Ask Your Customers Why They Bought

You can gain a lot of very valuable insights from your existing customers when you want to optimise your site. After all, if there’s anyone who knows what the main reason…

… is people are buying from you, it’s the people who are buying from you.

The actual reason why people buy can be very different then you might think.

An example:

A newspaper thought that most people signed up because they inform people about the news. When I asked customers why they actually bought, they all said one thing… because of the regional and local news. Not the just the news – it was all about the regional news. I A/B tested a new version of the funnel emphasising the regional news aspect and it clearly generated more sign ups.

So after people have bought something from you, ask them a few quick questions about why they did. Open-questions tend to generate the best insights.

You can do this in multiple ways:

1) Thank you page survey
The easiest and most direct way would be to put a short survey on the thank-you page. I use Hotjar for this. Ask them how they found your product, what motivated them to make a purchase, alternatives they considered or any other information you may want to know.

2) E-mail customers
Another way is to email recent customers a link to an online survey. If you want to ensure you get enough responses, I suggest adding an attach a reward to filling out the survey, like a chance to win a gift card.

Here a couple of open questions that tend to work very well: What’s the main reason you bought from us?

-What made you buy?
– Which fears, uncertainties and doubts did you have about the product before buying?
– Which alternatives did you consider?
– How would you describe our products to your friends, family and colleagues?
– How’s your life better thanks to our product?

These results can give you very useful information for future marketing. You can adapt your marketing to the responses to target a more specific audience, and you can use some of the wording your respondents use to make your headlines and USP’s and copy fit more closely with the expectations of your customers.