What Is A Website Feedback Tool & How To Use For Online Business Success

A website feedback tool allows developers and business owners to discover what consumers like and dislike about the customer experience on their websites. These tools can also reveal bug issues that might deter customers at checkout or at any other point in the shopping experience in order to provide a seamless customer experience from start to finish.

Acquiring this vital feedback has become much more accessible to enterprises of all sizes, considering the widespread availability of digital website feedback tools to aid with collecting and analyzing feedback. Some even come with handy integration tools to assist in collaborating with colleagues and stakeholders. Analyzing and managing feedback is a technical process that can be nearly impossible to condense into actionable insights without the help of digital tools. 

If you have a brand new startup or you have been in business for several years, user feedback is imperative to online business success. Most consumers view brands more positively if they actively seek out and implement changes according to customer feedback, while a frustrating user experience on a website causes up to two thirds of consumers to have a negative opinion of the brand overall. 

In this article, we’ll go over key aspects related to using a website feedback tool:

Why collect feedback

If you don’t collect feedback from your customers about how their experience with your business was or how they felt about the layout of your website, then you will be missing out on insights that can have a huge impact on how your company is perceived. 

Here are some of the top reasons for why you should be collecting feedback:

1. Know what consumers are looking for

Everything that your customers see on your website affects their experience and how they feel about making an online purchase now and in the future. Colors, design, customer journey, product landing pages, and the products themselves come together to produce an image of your brand. This brand image will be carried in the minds of consumers as they are shopping on your website, and why comparing to others. Collecting feedback can help your company compete more effectively with others in the same field by identifying exactly what your customers are looking for when they visit your website.

2. Supports regular innovation

Gathering and analyzing feedback on a regular basis also supports your company’s ability to innovate your products and services. True innovation comes from the creativity and willingness to constantly adapt to changes and customer values. Technology is quickly driving forward almost everything about doing business online including checkout, packaging, shipping, and customer service. By regularly collecting user feedback you expand your ability to understand your customers, their behavior, and what they truly need from your company.

3. Useful for all departments

Feedback from customers and colleagues is vital to every single business department. This is BugHerd’s primary benefit as a tool: to gather feedback from colleagues so you can more easily ascertain the usefulness of a website. Marketing and sales can use customer feedback to create more effective advertising strategies, product developers will be able to integrate customer feedback into future iterations of products and use it to develop new products, web developers and IT engineers can also use feedback to create a more secure user experience, and leadership will be able to make informed decisions more quickly. Collecting customer feedback is the best way to ensure the future success of any brand.

Types of website feedback tools

How you collect customer feedback on your website can be just as important as the information those surveys can provide. There are a few different ways of collecting feedback from consumers who visit your site:

On-site and in-app surveys

Collecting feedback through surveys on-site is the most common way of collecting vital information about the user experience on both desktop and mobile. It is useful to compare the answers that you receive from these different channels so that you can see what demographics are using which platform to shop and make purchases, which channel produces the most sales, and other details about potential purchasing barriers. Then you can effectively capitalize on this customer feedback.

Off-site surveys

Deploying a survey via email is another highly effective way to gather important feedback from customers. In fact, 20% of emails are opened within the first hour of being sent. People who receive emails from you may be existing customers or people who are interested in your products but haven’t made a purchase yet. Both are ideal consumers who can provide you with actionable feedback based on their different experiences with your brand. Although not every email contact will open the email and follow the link, the insights that they can provide are essential. 

Widgets and chatbots

Another way to ask website visitors for feedback is by implementing a feedback widget or chatbot that can both collect information and guide consumers to solutions to their needs. This real-time data can be analyzed very quickly using a digital website feedback tool and provide valuable insights about website performance, layout, and design that you won’t be able to get at other points in the customer journey. 

Analyzing feedback 

Gathering customer feedback is just the first step in the process of understanding the wants and needs of your consumers. After you’ve implemented a user feedback collection strategy, the next step is to properly analyze the feedback so that it’s understandable and can be turned into actionable insights. If you are a company that is just getting ready to launch, within the first year of launching, or a company that is just now beginning the process of creating a feedback collection strategy, then you need to find the best way to organize, understand, and implement that data before the competition beats you to it. 

