{"id":1364,"date":"2013-11-21T23:36:11","date_gmt":"2013-11-21T23:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.qualaroo.com\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2024-05-29T19:00:52","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T19:00:52","slug":"a-whole-new-way-to-think-about-asking-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/a-whole-new-way-to-think-about-asking-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"A Whole New Way to Think About Asking Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">Recently, Qualaroo CEO Sean Ellis chatted with Dr. Karl Blanks of Conversion Rate Experts in a webinar covering \u201cGolden Questions\u201d that reveal why visitors aren\u2019t converting, as well as a new way of thinking about questions that helps you understand what to ask to get real insights. You should definitely listen to the whole webinar, but we\u2019ve pulled a few of our favorite takeaways out into blog form. Enjoy!<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Most businesses understand that both testing and surveying play key roles in <a href=\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/beginners-guide-to-cro\/\">conversion rate optimization<\/a>. Often times, however, these businesses don\u2019t see real gains because they\u2019re not using these tools in the most effective ways. It\u2019s not uncommon to see businesses testing tons of different page elements before ever identifying what it is that users actually want.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Even when companies do implement surveys to try and gain a better understanding of visitors, they frequently ask the wrong kinds of questions and thus don\u2019t end up with much in the way of actionable insight.<\/p>\n<h3>Asking the Right Kinds of Questions<\/h3>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">By contrast, understanding the visitor is central to conversion rate optimization. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.conversion-rate-experts.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Conversion Rate Experts<\/a> (CRE), who have worked with Google, Facebook, and others, started getting deep into finding out which questions matter to improve website performance.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">How? By writing out around a hundred commonly-asked questions, which they then tested on a control group to see which ones resulted in the highest quality, most useful information. They also reverse engineered the process, so to speak, tracing the biggest optimization wins back to the original question that resulted in the insight that informed the optimization.<\/p>\n<h3>The Keys to Asking Questions that Move the Needle<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Principle 1:<\/strong> It\u2019s better to err on the side of asking too few questions than asking too many. \u2014 Lots of iterative, one question surveys are infinitely better than giant surveys that no one completes.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Principle 2:<\/strong> The only thing worse than not asking questions is to ask them and then do nothing with the responses. \u2014 If you\u2019re asking questions, read the responses and then do something with them.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Principle 3:<\/strong> Ask the right questions. \u2014 How do you know which ones you should ask?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Surveys aren\u2019t something you should do because everyone else is doing them and then forget about them. You should build different questions into a regular plan of gathering visitor intelligence.<\/p>\n<h3>Understanding Your Customers and Visitors<\/h3>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Each of us has different motivations, needs, and context when visiting a website. The same is true of your customers. Some are motivated to solve a problem, some are browsing\u2014some came from an ad, others a blog post. It\u2019s up to you to understand the context and needs of visitors in order to serve them and drive better results in the process.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Each element is a piece of the puzzle that leads to insights:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Where the prospect has been \/ where they are coming from.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The appeals for the user, what would persuade them if only present.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The most persuasive content on your site that people are being influenced by.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">How do they perceive your positioning relative to your competitors.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Specific wording that appeals\/speaks to them.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The objectionable (dull\/boring\/off-putting) content.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The \u201cGolden Questions\u201d are tools for throwing light on specific parts of your user\u2019s motivations and needs. So asking questions is less about one answer, and more about uncovering the totality of the needs and motivations of your visitors. It\u2019s not about asking yourself \u201cWhich questions should I ask?\u201d but \u201cWhich areas of my visitors am I still blind to? Which questions are best at finding the motivations and drivers in that area?\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Who Should You Survey?<\/h3>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">There\u2019s one more concern to deal with before we talk about which questions to ask. And that is: who you ask is just as important as what you ask.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Your site gets three main types of visitors\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Qualified \u201cNoes\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 These are people who visit your site, are qualified (within your target market), but leave for one reason or another without converting. This group isn\u2019t converting, but you want them to.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Customers Who Bought Moments Ago<\/strong> \u2014 These are people who have just checked out, and are conveniently located on a thank you page where you have their momentary attention.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Existing Customers<\/strong> &nbsp;\u2014 People who have bought from you or buy from you regularly.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>So which is the best group to survey?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">It might seem that the first group is the best to ask since you\u2019re looking to remove barriers to conversion and these are the people who aren\u2019t converting. Yet the second and third groups actually yield better insights. Why? Well, to start with, understanding the people who did buy allows you to tip the scales for people who didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But more so than that, the problem with the \u201cnoes\u201d is that you can\u2019t identify and isolate them. There\u2019s no way to tell the difference between a qualified visit and an unqualified visit. In fact, CRE found that on average, more than 50% of your visitors may not be qualified in the first place.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Finally, the customers who bought moments ago still had concerns\u2014they just overcame them. It\u2019s like running a marathon: a user from this group has just crossed the finish line, so to speak. You have the opportunity of asking them, \u201cAt which points in the race did you almost give up?\u201d If they answer, \u201cClimbing that huge hill back there was really hard,\u201d you know if you go to the hill you\u2019ll probably find a lot of runners giving up there.<\/p>\n<p>Now that you have a new framework for thinking about asking questions, you\u2019re ready to start asking the questions that really matter. In our next blog post we\u2019ll dive into the the Golden Questions to ask. But if you can\u2019t wait for the next post, check out the Golden Questions webinar now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tLearn the Golden Questions that can unlock the customer insights you need to drive the conversion rate of your website.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-asking-survey-questions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18574,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions\/18574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}