Website Exit Intent Surveys: Questions, Best Practices & Use Cases (With Template)

Investing significant time and resources into attracting potential customers to your website through paid ads, organic SEO, and strategic marketing can be disheartening when visitors leave without engaging or taking action. With an average bounce rate of 38.7% for e-commerce websites, every visitor who leaves represents a lost opportunity—a missed conversion, a potential customer, or even a valuable lesson that could help you improve.

But what if those fleeting moments before a visitor leaves could be turned into actionable insights? That’s where website exit intent surveys also known as exit surveys—come in. These strategic tools give you the opportunity to interact with departing visitors, uncover the reasons behind their exit, and use this feedback to make meaningful improvements.

For instance, if a visitor shares through an exit intent survey that they left because the page lacked enough information, you can redesign the page to highlight critical details more prominently. By addressing such concerns, you can reduce your bounce rate, improve user experience, and potentially recover lost conversions.

When designed thoughtfully, exit intent surveys not only provide actionable feedback but also leave a positive impression that can encourage return visits. In this blog, we’ll dive deep into website exit intent surveys, explore effective survey questions, and share best practices and use cases to help you optimize this powerful tool. Let’s get started!

TL;DR

Website exit intent surveys are designed to trigger when a user is about to leave a webpage or close a browser tab, hence the "exit intent" name. They can ask questions about user experience, reasons for leaving, feedback on products/services, or suggestions for improvement.
You can ask website exit survey questions to gauge the reasons behind shopping cart abandonment, understand the ease of website navigation, pricing-related concerns, get product feedback, and more.
A website exit survey is useful across industries including e-commerce, healthcare, travel and hospitality among others to gather feedback on customer satisfaction, patient experience, guest experience, and student experience.
You can leverage Zonka Feedback to create exit surveys and gather feedback across multiple feedback survey channels. Through its advanced reporting and analytics, you can get detailed insights into your product's performance and take action to close the product feedback loop. You can schedule a demo with our experts to discover how to implement exit surveys effectively and maximize their impact.

Capture Effective Feedback At Exit Intent

Collect real-time, in-moment feedback right before they exit your site to collect useful insights & take appropriate actions.

What is a Website Exit Intent Survey?

A website exit intent survey is an effective tool for capturing feedback from visitors who are about to leave your website without completing a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up. By understanding their reasons for leaving, businesses can identify factors contributing to low conversion rates and take targeted steps to address them.

These surveys are triggered precisely when a visitor signals an intent to exit your website or app, such as moving their cursor toward the close or back button. Typically appearing as pop-ups, they ask visitors about their experience, uncovering insights into potential issues like insufficient information, high prices, or a confusing layout.

By leveraging the actionable feedback from website exit intent surveys, businesses can refine their strategies, enhance user experiences, and effectively reduce bounce rates.

Why Do You Need to Use Exit Intent Surveys?

Here's why you should implement an exit intent survey on your website or application.

To Listen to Visitors: With 95% of future purchases estimated to be online, website exit surveys capture missed conversion opportunities, enhancing your understanding of visitor expectations and helping you listen to the voice of customer.
To Boost Conversions: Engage impatient digital users effectively by aligning your website with their expectations through website exit intent surveys, increasing the likelihood of achieving conversion goals.
To Optimize Resources: Exit surveys identify pain points like payment preferences or product descriptions, helping you save time and resources by making informed optimizations.

To understand the concerns of your users, you can leverage an exit intent survey template and share it with your customers to know why they are leaving your service.

When Should You Use an Exit Intent Survey?

To create a seamless website or e-commerce experience, you need honest feedback from real visitors. Understanding why someone decides to leave your site helps you:

Identify and fix problem areas to reduce bounce rates.
Highlight what customers value most by making it more prominent.
Understand competitor comparisons to refine your offerings and stand out.

Exit intent surveys give you the insight needed to transform abandoned visits into learning opportunities that improve engagement and conversions.

Where Should You Place an Exit Intent Survey?

