Understand user motivations and goals

Step-by-step Playbooks
, , , , , ,
1

Business benefits

Increase conversion and retention by learning how your customers make decisions and differentiate between products.

Write closed ended questions to understand customer goals at a high level.

Closed ended questions increase response rates, eliminate the potential for surprising answers, and code and compare larger sets of responses.

Closed ended only work when you can reliably list the set of answers your audience might respond with, which reduces the potential for bias.

Write open ended questions for in depth answers about user behaviors.

Open ended questions open up the opportunity for new and more in depth user perspectives as well as more unique, personalized answers. **They can’t be answered with a simple yes or no response.

Types of questions that can lead to motivation insights:

  • Product benefits, like what matters most when buying this type of product or listing the top 3 reasons that users purchased from the site.
  • The value proposition, like what made the user choose this website over others, or what they liked most about their shopping experience on the site.

Start all questions with How, Where, What, When, Which, or Who, instead of Why or Was, to avoid triggering rationalizations.

For example, instead of asking why a user didn’t buy a product, phrase the same question as What were the top three reasons that prevented you from buying?

Target your surveys and polls to segments of first time customers, VIP customers, and specific personas to get unique insights.

  • Make first time customers who bought from you within the past 7 days the biggest segment, bringing the most unique insights.
  • VIP customers – such as those users who spend at least five times the average order value – can provide additional insights related to customer loyalty.
  • Use persona specific surveys to build out your target audience profile more fully.

Trigger your surveys and polls via SMS, pop up links, and email. Use the subject line to outline what customers get for what they have to do.

Email remains the most proven way to distribute surveys, resulting in the highest and most reliable response rates.

Use email subject lines like Get $5 store credit for 5 minutes of your time or Help improve [product] with 5 minutes of your time to communicate what you want from the recipient and what they’ll receive in return.

Compare the answers you receive to closed ended, goal focused questions across segments.

For example, put the same question with the same set of standard responses to desktop and mobile users to benchmark how your website converts on a specific page depending on the device used.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T10:08:47Z