How post-purchase surveys can supercharge your business

Every ecommerce biz is in the game to serve its customers. To knock it out of the park, we have to be all about our customers and pack as much value as we can into their experience.

Here's a tip from the ecommerce trenches: Post-purchase surveys are a secret sauce that can help do just that.

They're pretty much a cheat code for making savvy business decisions and delivering what your customers truly want.

In this post, I'm going to share how I use post-purchase surveys with Knocommerce for both HeapsGood and Threadheads. Plus, I'll share some of my top questions to ask. Let's go!

Meet Knocommerce - the Sherlock Holmes of customer survey platforms, specifically designed for Shopify store owners.

I'm going to write this blog post with Knocommerce in mind as it's comfortably the best solution on the market right now (and it has a free plan). Knocommerce gets you up close and personal with your customer data through supercharged post-purchase survey tooling.

It may surprise you, but I get over a 30% response rate from my post-purchase surveys. One in three customers are happy to share their feedback!

Here are a few example questions that I use for my brands, to hopefully demonstrate how useful post-purchase surveys can be...

Confused about where your customers are coming from? Attribution is a cloudy situation at the moment in ecommerce land. Post-purchase surveys clear that up, giving you a sharper picture of which marketing channels are driving awareness.

The first question I ask to achieve this is 'how did you first hear about us?'

Then you can better understand the customer journey by asking how long it took them to purchase (as shown above).

If a channel exceeds your expectations, then it might be a good idea to allocate more investment, time and energy towards it.

You can ask your customers about product preferences, what they'd like to see more of, or even ideas for new products.

First I ask a simple 'yes' or 'no' question.

I then use conditional logic to ask what products they want to see.

For many brands, it's important to know what percentage of your orders are gifts. If it's a high percentage, I would consider evergreen gifting messaging (always talk about gifts), doubling-down on gifting occasions like Father's Day, and adding personalisation to your customer experience with custom packaging.

Then, if they select any of options B-D, dive in a little deeper and ask what the occasion is:

P.S. Who is already buying for Christmas!?

Customers have given me some absolute gems when it comes to user experience that I never would've thought of. Plus they've also pointed out some pretty bad website bugs!

After this question, I again use conditional logic to ask what issue the 'yes' people encountered.

This is an easy one but fairly powerful. Get a snapshot of your competition, so you can come up with ways to differentiate with a product, service, offer and more.

Knocommerce actions enables you to add coupon codes (and heaps more) to your surveys, usually at the end of the survey.

This means you can turn insight into action: prompt customers to act directly in their surveys. Think coupons, upsells, referrals, loyalty programs - you name it, boosting your ROI while you're at it.

I'd suggest rotating your questions every 3-6 months based on order volume. This way, you can gather varied data and better understand your audience over time. For Threadheads, I then collect this information in our brand deck (age, gender, favourite categories, % of gifting and so forth).

Definitely aim to have two surveys to begin with: one for new customers and another for existing customers. This will ensure you get clear attribution data, and better understand your audience at the different stages of the customer journey.

Just think about this: how often do you get the chance to chat directly with your customers, to get feedback on your products and brand? That's some powerful stuff. With customer surveys, all it takes is asking the right questions, and your customers will be more than willing to lend a hand.

Really hope you found this blog post useful! Got any questions about post-purchase questions? Drop it in the comments below or contact me at ace@heapsgoodpackaging.com.au and I'll help you out. If you want to get started, check out Knocommerce here.