The placement of your exit intent survey depends on the stage of the customer journey you’re focusing on and the goals of your business. Here are some strategic locations:

Checkout Page: For e-commerce sites, the checkout process is critical. Use a shopping cart abandonment survey to uncover reasons for not completing a purchase—be it unclear payment options, hidden fees, or lack of trust signals.
Product Pages: If certain product pages have lower conversion rates, an exit survey can identify key issues like incomplete descriptions, missing reviews, or subpar visuals.
Pricing Page: For SaaS businesses, the pricing page often determines sign-ups. Placing an exit intent survey here can highlight if pricing is unclear, if there’s confusion about plans, or if potential customers need more details to make a decision.
Landing Pages: Optimize your landing pages for better ROI from paid marketing campaigns. Feedback from visitors who don’t convert can point to missing elements like testimonials, clearer messaging, or improved CTAs.
Homepage: As the first impression for many visitors, the homepage is ideal for encouraging engagement. If visitors aren’t ready to convert, use an exit survey to invite them to join your email list, explore more content, or attend upcoming events.

Strategic placement of exit intent surveys on the website ensures you capture meaningful insights exactly when and where visitors need attention, enabling you to optimize their journey and reduce churn effectively.

Website Exit Intent Survey Questions to Collect Feedback

To bridge the gap between customer intent and conversion, it is important to carry out an exit intent survey. By strategically deploying well-crafted survey questions, you can better understand customers' needs, preferences, and pain points and increase conversions.

If you're looking to start creating your own exit intent survey, here are a few of the most popular survey questions your business can use.

1. Shopping Cart Abandonment Survey

Visitors often add items to their shopping carts but leave without purchasing. Reasons vary—distractions, price comparisons, or unexpected fees. By asking users for feedback, you can pinpoint issues and take action. This helps bring leaving visitors back, gives direction to marketing campaigns, gets qualified traffic, drives sales and increases conversion rate.

Here are some shopping cart abandonment survey questions that you can add to your website surveys gauging exit reasons:

What prompted you to quit shopping?
Do you need any additional information to complete the purchase?
Do you have any queries you'd like to ask before you place your order?
Were there any concerns or issues that made you hesitate to proceed with the checkout?
Were there any specific products you could not find or were out of stock?
Did you encounter any difficulties during the checkout process?
Were there any security concerns that made you hesitate to purchase?
Were there any pricing or discount-related issues that influenced your decision?

2. Website Exit Intent Popup on Navigation

According to a study by Baymard Institute, 25% of users abandon websites due to poor navigation. To improve the user experience and reduce website exit rates, it's important to understand how visitors navigate your website and create popup surveys gauging the reasons.

Here are some questions that you can consider for your website surveys for exit intent that can also help you improve your website's user experience:

Did you find what you were looking for on our website?
Did you find our website easy to navigate?
Was there any information you were unable to find on our website?
Did you encounter any technical issues while using our website?
Was our website loading speed fast enough for your liking?
Is there anything you would suggest we improve about our website navigation?

3. Website Exit Survey on Pricing

Despite liking your product's features, customers might leave your website upon seeing the price, possibly due to budget constraints or feeling the price doesn't match the product's value. When visitors exit at the pricing page, it signals potential issues in your pricing strategy or page design. Addressing these can improve conversions and prevent losing potential customers.

By asking the following questions, you can understand the problem, find a solution to fix issues on the pricing page and prevent visitors from leaving:

What pricing concerns or issues made you hesitate to proceed further?
Did you find the pricing competitive compared to other alternatives in the market?
Were there any uncertainties or confusion about the pricing structure?
Is there a particular price point at which you would consider our offering more compelling?
Were there any specific concerns about the value or benefits offered at the given price?
Would additional information or clarification about our pricing influence your decision?

4. Exit Survey Questions for Product Feedback

Customers might leave your product for different reasons like quality, functionality, user experience, compatibility, or pricing. They could also exit due to insufficient information, unclear descriptions, or trouble finding the right product. Gathering website feedback when they exit can reveal these issues and help you improve.

Here are some questions to collect and refine the product experience:

Was the product easy to use and understand?
Did you experience any technical difficulties while using our product?
Did our product solve the problem you were trying to address?
How does our product compare to similar products on the market?
Would you recommend our product to others? Why or why not?
Could we have done anything differently to improve your experience with our product?

5. Goal Completion Survey

When customers aim to achieve specific tasks like signing up, purchasing, or downloading resources, ensuring a smooth process is important. If visitors leave before completing these goals, it could be due to various reasons such as confusion, lack of trust, technical difficulties, etc. Identifying these hurdles is crucial for increasing engaged users and improving the customer journey.

Consider these questions to create a website exit intent survey for goal completion:

What can we do to help you complete your goal of visiting our website?
Did you encounter any issues while attempting to complete your goal?
Did you find the information or product you were looking for?
Were there any technical difficulties you experienced while trying to complete your goal?

