What questions should I ask in an ecommerce customer survey?

“What other brands do you buy?” has been the most insightful question whenever we’ve run one of these. It maps your real competitors, which are often different from the ones you assume. Then you can go and study their sites and their loyalty programmes. Age range is just as important, because it confirms or destroys your biases about who your customer actually is.

Don’t ask about income directly. Ask what they spend each year on areas of their life like travel or fashion, and you’ll get a decent read on disposable income. Skip location if you can match responses to customer records, because you already have their address. Skip anything Shopify already tells you, like how often they buy. Drop anything that puts people off answering.

I also add an open prompt or two, like “describe what you look for in a dress”. The words people use there become a language guide for your ad copy. Keep those to a minimum and put them at the end, because each one makes people stop and think.

Survey more than one group: customers at different spend levels, plus people who haven’t bought yet. And run it before you rework your customer avatars, because the answers should shape them. Otherwise there’s a bit of guessing.