we had two losers in a row and this is the harsh reality of CRO sometimes. There is no negative to this, it is all data to learn from and point us in the right direction for the next set of testing.

But we learn more from losers than we do from winners.

LEARN, HYPOTHESIS, TEST, REPEAT.

Click here to watch a detailed breakdown of our latest split test…

What did you think of our first newsletter? Hit reply and let us know, or tell us what topics you would love to learn more about!