The Post-Purchase Survey Question That Finds Your Conversion Problem

Why "it must be price" is usually wrong

A hardware brand I work with was losing buyers at checkout. Everyone assumed it was price. It was fear.

They already had a post-purchase survey, but it asked polite questions nobody acted on. So I rewrote it to ask one thing: what almost stopped you from buying?

The answer came back the same way over and over. Not price. Not shipping. Compatibility. Buyers were not sure the product would work with the gear they already owned, and nothing on the site answered that.

For a considered purchase, this is the normal pattern. The buyer is interested, can afford it, and has one question about their own situation that the site does not answer. They leave to look it up and do not come back.

The one question to ask

"What almost stopped you from buying today?"

Ask it on the order confirmation page, as an open text field, and make it the first question. Three reasons it works:

• It is asked of people who bought. They hit the same doubt as the people who left, and they are still on your site to tell you about it.
• It asks about a moment, not an opinion. "How was your experience?" gets you "great". This gets you the specific hesitation.
• It is open text. A multiple-choice list only contains the objections you already thought of.

Read the first hundred answers yourself and group them by hand. You are looking for the one doubt that shows up far more often than the rest.

Where to put the answer

Once you know the question, answer it everywhere the buyer looks. In this case we answered it three times.

1. On the product page, directly above add to cart. A compatibility checker, at the exact second the doubt appears.
2. On a dedicated page. Every setup the product works with, listed in one place that sales, support and ads can all link to.
3. In the ad creative itself. This is the part most brands skip. Putting the answer in the ad moves qualification upstream, before the click.

Email and the survey itself come next: the browse and cart abandonment flows should lead with the same answer, and the survey keeps running so you catch the next doubt once this one is fixed.

What to measure

Conversion went up. That was the goal. Returns went down. That was not, and it turned out to matter more.

By moving qualification into the ads, buyers ruled themselves out before paying instead of after unboxing. We stopped paying for clicks from people who were never going to keep the product.

So track two numbers together: purchase conversion rate and return rate. Conversion lift you refund is not conversion lift.

A bank of 12 survey questions

Start with the first one. Add others only when you have a decision that depends on the answer.

Hesitation

1. What almost stopped you from buying today?
2. What was the one thing you were unsure about before ordering?
3. Was there anything you had to look up somewhere else before you bought?

Trigger

4. What was happening that made you start looking for this?
5. How long had you been thinking about buying it?
6. What finally made you decide today?

Alternatives

7. What else did you consider?
8. What would you have done if you had not found us?
9. What made you choose this over the alternatives?

Discovery and use

10. Where did you first hear about us?
11. What will you use it with, or for?
12. Who is it for?