Site-Abandonment Survey: Discovery & Pre-Purchase

In typical retail traffic, roughly 97% of visitors leave a site without purchasing. Post-purchase surveys can’t tell you anything about them. That’s why we built that Site Abandonment survey. It’s the second most popular survey in the Bizrate Insights suite and the natural complement to the Online Buyer Survey. Together, they cover shoppers who buy and shoppers who don’t.

These are on-site, pre-purchase surveys that engage shoppers either during their visit or as they signal they’re about to leave. They tell you why shoppers came, where and why they hesitated or left, and what would bring them back. Even where they’re going.

One important distinction from the Online Buyer Survey: Site Abandonment results are for your internal use only. They are never published publicly and don’t feed Seller Ratings.

How the invitation works

The survey is available on desktop, tablet, and mobile, with trigger behavior tailored to each.

On desktop, Bizrate’s TrueExit™ technology detects exit intent: the invitation surfaces in real time as the shopper’s cursor crosses the URL bar or moves toward closing the window, right where the cursor is, at the moment they’re leaving. Because it fires at exit, it never interrupts an active shopping session. The invitation can render on any page that carries the survey code, so if you don’t want it appearing on certain pages (your homepage, for example), the code can be removed from those pages or additional triggers can be set.

On mobile and tablet, where there’s no cursor to track, time on site triggers the invitation instead (3 minutes by default). Many retailers add page-view or scroll-percentage conditions, since mobile browsing behaves differently and the browser typically stays open.

As part of the managed service, your Client Experience Manager works with you to tune these settings, so you don’t configure any of this yourself.

When a shopper accepts the invitation, the survey opens in a separate pop-over window, so it never blocks the page. Shoppers can keep it open and come back to it after they leave or once they’ve finished shopping.

What we ask, and why

The standard survey is a single page that takes about a minute, and every question is optional. Several questions are dynamic — they appear, disappear, or change their answer choices based on earlier responses — so each shopper only sees questions that match their actual visit. Roughly 1–3% of invited shoppers respond, which is among the industry’s highest rates for this survey type.

Reason for visit. “What is the main reason you came to [your site] today?” — browse with a specific item in mind, window-shop, buy something, check cost/coupons/product info/support, or other. This tells you what your traffic actually wants. If the shopper selects a purchase-intent answer (“buy something” or “browse with a specific item in mind”), a dynamic follow-up asks what time of day they’re most likely to complete their purchase — directly useful for timing retargeting campaigns.

Visit frequency. How many times they’ve visited in the past year, from first-ever visit to daily. This separates new-visitor friction from problems affecting your regulars.

KPIs. Shoppers rate overall satisfaction, likelihood to recommend, and likelihood to visit in the future on the same 1–10 scales used in the Online Buyer Survey. When you run both surveys, these scores align, giving you a single view of sentiment across shoppers and buyers — and a Net Promoter Score for people who didn’t buy.

Usability ratings. Overall look and design of the site, ease of finding products, and product selection. Site usability is one of the most common reasons shoppers abandon, so these metrics are key levers for converting more of them.

Point of abandonment. “What did you do during today’s visit?” — looked around/browsed, placed items in the cart, or started but didn’t finish checkout — pinpoints where in the funnel the shopper stopped. A yes/no follow-up asks whether they accomplished what they came to do.

Reason for abandonment. This question is dynamic: its answer choices adapt to the point of abandonment (a cart abandoner sees different options than a browser). Shoppers select their top reasons from choices such as wanting to see total cost, items out of stock, in-store pickup not available, needing more information, still deciding, return policy, cost/pricing, coupon or discount issues, website technical issues, shipping too high or not free, saving items for later, running out of time, arrival date too late, or not intending to purchase today.

What would have enticed a purchase. Ship-to-store, personalized recommendations, a special offer or discount, free returns, free shipping, live chat, or nothing — direct, prioritized feedback on which levers would actually convert.

Future purchase intent. Where the shopper plans to buy the items they were looking at: your website, your store or catalog, another website, another store, or undecided. This reveals whether you’re losing sales to competitors — or whether another of your own channels is absorbing the purchase.

Open comments. Shoppers describe the visit in their own words. Anyone who leaves a comment self-codes it by sentiment, and comments carry sentiment analysis in reporting.

Email opt-in. Shoppers can share their email address so you can review and respond to their feedback, which allows the survey to grow your opted-in marketing list. Every address collected is a shopper who abandoned but raised their hand to hear from you: exactly the audience for win-back emails and offers.

Optional demographics. Gender and year of birth, plus an optional invitation to join Bizrate’s consumer panel.

Save-the-Sale: acting on feedback in real time

Shopper comments can be sent to your team in real time via email. When a shopper reports a glitchy cart, a missing coupon, or an unanswered question (and asks to be contacted) your team can step in immediately, resolve the issue, and recover the sale while the shopper is still in market. Retailers use Save-the-Sale to convert abandoners into buyers in the moment.

Custom questions (Advanced and Pro plans)

With upgraded plans, custom questions can be added on a second page. Extensive testing showed a two-page format performs best, which is why all standard Bizrate questions sit on page one. Custom questions can branch from any previous question or stand independently, in binary, single- or multi-select, open-text, or rating-scale formats. Examples retailers have used: “Would you be interested in a loyalty program?”, “If you’re planning to purchase from another site, which one?”, and “What could we improve to win your business?”