As an ecommerce business owner, getting feedback from customers after they buy from your store can provide invaluable insights. Well-designed post purchase surveys allow you to learn exactly why customers purchased, identify areas for improvement, and optimize your sales funnel.
After 15 years as a WordPress professional helping businesses grow online, I‘ve seen firsthand how critical post purchase surveys can be for boosting customer loyalty and conversions. In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll share my best tips and proven techniques for creating effective post purchase surveys for your WooCommerce store.
Contents
Why You Should Be Using Post Purchase Surveys
Let‘s start by looking at some key reasons why actively collecting customer feedback through surveys is so important:
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Understand intent behind purchases – Surveys give you the ‘why‘ behind your customers‘ buying decisions. Google Analytics can‘t provide this level of insight on its own.
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Identify successes and pain points – Customers will reveal what parts of their experience deligted them or need improvement. This helps you double down on what‘s working while fixing frustrating areas.
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Improve future purchases – Feedback allows you to optimize your sales funnel, product selection, website content, and more to encourage repeat purchases.
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Increase customer loyalty – When you actively request feedback, customers feel valued. This improves retention and likelihood to recommend your business.
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Gain market insights – Survey responses over time provide broader market research into buyer behavior, trends, demographics, and competitor standing.
According to research by SurveyMonkey, 77% of customers are willing to complete post purchase surveys. But only about 20% of businesses actually send surveys out consistently. Don‘t miss out on this opportunity to gain a competitive advantage.
Now let‘s look at two great ways to create effective post purchase surveys for your WooCommerce store.
Method 1: Creating Surveys with UserFeedback
UserFeedback is one of the most powerful WordPress plugins for building all kinds of surveys. I‘ve used it successfully for many client projects over the years.
UserFeedback makes it really easy to create beautiful, professional surveys optimized for conversions. Some key features include:
- Custom survey themes and colors
- Advanced conditional logic
- Unlimited questions and responses
- Targeting by device, browser, URL, and more
- Detailed real-time reports
- Custom thank you pages
Let‘s go through the step-by-step process of creating a post purchase survey with UserFeedback:
Installing and Configuring the UserFeedback Plugin
First, you‘ll need to install and activate the UserFeedback plugin on your WooCommerce site.
After activation, you‘ll be greeted by the setup wizard. This will guide you through:
- Creating an example survey
- Enabling key features like additional templates
- Installing the extensions you need
- Entering your license key to unlock Pro features
At the end, you‘ll be able to start creating surveys tailored to your goals.
Creating Your Post Purchase Survey
To build your survey, go to UserFeedback → Surveys and click the "Create New" button:
Next, select the "Post Purchase Review" template. This will pre-populate some relevant questions to save time.
Now you can easily:
- Add, edit, delete, and reorder questions
- Customize themes and colors
- Make questions required
- Setup conditional logic
I recommend asking 5-7 targeted questions that will reveal insights into your customers‘ purchase experience. Here are some good examples:
- How did you first hear about our store?
- How would you rate the quality of our products?
- Was our shipping speed satisfactory?
- Would you purchase from us again?
- Any other feedback you‘d like to share?
You can have unlimited questions of any type like star ratings, multiple choice, text fields, and more. Add them easily by clicking the "Add Question" button.
After setting up your questions, move on to the Settings tab:
- Enable Google Analytics tracking
- Select device targeting
- Show survey on order confirmation page
Specifically, you need to target the order confirmation page by setting the condition "Page URL is" to "order-received" on the Pages tab.
Next, go to the Notifications tab to get email alerts whenever you receive a new survey response. This allows you to take quick action on feedback.
Finally, publish your survey and it will be live on your WooCommerce thank you page.
Viewing UserFeedback Survey Results
One of the best parts of UserFeedback is the in-depth reporting.
Whenever you get survey responses, you‘ll be able to analyze them via the insightful reports. Just go to UserFeedback → Results.
You‘ll see helpful summaries and can drill down into granular response data. It‘s easy to filter, segment, and export the data for further analysis.
The interactive charts help you quickly spot trends and patterns. For example, you may see that shipping speed satisfaction increased 5% month-over-month. This allows you to make data-driven decisions to improve customer satisfaction.
Method 2: Creating Surveys with WPForms
WPForms is my top recommendation for the best WordPress form builder plugin.
While the free version is quite capable, I suggest using WPForms Pro. It unlocks powerful addons like Surveys and Polls that are perfect for creating professional surveys.
Here‘s an overview of building post purchase surveys with WPForms:
Installing and Setting Up WPForms
First, install and activate WPForms on your WooCommerce site.
Then enter your WPForms license key to enable the Pro addons. You can access your license key from your WPForms account.
Go to WPForms → Addons and install the "Surveys and Polls" addon.
Creating Your New Survey
To build a new survey, go to the WPForms → Add New page.
Select the "Survey Form" template. This will load pre-made form fields you can customize as needed.
WPForms makes it easy to:
- Edit, add, delete, and rearrange questions
- Insert images, video, and HTML
- Use smart conditional logic
- Accept payments
For post purchase surveys, I recommend questions like:
- How satisfied are you with your overall experience?
- Please rate the quality of our products
- How likely are you to recommend us to colleagues?
- What could we do to improve our service?
You can leverage any field type:
- Multiple choice
- Star ratings
- Text/paragraph fields
- Dropdowns
- And more…
After setting up your questions, the Settings tab lets you:
- Customize confirmations
- Configure notifications
- Adjust additional options
To show the survey only on the thank you page, target the URL path "order-received" using conditional logic.
Displaying Your Survey on the Thank You Page
With WPForms, you have two options for displaying your survey on the order confirmation page:
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Embed Shortcode: Get the WPForms shortcode and add it to your custom thank you page
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Use Page Builder: Drag the WPForms widget onto the page with a builder like Elementor
Now when a customer finishes purchasing, your survey will pop up automatically!
Viewing and Analyzing Survey Results
WPForms has top-notch reporting built right in.
Navigate to WPForms → All Forms and click the "Survey Results" link for your form.
You‘ll find organized reports with interactive charts and graphs. It‘s easy to:
- Switch chart types
- Filter and segment data
- Export results as CSV/PDF
This delivers the insights you need to better understand customers and improve their journey. For example, you may find shipping costs are a common complaint and focus on reducing rates.
Get Valuable User Feedback to Grow Your Store
Implementing post purchase surveys provides crucial insights into your customers‘ minds that analytics can‘t offer. This allows you to optimize your WooCommerce store for higher conversions and loyalty.
As you saw, both UserFeedback and WPForms make it easy to create beautiful, functional surveys. I recommend taking the time to carefully craft thoughtful questions tailored to your business goals.
Start small by sending surveys to a percentage of customers at first. Once you‘re confident in the process, make it part of your standard workflow after every new purchase.
I hope this guide provided valuable tips and strategies to help you gain an advantage with post purchase surveys. Let me know if you have any other questions!