Another reason why collecting website feedback drives innovation is because most companies are already taking action and collecting valuable customer insights. Using the information that they have collected, companies are able to stay on top of the rapidly changing trends and needs of their customers. In fact, 62% of marketing leaders reported that the use of online customer feedback at their organizations has increased in the last two years, and 70% said that they expect to collect and use even more online data within the next two years.

There are many ways that businesses can analyze the feedback that they have been collecting. Just like the process of gathering data will be unique to each brand, the method of analyzing that data will vary as well. The right method for your company will depend on several factors, including cost, expertise, the amount of data, and the time frame in which that data needs to be organized, analyzed, and applied.

Analyzing feedback manually

In order to analyze customer feedback manually, a coder experienced in data analytics will be the best choice when it comes to utilizing this method. If you don’t have an in-house data analyst available, then you can always hire a freelancer. They’ll need to use two spreadsheets, one for code frame themes and subthemes, and the other for coding pieces of feedback according to the code frames. This is a very meticulous method of analyzing data and does require a lot of time, effort, and diligence. This method of analyzing data might be best for data regarding long term changes and brand impact.

Automated tools

The most accessible and cost effective way to manage and analyze customer feedback is through the use of an automated website feedback tool. Automation and machine learning developments have streamlined data analytics in both cost and efficiency. 

Automated marketing tools make data collection and analytics go smoothly and quickly so that brands can continue to improve their marketing strategies. Before collecting user feedback from customers, automated feedback tools are often used internally by collecting feedback from colleagues and team members to ensure the website quality before launching or updating the website.

A great automated marketing tool will also include screenshots with technical information to help solve bugs fast. The best part of using an automated tool to analyze customer feedback is that you don’t have to have any technical or coding knowledge to get started.

Using scripts to analyze feedback

You’ll also need a coder for this method of analysis. This method is much like the manual method of analyzing feedback, although it does speed up the process significantly. A DIY script can help automate the process of analyzing feedback data through keyword extraction. Through this method, you can organize data based on certain keywords. However, a lot of times any open ended feedback from customers will be layered and involve many keywords, making it difficult to categorize into one keyword or another. 

How to use a website feedback tool effectively

According to recent surveys, 42% of companies are concerned about adapting to market changes and the future of their business success. Many companies are learning how to adapt to the push towards digitisation, by introducing online delivery services, starting business social media accounts for their brands, and offering new products in the wake of the financial crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This means that there will be a significant learning curve for some when it comes to using a website feedback tool effectively, and that there is a strong desire for businesses to learn how to serve their clients better and increase their income. Luckily, using a website feedback tool can make this transition to online business simple and also help increase profits.

Feedback management

Feedback management is the process of analyzing, implementing, and following up with consumers’ input about their experience. To get the most out of your website feedback tool, you will need to establish your goals for collecting customer feedback. What do you want to know? What do you want to change? Then you can ask your customers specific questions that relate to one of your products or services. 

After collecting the data, it’ll need to be analyzed, either manually or with some form of automation. Then it’s time to act on what you’ve learned. Make logical, data-driven decisions to improve your website and the customer experience. After implementing changes, follow up and make sure that your customers’ needs have been met. Feedback management is an ongoing process that requires constant attention to 4 different areas:

1. Asking the right questions

Ask questions that give you direct and actionable information regarding your brand, your website and the issues that you want to address. Any superfluous information that is collected will just muddle the data. 

2. Asking the right people

Depending on what you want to know, make sure you are asking the right people. Whether that is your internal team, existing customers, all website visitors, stakeholders, or people who abandoned their cart.

3. Asking at the right time

Widgets and pop ups can be very effective ways to gather feedback from visitors, but if the timing is disruptive to their shopping experience they either won’t respond or it will result in consumers being put off by your brand. Make sure to ask for feedback at key points such as when they are leaving your site, if they’ve been searching for a long time, and after they checkout. 

4. Implementing changes based on feedback

The most important aspect of using a website feedback tool is to find ways to implement necessary changes according to customer feedback. When you discover trending issues such as website response issues, design flaws, or hiccups in the checkout process, it is important to have a plan of action in place. 

Website and customer  feedback is one of the most valuable tools that businesses have to improve and strengthen their online presence. Using an all-in-one website feedback tool to gather and analyze user feedback is essential to the success of online businesses moving forward.