6. Lead Generation Survey

An exit survey can gather contact information from website visitors interested in your offerings but not ready to buy. Setting up survey collection during exit intent allows for targeted emails or personalized sales efforts, nurturing these connections until your website visitors are prepared to make a purchase.

Here are some lead generation survey questions you can add to your website exit survey:

Are you interested in learning more about our products/services?
Would you like to receive updates about our latest offers and promotions?
Would you like to speak to a sales representative about our products/services?
Would you like to schedule a demo of our product/service?
Can you tell us what could have persuaded you to make a purchase today?
Are there any specific features or benefits you're looking for in our products/services?
Would you like to receive a free trial of our product/service?

7. Landing Page Bounce Research Survey

When driving traffic to your site, a high bounce rate on landing pages can be frustrating. Using targeted website survey questions helps you gain valuable insights into necessary changes for better conversions. You can ask about the design, layout, content, and information provided. These valuable insights help to optimize pages, decrease bounce rates, and drive better conversions

Some example questions for a landing page bounce rate research survey could include:

Were you able to find the information you were looking for on this page?
Was the layout of the page easy to understand and navigate?
Did the page load quickly enough for you?
Were the images and visuals on the page helpful?
Did the content on the page match your expectations?
Did you encounter any technical issues while browsing the page?
What was missing from the page that would have made you more likely to take action?

Best Practices for Creating Website Exit Intent Survey

Simply adding a website exit intent survey will not get you actionable feedback. Your website exit intent survey should be done in such a manner that it is engaging, relevant, and easy to complete for the visitors.

Here are some best practices that you can follow while implementing website exit surveys to maximize response rate:

Keep it Short: Understand that your users might be in a hurry or have a limited time attention span, so your survey should be short and to the point. You can leverage microsurveys that have just one or two questions to collect customer feedback.
Add a Mix of Questions: Use a mix of questions like multiple choice answers, survey widget question, open ended survey questions, close ended questions, follow up questions, Likert scale questions, survey rating scales questions, and questions on CX surveys like net promoter score and customer satisfaction score to gain insights on different aspects.
Make it Visible: Your exit intent survey should be highly visible and easy to find for the visitors who are about to leave your website. Use pop-ups, overlays, or catchy designs to grab visitors' attention and prompt them to provide feedback.
Test the Survey: Before launching your website exit intent survey, it's important to test it thoroughly to ensure it is configured across all devices. Conduct A/B tests to compare different survey formats, questions, and designs to see which ones are most effective at capturing visitor feedback using survey software.
Make it Easy to Exit: While capturing visitor feedback is important, you also want to ensure that your exit intent survey does not create a negative impression of your brand by interfering with the user experience. Provide visitors with a clear and easy way to exit the survey if they choose not to participate.
Create Targeted Survey: By creating targeted exit intent surveys for different segments of customers based on their behavior on your website, you can gather more relevant and specific information about the causes of customer churn.

Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Exit-Intent Surveys

To unlock the full potential of exit-intent surveys, careful design and strategy are essential. Avoid these common mistakes to ensure your surveys are impactful and drive actionable insights:

Asking Too Many Questions: A long survey can discourage users from responding. Keep it short and focused with 1–3 essential questions that gather the most valuable feedback without overwhelming visitors.
Skipping the Free-Text Option: Predefined responses are helpful, but they can limit user input. Always include an "Other" option or a free-text field to capture feedback you might not have anticipated. This allows users to share unique insights that can be invaluable.
Using Generic Questions: Questions that don’t align with the user’s activity on the page provide little value. Tailor your survey questions to the specific page visitors are leaving. For example, on a checkout page, ask about issues like payment options or additional costs, while on a product page, inquire about missing details or product confidence.
Triggering the Survey Too Soon: If the survey appears immediately when a user starts navigating away, it can feel intrusive and lead to abandonment. Time the survey to trigger at the right moment, such as when the cursor moves toward the close button, ensuring it feels natural.
Forgetting to Close the Feedback Loop: If users share their feedback, acknowledge it! Let them know their input is valued and, if possible, update them on the changes you’ve implemented. This builds trust and encourages future engagement.

By addressing these pitfalls, you can design exit-intent surveys that not only improve response rates but also provide meaningful insights to enhance your website’s performance.

