27 powerful survey questions for your website audience

Of the types of consumer research available, surveying your website visitors is among the best when pursuing powerful in-the-moment feedback and improve customer acquisition. But when it comes to creating a survey template, deciding which questions to include can be quite the hurdle. Here are 27 starter questions segmented by potential survey goals, beginning with better understanding your first-time visitors.

Great questions will help you get the most out of Lucky Orange Surveys.

First-time visitors

1.  What are you trying to accomplish today? 

You've invested in driving traffic to your website. Start by figuring out if that traffic is actually in-market for your products or services and are your target audience. This is likely a multiple choice question with answer options specific to your business (Get a quote, Compare prices, Contact customer service).

2. Have you shopped with any of our competitors before?

Any variation of this question attempts to monitor the competitive landscape and pick up on trends of new customers comparing your options against competitors in the same space.

3. How did you hear about us? 

Learning where your customers come from is key to developing an optimized marketing strategy. Getting more people saying they heard about you from a friend? Consider leaning into a comprehensive referral program. Never seeing responses indicating they heard your radio ad? It might be time to discontinue your radio spots.

These are the types of survey questions that can guide much larger business, marketing efforts and marketing incentives.

4. Is there anything missing from our products/services?

Identifying shortcomings (whether they're real or just perceived) helps in product development, competitive analysis and marketing campaign planning.

5. Offer a discount

Whether through a promo code or a rewards program, providing a discount to first-time customers answer can lead to an immediate boost in conversion rates. Of course, you need to avoid offering too many regular discounts as customers may start to wait out until the next sale comes.

Returning customers and existing customers

6. What products/services have you purchased from us in the past?

Depending on your business model, return customers may be repeating the same purchase or evaluating new options. Determining which products are the best at bringing people back can help determine future product lines. This question can be really valuable if you don't have a system in place to track information on customer purchases and customer interaction.

7.  Would you be interested in _______ if we offered it?

Whether you're evaluating new service levels, product lines or payment types, figuring out where the interest lies is a great start. Keep in mind your responses are only coming from your existing audience, so whether they agree or disagree with the new product idea shouldn't be an immediate limitation on where you take your product or service roadmap.

8.  How do you prefer we communicate with you?

You can apply learnings from this question to your overall communication strategy including evaluation of site chat, SMS and any other relevant marketing channels. Depending on available technology, you may also be able to directly adjust an individual's communication preferences based on their response.

9.  On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our business to a friend or colleague?

Known as the Net Promoter Score question, this is a common method for judging the success of various customer satisfaction efforts. You'll receive responses that can be categorized into those who have issues with your brand, those that are happy with what you do and those that will actively promote your brand and expand your reach with their own voice.

10. Which of the following words would you use to describe our products/services?

In this line of questioning, you could also ask which words customers would use to describe specific aspects of the product like quality, reliability or responsiveness. You can also switch the phrasing to ask if they've experienced any issues with your product or service.

Visitor intent

11. What are you trying to accomplish on our site today?

This question is fundamental in understanding where the visitor is in your conversion funnel. If the majority of your visitors are in the consideration phase, you can adjust your messaging to prioritize building brand confidence.

12. Have you been able to accomplish this yet? 

A simple yes/no follow-up question allows you to spot broad trends in your site's ability to meet visitor goals. Be careful about where you ask this question as those who've just arrived on your site likely haven't accomplished their goal. Consider a trigger that waits until visitors view over three pages before asking these questions.

13.  If no, what's preventing you from accomplishing it? 

Here we spot more specific issues. This is a place to offer multiple choice answer options like, "product not available", "site too confusing" or "can't find shipping information". You can keep it broad or dial in response options more specific to your website. Take these answers and create A/B tests as part of your broader conversion optimization strategy.

14.  What do you think about the information on our website?

Consider formatting this so your question includes a sliding scale of response options. You could orient the sample answers around depth of information, quality of content, product description details or even more subjective elements like color and layout.

Avoid an open-ended question here since the topic is highly subjective.

15.  Is there anything missing on this page?

Depending on the visitor's intent, they may think you need more content links, additional images or a comparison tool.

Website issues

16. What were you looking for?

This is a great question to ask on your 404 page. You'll find broken links, errant advertising and even mistypes.

17. Did you face any challenges while using our website?

With this question, you're looking to spot navigation problems, overwhelming content sections, form issues or anything that prevents a visitor from getting the information they need.

18.  (Mobile-only) Does the website appear to function normally on your device?

Simply put, a mobile issue can be a disaster for your website. Let your visitors assist in your regular quality control exercises by getting their feedback.

19.  Do you think you have to click too much to get what you're looking for?

Responses to this subjective question will get you valuable insight into your architecture and linking structure.

20.  On a scale of 0-10, how would you rate the usability of our website?

Your audience may not consist entirely of website usability experts, but it's their opinion that truly matters. This question sets itself up for follow-ups about specific site features.

Behavior triggers

Depending on your site survey technology, you may be able to auto-invite visitors by their on-site behavior. Here are some specific examples of situations where behavior triggers may make for powerful site surveys.

21. Is there any shipping or pricing information we're missing?

For those visitors who've navigated your product descriptions and are looking through shipping information, there may be one piece of missing information they need to convert. As a follow-up, you can provide helpful links or contact information.

22. Is there something we can help you with today?

Use this broad question (which feels like the beginning of a site chat) to help visitors that appear to be lost. You could trigger this on a certain number of pages visited or total site visits without a conversion action.

23.  Are you enjoying our content? Is there anything you'd like to see us write about? 

Survey visitors who scroll through a few pieces of content can help determine future topics. These are the people who actually read your work and will find value in future content catered to their interests.

24.  Do you follow us on social media?

This is really a call-to-action disguised as a survey question. Make visitors aware of your social media platform and encourage them to follow with quick external links. This information is a step towards demographic surveys that help you better understand the types of people in your audience.

25.  Are there any products you wish we offered?

If a visitor navigates several product pages and doesn't add anything to their cart, they may have great thoughts on alternatives to offer.

26.  How did your purchase go today?

Get immediate feedback after a purchase to see if there are any hiccups in your current process. While these visitors made it through to check out, even small issues could be preventing additional conversions.

27.  What's the reason for your action?

This sounds quite aggressive, but what we're after here is a follow-up question based on a visitor unsubscribing from a list, giving a low NPS or CSAT score or canceling a subscription.

It's okay to ask for a reason here. This exit survey information is invaluable when it comes to optimizing your conversion funnel.