Internet shops are spending big amounts of money to attract new clients into their websites. While the marketing budgets grow researches and experts show that 90 - 99% of eshop clients abandon purchasing process before completion.

In other words it means that at best only one client on ten will finalize a purchase. The remaining nine clients will abandon shopping and in most cases eshop won't have any knowledge what was the reason of abandonment. 9 on 10 eshops are not collecting any data about shopping abandonment reasons.

First and most important step to increase number of successful transactions is to understand the reasons why clients are leaving before shopping is finished. Online surveys are a great tool to do it.

Most common reasons of shopping abandonment :

• price too high
• I don't have money right now
• too long delivery time
• just comparing prices
• just researching
• can't find a product
• too complicated shopping process
• no size available
• too complicated web site navigation

Each abandonment reason needs a separate strategy. Below you will find two examples.

Clients that don't have money right now but are interested in purchase should be provided with installment purchase or "bill me later" option.

"Client that is only researching", usually it means that he needs more information to take a decision. Right strategy for this group of clients should be to keep in touch also as the client leaves eshop web site. This kind of approach will improve chances to finalize a purchase on the next visit.

The importance of satisfaction is often underestimated, but satisfied customers and employees often determine market success of the company.

Different studies show that :

• only 4% of dissatisfied customers complain. For every complaint received, there are 24 silent dissatisfied customers.
• unhappy customer will tell (on average) 9 other people about his / her bad experience
• satisfied customer will recommend product or service (on average) to 5 other people
• acquiring a new customers can cost 5 - 7 times more than retaining an existing one
• cost of hiring and training a new employee can be 10 times higher than retention of the exiting one

Satisfied customers are often less price sensitive, more willing to buy and recommend your products or services to the other customers. Thanks to the loyal employees company can save money and time needed to recruit and train new ones.

An important part of satisfaction measurement process is an identification of factors making clients happy or dissatisfied. It is not enough to say that a customer is satisfied or not. The survey should go further and identify specific elements affecting satisfaction or its absence.

Well planned satisfaction survey can help you :

• determine level of customer satisfaction with your products or services
• assess level of employee satisfaction
• understand needs and expectations of your customers, employees, patients, ...
• design services and products basing on the expectations / needs of your customers
• respond quickly to changes, basing on feedback from the questionnaires

For all people that are facing a task of selecting the best survey software we created a little help. In this article you will read how to organize simple 5 step selection process to make best survey software choice. 

Step 1 - prepare selection criteria

At the beginning decide what you need and what selection criteria you will use. Typical elements of assessment are : functionality, user friendly interface, references, total cost of ownership (price and other costs like training or additional payments). Each criteria should have is weight, you should also decide what scale you will use to make scoring (for example 1-10).

Step 2 - create list of surveys software vendors

How to start? Use google, ask your friends and colleagues, check popular blogs that write about market research and internet. Try to narrow your google search results by using specific key words for example "satisfaction surveys".

Step 3 - make assessment

Most of the information you need can be found on companies web pages. In some cases you will need to make send an email to ask for additional information.

After this step you will have pretty good idea what survey software you will select.

Step 4 - create short list

Creating a short list helps to select best candidate. Select 3 or 4 best companies from your list and look a little deeper into their solutions. Create an account in each system and test available functionality. Check if there are no hidden fees. Some companies apply additional fees on large surveys or limits response number.

Step 5 - select best online survey tool

Sum up your assessment and select the best online survey system.