Whether you offer products or services, you may find yourself wondering what your customers or subscribers think about your offering and how you can improve it.

• What do they like and not like about it?
  
• What do they think about potential new features?
  
• Who are your customers?
  
• How much are they willing to pay (or how much more would they pay) for your product or service? If you have a Web site, you may also have specific questions about it as well.
  
• What do your visitors like and not like about your site?
  
• Why are they visiting your Web site, but not purchasing?
  
• What does your average visitor look like, e.g., demographics, online usage, or online purchasing?
  
• Why do your visitors come to your site, and what are they looking for?
  
• Is your site meeting your visitors' needs?
  
• What other services should you add to your site?
  
• How does your site rate on attributes that are most important to your visitors?

As an example, when I first started marketing my service, I asked my site visitors what they were looking for when they came to my site. I found that I was delivering my service in a way that was the exact opposite of what they desired. Consequently, I completely transformed my offering and began delivering my service to satisfy my target.

Once you decide which questions you would like to ask, you are ready to create your survey. Many survey creation options are available, spanning from do-it-yourself services to hiring someone else to carry out the entire process. Take some time to decide on the many options and choose those that work best for your purpose and budget.

Once your survey is complete, select a method to collect responses. Several methods can be used, and each can be accomplished quickly and easily if you use the right tools.

1.Survey via email.

If you have an opt-in email list of your customers or subscribers, then you are sitting on a goldmine. With such a list, you can efficiently survey your customers, providing you with valuable feedback and the potential for making more money.

To survey via email, simply include the surveys in an email to your list. Your response rates will be higher if your list is fresh and you have interacted frequently with the list members.

2.Place a pop-up survey on your site.

If you are interested in the opinions of customers and prospects visiting your site, you can utilize pop-up surveys to intercept people with a survey as they enter or leave specific pages on your site.

If you use pop-up surveys, it is usually better to intercept visitors once they leave a particular page, as opposed to when they first enter a page. This method allows a visitor to view the page of interest first before being interrupted. In addition, you should activate the window once per unique visitor. This will ensure that your customers are not annoyed by having to deal with more than one survey invitation.

Pop-up surveys yield relatively high response rates. Depending on the demographics of your visitors and content on your site, pop-up surveys typically yield response rates between 10 and 40%.

3.Place a survey link or button on your site.

This option is less intrusive than pop-up surveys and will likely yield much lower response rates. If you use this method, place your link prominently on your site where people will see it.

In conclusion, surveys are a powerful means of gathering valuable information from your customers. You may be surprised to learn how many will tell you what they really think about you. Ask some questions and find out what your customers truly want. The information you gain could be exactly what you need to take your offering to the next level.