How to collect website feedback

What is website feedback?

Website feedback is experience data about your website which comes from your end-users.

It can be solicited by you, or it can be sent spontaneously by users via email or social media. Users may also offer website feedback through reviews, either on your site or on a third-party platform.

You may have seen feedback invitations from brands when you visit their websites or landing pages. They’re typically in the form of a short survey questionnaire popup or intercept.

Why is website feedback important?

With more and more transactions and experiences moving online, having a website that performs well has become business-critical. To that end, finding out what website visitors think and feel about the online experience you provide has a number of benefits.

Identify barriers to conversion

Requesting feedback when a user abandons their shopping cart or navigates away from your website can provide important insights on how you can improve the experience and get a higher conversion rate.

Find out more about your users

Website feedback can help you understand why someone came to your website, what they expect from you, and whether their needs were met.

Improve UX

Website feedback can point you towards elements of your website UX that might be confusing users or failing to support their tasks. For example, you might learn that users can’t find a button or tab, and as a result you make it more prominent or move it to a more intuitive place.

Improve accessibility

It may not be possible to include all user groups who are in a minority, such as people with visual impairment, colour-blindness or learning difficulties, during your initial user testing, especially if you’re working with small numbers of participants. People in these groups may contribute valuable extra feedback on accessibility once your site is live.

Get a heads-up on technical issues affecting customers

User feedback may be how you learn that your site is loading slowly, is failing to display on some browsers, or if functionality like shopping carts and user accounts isn’t working properly.

Connect “what” with “why”

Website feedback may seem like a roundabout way of finding out what’s going on with your site, especially when you have analytics tools that can monitor its performance in detail moment by moment.

But website feedback and website analytics aren’t equivalent. They’re two complementary puzzle pieces that fit together to give you a more complete picture.

Analytics tells you what is happening – for example that you’re experiencing an unaccounted for dip in online conversions. Website feedback gives you the explanation for that trend in human terms – for example, maybe there’s a new authentication step from your payment provider during the checkout that users find off-putting.

How to collect website feedback

Surveys

Website feedback surveys are the most comprehensive format for collecting feedback, as they include multiple questions covering various aspects of website experience and allow you to delve deeper into feedback for website design.

Although not all users will have the time to complete a survey, those that do will provide feedback across several dimensions, including the nature and purpose of their visit, how the experience measured up to their expectations, and how likely they are to make future visits or recommend you to friends and family.

Website feedback surveys can be served to users as part of the website itself, or as a follow-up, e.g. in a post-purchase email.

Site intercepts and overlays

These are short, to-the-point questionnaires that appear during a user’s site visit and collect feedback on a page-specific level. These are usually contextual – i.e. they’re triggered when a certain set of conditions are met, such as a customer navigating away from your website when there are items still in their cart.

Site intercepts can be a great way to home in on specific topics, website features or user behaviours you want to know more about.

Feedback buttons and sliders

Adding a persistent feedback button or slider to your web design allows users to provide feedback easily at any point during their site visit. When the user interacts with the button or slider, a feedback form appears.

These passive feedback mechanisms are a useful way to collect feedback without risking annoying users by disrupting their experience with a pop-over or overlay.

Email

Webmaster email addresses for collecting site feedback aren’t as common as they once were, but adding a specific call to action on your contact page could provide an additional way to get feedback on your website.

Reviews

Collecting user reviews can be a valuable way to gain website feedback, especially if you structure the review form the customer completes into sections rather than using one open field text box. For example, you could have questions on product quality, service, shipping, and website ease of use.

Learn about our Website & App Feedback Tool

What questions should you ask when collecting website feedback?

Here are some typical website feedback questions and topics to include in a survey questionnaire.

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

“On a scale from 0-10, based on your experience today, how likely are you to recommend our website to a friend or colleague?”

NPS is a well-known metric that gauges customer satisfaction using the idea of social proof. If a customer is willing to recommend you, their experience has been so good that they are happy to share it with people they know and care about.

Purpose of visit

“What was the primary purpose of your visit to our website today?”

This question can help you understand where your website sits in the customer journey. Do customers spend time browsing or are they more likely to come to you to make a final purchase after researching products elsewhere? Understanding goals and behaviours like this can help you design a site that supports your users more.

Intent to convert

“How willing would you be to make a purchase from this website?”

This question can indicate whether your website promotes customer trust and confidence, and if people feel that you offer good value and an easy path to purchase.

You’ll find these questions and more in our free website satisfaction survey template, which you can download and use today with your free Qualtrics account. You can also view a sample website feedback form before downloading, so you can check if the template’s right for you.