Sure, you might be using your business web site for marketing and sales, but have you considered ways you can use it to gather information from your prospects and customers and use it to improve your products or service delivery? One way is to use your business web site for an online survey.
I am not talking about those annoying pop-up surveys that seem to be just ways to gather people’s contact information and make sales presentations—although the prevalence of those on the internet probably tells us that people like to take surveys. Instead, you can create one on your web site in order to collect valuable input and information from your site visitors.
Your online survey can be a short-term thing in order to garner specific information, or an on-going feedback tool that has a permanent residence on your web site. Either way, put some care and thought into crafting the survey—you want to make sure that you are asking the right questions and gathering information that can actually be helpful to you (and more informative for those who participate.) The great thing about something that is web-based, however, is that you can make instantaneous changes and updates—without the expense of re-printing or printing and mailing.
The easiest surveys are those with drop-down menus and check boxes that the participant doesn’t have to do anything with but answer the questions and click through. You may need design help to get something this sophisticated. You can also create something simpler—a one page questionnaire or survey. It is best if it can be e-mailed directly to you if the results aren’t compiled and sent to you. In a worse case scenario, you can have something that the participant prints off and sends or e-mails, but the more steps a person has to do themselves, the less likely they are to complete the survey.
Also: Using the Telephone on the Job