Exit Survey Use Cases Across Industries

Exit surveys are versatile tools used in various industries. They aim to uncover why people leave websites or cancel subscriptions, and help to improve customer experiences and retain their loyalty. Here are some popular use cases for exit surveys across different industries:

1. E-Commerce

Website exit intent surveys or website exit intent popup surveys can be used in the e-commerce industry to capture:

Product Feedback: Exit surveys can be used to ask visitors who abandoned their cart about their experience with the website, product, or checkout process. This can help identify issues with the website or checkout process and improve the overall customer experience.
Customer Satisfaction: Exit intent surveys can gauge customers' experience with the website or buying process and attempt to understand and measure customer satisfaction, which can be worked upon based on the feedback.
Feature Feedback: By enquiring customers who are about to cancel their subscription or uninstall the software about the features they found useful and that could be improved, you can understand the most popular features and areas where the software could be improved.
User Experience: Whether the software is intuitive and easy to use or meets user requirements, it can be used to identify areas where the software could be made more user-friendly.

2. Healthcare

In healthcare, website exit intent surveys can be used to get:

Patient Feedback: With website exit surveys, you can ask patients who are about to leave the website or after their visit to provide patient feedback on their experience with the website or clinic.
Treatment Feedback: You can show an exit intent survey to patients who have completed their treatment to provide feedback on their experience with the treatment, medication, or therapy. Doing this can detect any issues with the treatment process and improve patient satisfaction.

3. Travel and Hospitality

The travel and hospitality industry also makes a lot of improvements using exit surveys. Here's what they use it for:

Booking Experience: If users have abandoned their booking or want to know about their experience with the booking process, including any difficulties they encountered or information they needed but could not find, you can leverage exit surveys.
Guest Feedback: You can inquire to guests who have completed their stay to provide feedback on their experience with the hotel or resort in the exit surveys. Based on customer feedback, you can work on areas where the hotel or resort could be improved to meet guest needs better.

4. Education

In the education sector, website exit surveys capture both student and teacher feedback. Here's how:

Student Feedback: Exit surveys can be useful to ask students who have dropped out of a course or are about to drop out to provide feedback on their experience with the course. Through the student feedback survey, you aim to find any issues with the course structure or content and improve student outcomes.
Instructor Feedback: Requesting feedback from students who have completed a course can help identify areas for improvement in the instructor's teaching style and feedback quality, leading to an enhanced student learning experience.

Maximize Insights and Improve User Experiences with Exit Intent Surveys

Exit intent surveys are a powerful tool to understand customer behavior and refine the user experience. By asking targeted questions, you can uncover why visitors leave your site, enabling you to address their concerns effectively and enhance their journey to meet expectations.

With a solution like Zonka Feedback, equipped with pre-built customizable survey templates, multi-channel distribution, and advanced reporting, you can seamlessly create, distribute, and analyze exit surveys. This allows you to take meaningful action, close the feedback loop, and turn insights into measurable improvements for your business.

Schedule a demo with our team and learn how you can create website exit intent surveys for various use cases.

FAQs

1. What is a website exit intent survey?

A website exit intent survey is a tool designed to capture feedback from visitors who are about to leave your website. By asking targeted questions, it helps businesses understand the reasons behind user exits, identify problem areas, and implement solutions to improve user experience and conversion rates

2. How does a website exit intent survey work?

Exit intent surveys are triggered when a visitor shows signs of leaving a webpage, such as moving their cursor toward the browser's close or back button. These surveys typically appear as pop-ups, asking questions to gather insights into why the visitor is leaving and what improvements can be made.

3. Where should I place an exit intent survey?

Exit intent surveys can be placed on various pages depending on the goals of your business, such as:

Checkout page to address shopping cart abandonment.
Product pages to understand low conversion rates.
Pricing page to gauge clarity and competitiveness of pricing.
Landing pages to optimize marketing ROI.
Homepage to capture first-time visitor feedback.

5. What questions should I ask in an exit intent survey?

Tailor questions like “What stopped you from purchasing?” or “What could we improve?” based on the page users are leaving.

6. How do exit intent surveys reduce bounce rates?

Exit intent surveys provide insights into why visitors are leaving without taking action. By analyzing their feedback, you can address common issues like unclear navigation, lack of information, or pricing concerns. Implementing these improvements based on user input can enhance the overall experience, keeping visitors engaged and reducing bounce rates.

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