Does Your Ecommerce Website Let Customers Down?
The simplest short-term way to improve any ecommerce website is to figure out where the problems are & remove them one by one. The obvious paradox is: If you knew where the problems were, you’d have fixed them already. So how do you find those problems? Where are you letting customers down?
Here’s a very simple way to find problems & track your improvement over time…
Step One: Survey Every Order
A few days after each order has been fulfilled, send out a ‘Thank You’ email. Within this email, include a very small survey consisting of 2 questions:
Question 1. How would you rate this order?
- Excellent
- Good
- Average
- Below Average
- Poor
Question 2. If any part of this order could have been better, what would have improved it?
- [freeform text box]
Step Two: Follow Up On The Feedback
At a set period (say once a week/once a month), collate all of the feedback from customers who rated their orders as ‘Poor’. These are the customers you’ve failed, and their comments should tell you exactly how you’ve failed. This gives you a list of ‘problems’ to fix; a roadmap to improving your site. Put this into a project plan & tackle each problem one by one. (From a brand perspective, it’s worth emailing each of these customers to thank them for their feedback & to explain that you plan to address their problems, and then emailing them again once the issue has been fixed).
Step Three: Track The Ratings Over Time
Let’s say you start off with most comments ‘below average’. After a few months of feedback, you should have identified & ironed out the major common problems & your rating should rise. After that, you can move on to the improvements suggested by customers who rate their orders as ‘average’, and so on, until you’ve reached a stage where the majority of your orders are rated as ‘excellent’.
Not only does this allow you to continually improve, it also provides a safeguard mechanism. Each time you roll out a major change to the site, you can compare the ‘before’ and ‘after’ ratings to ensure you haven’t caused your customers any unforeseen problems.
