When was the last time you asked your online customers for feedback?

In the age of social media, customer feedback is taking centre stage. For the benefit of those who are not familiar with customer feedback, it is simply the information gathered from your clients or customers, mostly gathered using google, a website or social media channel. Customer feedback will help you measure your customers’ level of satisfaction.

Nowadays, this data is gathered using a variety of approaches, ranging from comment cards to website surveys. The data is also gathered from a variety of devices too (personal computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones).

Since customer feedback is now taking the marketing spotlight, several companies and famous brands are taking a different approach: the customers are now the focus of attention. By taking into consideration what the customers are saying and how they are reacting, you will be able to gauge their level of satisfaction, customer experience and brand loyalty.

Why is customer feedback important?

Collecting customer feedback is essential in getting an insight into the behaviour of your customers. By asking your online customers for their feedback, you will be able to:

• Boost your online conversion
• Enhance your customer engagement
• Improve customer support
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing strategies
• Improve the overall website experience of your customers

As we have mentioned earlier, there are several ways to gather individual or representative online customer feedback. The type of data you need to collect should depend on what your business goals are. You should also take note that not all customer feedback gathering methods are the same.

If you are planning to know how your website is received by your customers, getting their feedback is perhaps the best way. This is essential, especially if you want to analyse what is working or not.

Think about this. Your customers are the major source of traffic on your website. Their opinions are important and essential to the success of your website.

Their online feedback will serve as a guide for creating long-term business strategies. If you will take the time to analyse the data from your customers, you can adjust your website accordingly, and, in turn, generate more customers and boost your sales. If your website works for your existing customers (the ones who gave you feedback), the likelihood that it will work with potential customers is high.

When you are ready to collect or request feedback, keep an objective mind and be open to all possible suggestions because it will be a waste of time if you will resist making the necessary changes. Even though you are emotionally invested with your online venture, being subjective with your customers’ feedback will not do any good for you. After all, you’re seeking feedback to improve things, aren’t you?

How easy is your website to navigate?

Without feedback, you probably will have no idea if customers are enjoying your website or not. If possible, you should gather feedback as soon as you can. This piece of information is priceless.

If your website is new, getting the initial viewpoint of any news customers is of vital importance because the feedback of your frequent website visitors may not be as rich. Besides, taking note of their feedback will allow you and your web developer to make the necessary changes because implementing them would be easy at this stage: this is the most efficient and cost-effective way.

In addition, consolidating customer feedback early in the process will make a huge difference in the long-term because leaving any slight issue unattended will decrease your website’s capacity to convert visitors into consumers: this may result in consequential losses as time passes by.

To prevent this from happening, a simple timely modification can result in dramatic growth.

If any of your website visitors dislike an aspect of your website, you need to know exactly what aspect of your website they disliked and why they disliked it. This will help you know what to work on. For instance, when your customers report a bug issue or 404 error, you can address the issues from its source.

Aside from seeking feedback, you should also determine if the feedback you’re gathering comes from your target demographic or audience. If not, the feedback that you will receive might mislead you or will give you little or no value at all.

If you will seek feedback from people you know, such as your family and friends, they may not belong to your target demographic and may give you biased responses. As we have mentioned earlier, keep an objective mind.

With this in mind, what are some of the types of feedback you can implement for your website? Here are a few of them:

• Comment cards. This type of individual feedback is gathered by providing website visitors with an area where they can write their comments and click the feedback button. This can help your customers vent out their feelings directly to you, instead of venting them out on review sites or social media.
• This type of triggered feedback will determine the behaviour patterns of your target demographic. This will help you understand your customers’ needs and optimise your website for them.
• Focused representative research. When making strategic decisions, seeking representative feedback is the most ideal course of action. By inviting a number of your website customers to leave feedback after visiting your website, you will be able to gather key performance indicators like brand perception, customer satisfaction, and purchase intent.

Could you make the website experience any better?

Yes, you can! Gathering feedback, whether it is positive or negative, can help you improve the website experience of your customers. Think about this: negative feedback is better than not having any feedback at all but when it comes to negative feedback, you have to determine if it will turn your website’s weakness into a strength or it is an offer of constructive criticism.

Be grateful if your customers are honest with you. Do not be discouraged about it.

Sometimes, customers will just leave highly subjective feedback like ‘I don’t like it’ or ‘I don’t get it’. You have to remember that you cannot please all people. You do not need to act on this.

Just remember, before you do any changes to your website, learn to filter your feedback by taking in what’s useful and statistically significant.