Shopify Expert Insights

E-Com Advice from our experienced in-house team

My number one most powerful tool for optimizing a Shopify store isn't Google Analytics, it's customer surveys. And not just any customer survey, we need to ask three very important questions:

  1. How would you feel if you could no longer use us?
  2. What is the primary benefit that you have received from us?
  3. What type of person do you think would benefit most from us?

For our client surveys, we use from survey.io. It's incredibly easy and includes a default set of questions that gives us exactly as much insight as we need. Sign up, it's free, and email that link to your existing customer base. Make it a friendly email that's from a person to maximize response rate. Depending on how warm your list, I'd expect a 5% response rate, with most people responding in the first 24 hours. After that, you can start reviewing their answers and looking for absolute nuggets of conversion gold.

Knowing the why your customers are buying as well as the language they use to describe the benefit of the product is phenomenal insight. If a clear benefit emerges that you're not talking about, rotate your positioning around that benefit and watch as both sales and satisfaction increase. Tune your messaging around the language your customers are using.

For example, we work closely with Everest Bands on a retainer basis to optimize their site. Recently, we surveyed their customers and discovered that we were had completely missed the reason they were buying. We had been selling the idea of customizing a watch with a premium band. It turns out that Everest's customers have been buying the straps because they perceive as a sporty alternative to the standard steel bracelet. Knowing that, we conducted a photo shoot to portray the product in active lifestyle settings, rewrote the product descriptions to talk about active lifestyles, and boom, the conversion rate improved yet again. Had we not asked their customers, we never would have known to change the brand's positioning.

Until you ask, you're just guessing. For the cost of only your time, survey your customers and find out why they're really buying. Ideally I would either send surveys at regular intervals, or include it as part of a marketing automation program (like Klaviyo) and email customers 60 days after purchase to touch base and survey them. Review the results quarterly and re-position your business accordingly. You'll be amazed by the actionable insight your customers are dying to tell. You just have to ask.