How to add a Shopify post purchase survey on your Order status page

One of the most effective ways to understand your customers is by asking the right questions at the right time. This is where post-purchase surveys come into play, providing a wealth of valuable data that can help you elevate your business to new heights.

In this article, we’ll explore post-purchase surveys and their crucial role in improving the customer experience. More specifically, we’ll guide you through the process of adding a post-purchase survey using Forms by MESA to your Shopify Order Status page, a strategic location that allows you to gather feedback when the shopping experience is still fresh in your customers’ minds.

Whether you’re a Shopify novice or a seasoned pro, this tutorial will offer insights that can help you make data-driven decisions, optimize your offerings, and ultimately, increase your customer satisfaction and loyalty. So, if you’re ready to harness the power of customer feedback to boost your eCommerce business, read on!

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Understanding post-purchase surveys

A post-purchase survey is a powerful tool used by businesses to gather critical feedback from customers after they’ve made a purchase. This feedback often covers aspects such as product satisfaction, customer service, shipping experience, and the purchasing process as a whole.

A post-purchase survey, as the name suggests, is conducted after a customer completes a purchase. Its primary goal is to gather information about the customer’s buying experience. The insights derived from these surveys offer a plethora of benefits. They can help you identify what you’re doing right and where there’s room for improvement. These surveys also provide an opportunity to uncover trends, improve customer retention, and even drive positive word-of-mouth referrals.

Key components of an effective post-purchase survey

While the questions in your survey will depend on your specific goals, there are some common elements that make up an effective post-purchase survey:

1. Relevant and Specific Questions: The questions should be relevant to the purchasing and product usage experience. For instance, asking about the ease of the checkout process, product satisfaction, or delivery experience.
2. Different Types of Questions: A good mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions can provide both qualitative and quantitative feedback. While closed-ended questions can help identify patterns and quantify customer satisfaction, open-ended questions can provide rich insights and uncover issues you may not have been aware of.
3. Rating Scale Questions: Questions based on a rating scale (like the Net Promoter Score question, “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend?”) can help you measure and track customer satisfaction over time.
4. Easy and Quick to Complete: The survey should be straightforward and quick to complete, ideally taking no more than a few minutes.
5. Anonymity: Providing an option to answer anonymously can help you gather honest feedback, as customers may feel more comfortable sharing their real thoughts.

By understanding the purpose of post-purchase surveys and the elements that make them effective, you can start to create a survey that delivers valuable, actionable feedback for your Shopify store.

Step-by-step tutorial: Add a Shopify post-purchase form to order status

Try this workflow template and personalize it to meet your exact needs. Follow the step below to better understand how it works.

<script>
Shopify.Checkout.OrderStatus.addContentBox(
     '<h2>How satisfying was your shopping experience today</h2>',
     '<form id="mesa-form"></form>'
    );
</script>
<script src="https://mymesa.site/your-uuid/forms/new_workflow_1.js"></script>

As a result, this is what the survey would look like on the order status page after checkout using the Advanced Option.

How to save post-purchase form responses

Now, what to do with form submissions?

Luckily, you have plenty of options.

Add another step in the workflow that captures the form data and stores it somewhere.

Maybe you’d like to have everything go to a Google Sheet. Or perhaps, you’d like to send a team Slack every time a submission happens.

However, the simplest option would be simply to email the results.

We can use the built-in Email app.

Next, click the { + } icon for each field to bring over the data from each respective form field.

Lastly, Save and Enable your automation.

Be sure to click the “Save” button and turn your automation to “On”. Then, your automation will run every time your Shopify post purchase survey is submitted. Consequently, MESA will proudly celebrate your achievement by popping confetti in your honor. Congratulations!

Types of post-purchase surveys

Brands need data about their customers in order to make the customer experience more personalized. Once a post-purchase survey has been completed, the results can be used to better understand, segment, and cater to repeat customers and others who look like them in the future.

Once your post-purchase survey is built, you’ll want to think about the questions you’ll include. Here are a few areas to consider.

Competitive advantage: Why did you buy from us?

A simple question like this can help you understand why a consumer decided to buy a product from your store. It also helps you discover your brand’s unique value proposition, and you can use these insights to produce content and marketing materials that are more effective down the road.

When answering this question, you could use a scale of 1-10 or a tick box for subscribers to share their reasoning for purchasing your product.

Common factors may include:

• Pricing
• I am looking for a specific item in stock
• Favorable product reviews
• I am a loyal customer
• You came up first in my search
• Referral from a friend or website

Satisfaction with the shopping experience: How was your shopping experience?

This question is a critical one. Conversion rate can be improved by better understanding the customer’s journey, all the way from the landing page through final checkout. When you know what works about the experience (and where there’s friction), you can constantly improve your customer experience.

