I am interested to know if it is worthwhile using online polls on a fashion ecommerce website to collect data about the consumer?

hi, Usman, how are you?

It depends on what you're using it for & what information you want!

Nice tip: a very non-intrusive place to put polls, where you'll also get very good results, is the post-checkout page. After someone's made an order with you, they generally:

A. Trust you
B. Have nothing else to do at that exact moment

Hope that helps!

daniel

Hi Usman,

This really depends on whether you just want the views of customers or also those people who have visited your site and for whatever reason decided not to purchase. The latter group are important if you want to understand reasons for non-purchase (eg products, user experience, costs, just browsing, etc) and to also increase purchase conversion rates amongst these users.

For customer surveys I have found that including feedback links within post purchase confirmation emails to be more effective than a splash screen following a purchase. This allows the customers to fill in a survey at a time that suits them rather than directly following what may have been a long purchase process. Obviously its important that these emails go soon after the purchase so that feedback is considered and relevant. I have implemented this on a large european e-travel site and collected 1000 responses per market per survey and obtained really insightful data that helped improve the customer experience and conversion rates.

Hope this helps,

Chris Handford
SPA Research

On 12:15:16 9 July 2008 StephenFoxworthy wrote:

Hi Usman,

DanielB's response is very relevant - Having a poll post-purchase means you're gaining CUSTOMER feedback, not just browser feedback.

This is an important distinction to make. People are very opinionated, so the views of someone who has actually purchased may be much more valuable than the view of someone who has been on your site, but effectively just 'kicking tyres'.

This is the same as product reviews. There's a huge difference between an actual customer review, and a general user's review of a product or service.

Post purchase survey is one of the best ways to gain insight into your consumers, but again, the survey needs to be non-intrusive, short and relevant.

Avoid generic questions, segment your questions by what you already know about the customer, eg. gender, location, product purchased etc. and keep it short - think about what you really want to know from customers, and what you want to do with the data. Make it actionable.

Good luck with it.

Regards,
Stephen Foxworthy
Digital Director,
www.BPLMarketing.com