Why Customer Feedback is Key for Increasing Your Conversion Rate

When most website owners think of conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools, heatmap and sessions are typically at the top of their list. These tools depict how visitors interact with your site and inform robust CRO strategies, but to get the most precise understanding of user behavior, layering customer feedback into your website optimization process is essential.

The role of customer feedback in the website optimization process

The phrase “website optimization” gets thrown around everywhere. You’ve heard it in conversations about UX design, analytics, keywords and even email campaigns, but what is it really?

Website optimization involves all of those components and more. The term encompasses every digital marketing effort, SEO and technical aspect that drives traffic to your website and converts those visitors into paying customers. 

The best CRO strategies focus on understanding user behavior. And while core CRO tools let you see where people click, how far they scroll and how they interact with forms, visitor feedback tools take things a step further. 

Customer feedbacktools like surveys and live chat provide a communication channel for visitors to ask questions, provide an opinion or give constructive criticism. Instead of guessing why a customer isn’t converting, these tools allow you to step in and ask important questions to the right people at the right time in theconversion funnel

Let’s take a look at three of the most crucial customer feedback tools you can deploy on your website to learn more about why people convert or why they may abandon your website unsatisfied. 

Live Chat

With Lucky Orange Live Chat, you or your team members can talk to visitors in real-time, addressing any questions they have and pointing them in the right direction to a part of your website they might otherwise have trouble finding. 

Whether you're a team of one or 10, Lucky Orange’s Live Chat is completely customizable to the amount of time and resources you are able to put towards it. Choose office hours or select to only live chat when you’re available. Even an hour or two of live chat a week can provide you with some powerful user behavior insights. 

Simply include a chat icon at the bottom of a landing page or any key website section or go a step further and invite users to chat when you notice them having difficulty navigating your site. 

Guiding people to the right page on your site is only the beginning. Live chatting with customers gives insight into your website's problem areas. 

If customers keep having trouble finding what they're looking for and express that in chat, you have a new CRO hypothesis to test. You also have the opportunity to ask if they are satisfied with their experience and can use their answers to determine if your site is meeting their needs. 

At the very least, you’ve helped customers better navigate your website, and at the very best, you're getting a direct view into visitor behavior and are better equipped to make changes that align with your goals.

Announcements

Whether announcing a new product or an exciting promotion, well-timed announcements can mean the difference between a bounce or a conversion on your site. 

Lucky Orange Announcements allow you to choose the format, text and timing—perfect for giving your consumers a little push toward converting. 

Let's say one of your customers puts a product in their cart and is ready to check out but may be spending a long time on your shipping page—indicating some confusion or struggle. Setting an announcement about free shipping to pop up after 10 seconds on that page can drive a conversion you might have otherwise missed out on. 

Not all announcements are created equal. Here are some examples of impactful announcement types that will boost any CRO strategy. 

Announcing a sale or promotion

How many times have you been online shopping and an announcement popped up with a promotional code? Promotions work, and announcing a sale to website visitors will likely increase conversions on your site. Strategically choose when your announcement will pop up and where, to give visitors the push they need to convert. 

For example, let’s say you've noticed high cart abandonment rates. To increase conversions, you could create an announcement that would be triggered at the checkout page announcing a sale within a short time frame. This announcement would influence the visitor to act with a sense of urgency and complete the sale. 

Announcing changes in business operations

Announcements can also be used to communicate changes in business operations with your website visitors. If you are changing your business hours or will be closed in observance of a holiday, an announcement will keep visitors in the loop and alleviate their frustrations if a customer service need arises.

New offering

If your website has a new feature or product, creating an announcement about it is a great tactic for generating customer interest.  Don’t wait for website visitors to discover new offerings by themselves—an announcement will catch their attention and help them navigate to the right landing page. 

Surveys

When utilized correctly, surveys give you a peek into the mind of your customers. They can point you in the direction of your problem areas and give you valuable insights you could have missed when using other CRO tools. In the CRO process's research and evaluation phases, surveys help you form a hypothesis or understand if your solution is the right one. 

Including a survey on your site isn’t enough to drive conversions, though. It will only be helpful if you know what questions to ask. To get you started, we’ve compiled a few questions that you can use to understand why certain behaviors happen.

Types of survey questions to ask

What was the purpose of your visit?

This question helps you understand what kind of traffic you’re attracting to your site and if your visitors are looking to convert or come for a different reason. If they aren’t looking to convert, consider what you’re doing to drive traffic to the site. Do your CTAs and online profiles align with your product or service’s true benefits? 

Were you able to find what you were looking for? If not, why?

This question provides insight into the user experience of your website and the needs of your customer. If they answer no, then you know you have adjustments to be made to drive more conversions. 

Watching sessions to see visitor behavior before answering this question will help you see what site elements drive their confusion or struggle.

How would you rate your experience on our site today?

This question measures the user experience of your website. In Lucky Orange Surveys, you can review profiles for each website visitor who responds to your survey. 

If a visitor responds negatively to this survey question, click on their profile and watch the most recent session recording to understand where a problem in their experience occurred. Understanding this person's behavior will help you spot issues with your format and can lead to an impactful CRO hypothesis. 

Conclusion

The next time you’re using CRO tools to optimize your website, take a second to consider where customer feedback can fit into your existing process. Layering feedback into your CRO strategy will allow you to create stronger hypotheses, collect better research and provide insights into your visitor's behavior that you might have missed with just heatmaps and sessions.