From the moment a consumer clicks onto your online store to when they finally get the product delivered, you’ll want to know everything about their shopping experience. Here are some key questions to include in your survey:

• How was the site browsing experience?
• Did you have any issues using the website?
• What did you like/dislike about our checkout process?
• How can we do better?

These types of questions allow for specific insight from customers on what needs work or how the shopping experience was overall. Some questions can be answered with a Yes/No tick box and space for more information, but others can be open-ended to give your customers a chance to share in-depth.

Attribution: How did you find us?

The underwear retailer Athena offers first-time purchasers this quick post-purchase survey on the checkout confirmation page after a few seconds in response to mouse exit behavior. They use this one-question survey to better understand what (or whom) attracts people to their site.

With this question, you’ll be able to determine the primary source of where your customers came from. The information gathered from this question can help you learn more about your customers’ origins and their attribution value. It’s also a great way to identify the top traffic sources driving new customers.

This could be an open-ended question, a multiple-choice question, or a single-choice question, with these referral sources as options:

• Search Engine
• Facebook post
• Twitter tweet
• Instagram post
• Online Ads
• Blog post
• Loyal customer
• Word of mouth
• Other

Find & nurture your influencers: Are you an online influencer open to promotional opportunities?

Micro-influencer nurturing campaigns created in partnership with existing customers are an excellent option to reach a larger audience.

Social media users with a loyal following that don’t fit the traditional mold of celebrities, specialists, or well-recognized public figures are known as micro-influencers. They’re people who work in a specific industry and frequently post content about it on social media. In contrast to standard “influencers,” micro-influencers have fewer follower counts, usually in the thousands or tens of thousands, yet their audiences are highly engaged with their content.

Asking your customers to share their personal networks can open the doors to perfect match co-marketing opportunities.

Support resourcing and customer service

As the world’s most popular online retailer, Amazon places a high value on customer satisfaction, especially when it comes to customer service. Look at the survey form, and you’ll see that the company asks about service quality and gives customers a chance to explain any specific issues.

Toward the end of your survey, you’ll want to include questions concerning proactive customer support. These insights can also help you proactively improve the customer experience and reduce manual tasks via automation. 

For example, “Where is my order?” queries can be reduced by notifying customers through SMS when their order arrives (or will be arriving.) This type of automation can also help reduce customer support load and create an opportunity to ask for a review, a powerful form of social proof. 

Also: ask if there are specific concerns with the support process or if customers have run into an issue in the past.

By asking these types of questions, your team will be able to follow up with customers in the future to get out in front of potential sources of churn. In your survey, be sure to include links to your FAQs and support resources if they’re looking for a self-service option. 

This is also a great time to promote your brand on other channels. Ask customers: How do you like to communicate with us? Responses might be things like:

• Via Email
• Social Media
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
• Customer Service chat
• Other

Tips to increase survey participation

To glean the most meaningful insights from your post-purchase surveys, it’s critical to garner a substantial participation rate. However, given that your customers are often busy and have little extra time, it might prove challenging to engage them in surveys. Fortunately, a few strategic measures can considerably enhance your survey participation. Let’s explore these tactics:

Keep Your Survey Short and Straightforward:

Lengthy surveys are a major deterrent for customers. Aim to keep your survey concise, focusing on the most critical aspects of the customer experience. Ensure that the survey questions are clear and easy to understand, minimizing the effort needed to complete them.

Provide Incentives for Completing the Survey:

Offering a small incentive can greatly increase the response rate. This could be a discount on the next purchase, a small freebie, or even entry into a draw for a larger prize. Make sure to clearly communicate this incentive at the beginning of the survey to pique their interest.

Time Your Survey Correctly:

The timing of the survey can greatly impact participation. It’s usually best to send it immediately after purchase when the experience is fresh in the customer’s mind. However, for products that require some usage before customers can accurately assess them, it may be beneficial to delay the survey until they’ve had time to use the product.

Personalize the Survey Request:

A personalized request can make the customer feel valued and more inclined to help. Use their name, reference their purchase, and explain why their feedback is essential to improving their future experiences with your business.

Make the Survey Mobile-Friendly:

With an ever-increasing number of customers using mobile devices for online shopping, ensuring your survey is mobile-friendly is crucial. This makes it easy for customers to provide feedback whenever and wherever it’s most convenient for them.

By implementing these strategies, you’ll be well on your way to increasing your survey response rate and gaining invaluable insights from your customers. Remember, every piece of feedback brings you one step closer to providing a better shopping experience that keeps customers coming back for more.

Workflow wrap up

Now, every time you receive a form submission, you can receive an email with the results.

Every step in this workflow is 100% customizable. As you can see from this tutorial if you want to adjust the formatting later, you can easily do so. Or, if you want to extend the functionality of this workflow to do more, simply add another workflow step.