Can a Simple Survey Improve Your Customer Insight?

Customer insight is an elusive measure to obtain. You can look at all the web analytics in order to find certain trends and hang ups, test ad copy, landing pages, etc. Knowing what variables to change might allow an increase in conversion. However, these metrics might only tell you what to change, not why or how to change it. So how can you easily garner customer insight into the performance, or lack thereof, concerning your website? The first of last month, I starting running across articles and praise concerning a newly developed, open source survey for your site. Jointly developed by iPerceptions and web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik, the 4Q survey is simple enough. As described by Avinash on his blog, the survey is “A true permission based on-exit survey that provides an easy to deploy, easy to use and easier still to analyze framework to answer 4 questions that no website owner can live without.” This claims to offer a quick and concise window into the consumer’s mind dealing with:

1. What is the purpose of your visit to our Web site today?
2. Were you able to complete your task today?
3. If you were not able to complete your task today, why not?
4. If you did complete your task, what did you enjoy most about the site?

I was eager to test this service, however was hesitant waiting for catch. Set up is simple enough, a tongue-and-cheek YouTube video provided to assist, dropping code on the site much like a Google Analytics code, the service is free, and other than providing a back link, there appears to be little in the way of payment for iPerceptions. The survey questions can be somewhat customized; for purpose of visit, there are about twenty listed for multiple types of websites. We placed the code on an Ecommerce website and waited. Since installation on June 20th, there have been 32 respondents, some providing a good degree of customer insight, some not. However, after this period we have already seen a level of redundancy in responses concerning multiple issues. There patterns regarding certain site aesthetics, product features, and amount of offerings are providing the first signals as to the direction of possible development as well as emphasis on certain landing pages. The degree of information you will obtain from this service is somewhat limited, however for the time of set up and pay off, 4Q has, so far, been a worth wild experiment.