EBizInsider

In the past I have written about how customer reviews can play a large part in your customer’s shopping experience, but have you considered how they can also play a part in the design and development of your website? In this day of social networks and social interaction, people are more willing to share their thoughts and ideas on a product, offering, website or company as a whole. As a website owner it’s very easy to shy away from collecting that kind of information for fear that people will say negative things about your website and your prHow oducts. Let them! It can be very valuable to you and your business.

Feedback Helps
As a business owner you are constantly looking at your shelves and watching the boxes as they leave the warehouse to see which products are selling and which ones aren’t. This type of analysis tells you which products you need to order and which items you need to clear out. This is a critical part of managing your warehouse and keeping your business growing.

These same analytics are important for your online storefront as well. Using an analytics program can be very valuable to your business and give you insight on how shoppers are browsing your store. With online analytics you can get a good sense of which categories are the most popular, which search engines drive the most visitors along with which keywords generate the most sales.

All of this information is valuable to your business, but does it tell you how your customers really feel about your website? Do you know what gets them to click the order button or what keeps them from clicking that button? You can get this information from your analytics program, but it’ll take forever to find.

Ask the Tough Questions
Take your efforts up a notch by soliciting direct feedback from your customers. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out on a limb by asking for this feedback, chances are you’ll learn a lot of valuable information that you probably didn’t know before. To do this, make the process as easy and attractive as possible for your customers. A simple e-mail link will not work. Instead, be obvious. Create a link that says “Leave feedback.” Even better, give your customers 10% on the “Thank You” page for leaving a product review or feedback. The “feedback” link could then open in a pop-up or pop-in window with some basic information. Name, E-mail and Comments could be enough, but ask for more from the customer that will better help you make a decision. You know which questions to ask. Hey, if you want your back scratched you know what needs to happen.

You can also collect indirect solicitation, also called A/B split testing, to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t work. The idea here is that you have two different versions of a promotion, version A and version B, each with a distinct message and/or discount. Once you have the test set up, a program will randomly display one of the promotions and you will get to see which test resulted in the most sales. This small sampling allows you to see which changes will result in the most sales, so after your results are in place you can roll out the most popular promo to every visitor. Google AdWords offers a great tool called Website Optimizer that does exactly this, and of course it’s FREE!

Keep up with your Customers
These are just two methods that you could explore in an effort to understand your consumers a little bit more. And don’t fall into the trap that, “Well, I’ve been doing this X amount of years and I know my customers,” or “I have a lot of experience in retail and I know what the customer wants.” Internet users are adapting to new technology on a continual basis. Never forget, an internet shopper is not the same as a retail shopper.

Customer’s have a powerful voice, don’t be afraid to listen to it and change your website to suit their needs more effectively and efficiently—and profitably!

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