The Online Buyer Survey is Bizrate Insights’ flagship solution. It captures feedback from verified customers at two moments: right after purchase (the Point-of-Sale survey) and after the order arrives (the Fulfillment survey). It’s one survey in two connected parts, designed to cover the entire purchase journey, and it can run on its own or alongside other Bizrate Insights surveys.
Because both parts of the Online Buyer Survey ask the same core Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), you can follow the same customer from checkout through delivery and see exactly where the experience holds up, and where it breaks down.
Every invitation includes a special thank-you offer for the shopper. These incentives lift response rates and help offset program costs, and Bizrate Insights continually tests and optimizes invitations, layout, and questions so response rates stay high without any work on your side.
Part 1: The Point-of-Sale (POS) survey
The POS invitation appears on your order confirmation/receipt page, when the purchase experience is freshest. The survey takes about 2–3 minutes, and every question is optional except email address, which is a deliberate design choice that keeps completion high. Roughly 10–15% of buyers respond, and 94% of respondents who submit the first page go on to complete the entire survey.
Two things happen as soon as a customer submits page 1:
Their responses are recorded, so you never lose a partial response
They’ve agreed to share their survey responses with you.\
You can also pass additional information, such as a customer ID, into the survey code so responses can be tied back to records in your own systems.
What we ask on the POS survey, and why
Page 1 — Core KPIs and order logistics. The survey opens with three KPI questions, each rated on a 1–10 scale:
Overall satisfaction with the purchase experience
Likelihood to recommend (the basis for your Net Promoter Score)
Likelihood to buy again the next time they’re in the market
These same KPIs are asked across all Bizrate Insights surveys, which is what makes cross-journey comparison possible: you can measure the same customer sentiment at checkout, after delivery, and (if you run pre-purchase surveys) before they ever buy.
Page 1 also asks how much the customer spent (including shipping, handling, and taxes), when they expect to receive their order, and which shipping option they chose. Each has a specific job:
The expected delivery date determines when the Fulfillment survey is sent (see below).
The shipping option question routes the follow-up: if the customer selects “Pick up in store,” they receive the BOPIS version of the Fulfillment survey. This option is only shown for retailers who have opted into the BOPIS survey.
Email address (the one required field) is needed to send the Fulfillment invitation.
Page 2 — Usability drivers, purchase frequency, and gifting.
Usability metrics are the drivers behind KPI scores so if satisfaction dips, these questions tell you why. Customers rate aspects of the purchase such as overall look and design of the site, ease of finding what they’re looking for, product selection, clarity of product information, prices relative to other merchants, shipping charges, clarity of charges before order submission, and checkout experience. To keep the survey short, these questions rotate: most respondents see only 3–4 of them, while you still collect data across the full set.
Two more rotating questions round out the page: purchase frequency (how many online purchases the customer has made from you in the last six months), which helps you gauge retention, and whether the order is a gift, which Bizrate Insights uses to measure and trend seasonal gifting. Gift responses appear in raw data only, not in VitalSigns.
Page 3 — Optional demographics
Customers can share gender, year of birth, income, education, and marital status. The page is clearly labeled optional, since shoppers are sensitive about personal information. Retailers use this data to validate what they collect elsewhere or to build profiles for opted-in customers. These questions can be hidden at your request.
Page 4 — Custom questions (Advanced and Pro plans)
Available with upgraded plans, custom questions let you dig into topics the standard survey doesn’t cover. They can branch from any previous survey question, stand alone, or branch from other custom questions, in formats including binary, single- or multi-select, open text, and rating or ordinal scales. As a best practice, keep this page short — fewer than five questions, with limited open-ends.
Because Bizrate Insights is a fully managed service, all question programming happens on the Bizrate side and no development resources are required from your team. The Client Insights Team and a library of proven custom questions are available to help you design them.
Page 5 — Open comments/verbatims
Customers describe their experience in their own words “as if you were telling a good friend.” Anyone who leaves a comment is then asked to code it themselves: the primary topic (product quality, shipping/tracking, customer service, pricing, and so on) and whether the feedback is positive, negative, or mixed. This self-coding makes verbatims immediately filterable in reporting. Comments are shared with you, along with the customer’s email address and Order ID when passed and included in your subscription.
The page closes with an optional invitation to join Bizrate’s consumer panel. This opt-in can be removed at a client’s request.
Part 2: The Fulfillment survey
About three days after the expected delivery date the customer indicated (defaulting to a 7-day window if no date was given), Bizrate Insights emails a Fulfillment invitation to everyone who completed the POS survey. Roughly 25% of POS respondents complete the Fulfillment portion, and the survey takes about 2 minutes.
The invitation email asks the customer to confirm order status first:
“Yes, I received my order” opens the survey.
“No, I have not yet received this order” schedules a follow-up email 5 days later.
“No comment” suppresses any reminder.
If the email is ignored, one reminder is sent 5 days later — and that’s it. Customers are never contacted again after that.
Survey questions display dynamically based on how the order was received — traditional mail delivery, BOPIS/in-store pickup, or curbside — so customers only see questions relevant to their experience.
What we ask on the Fulfillment survey, and why
Page 1 — Delivery status, KPIs, and fulfillment drivers
The survey opens by asking whether the order arrived on time, then repeats the same three KPIs from the POS survey (overall satisfaction, likelihood to recommend, likelihood to buy again). Comparing these scores against the same customer’s checkout responses shows you exactly how fulfillment affected their impression of your brand.
Page 1 also asks whether the customer contacted customer support about the purchase (and how — phone, email, live chat, mail — including “I wanted to but did not know how,” a signal that support is hard to find), and whether they’ve returned or plan to return any items. Both answers trigger follow-ups on page 2.
The page closes with satisfaction ratings on the fulfillment drivers: customer support, on-time delivery, order tracking/status information, availability of the product they wanted, and whether the product met expectations.
Page 2 — Conditional deep-dives
These questions only appear when relevant:
Customers who contacted support rate the availability of their preferred contact method, ease of making contact, courtesy of staff, knowledge of staff, and resolution of the issue.
Customers who indicated a return rate the overall return process.
Page 3 — Open comments and product reviews
Like the POS survey, the Fulfillment survey closes with an open comment, self-coded by topic and sentiment, plus the optional panel opt-in. Comments are combined with overall satisfaction scores and syndicated to search engines to power your Google Seller Ratings.
Product reviews are also collected as part of the post-delivery experience, so you gather product-level feedback from verified buyers without sending any separate review-request emails. Only verified purchasers can leave a review.
What you get from the Online Buyer Survey
Real-time insight in VitalSigns. Scores, verbatims, and trends are available 24/7 in the VitalSigns reporting portal, with real-time feedback alerts available to help you resolve issues as they happen.
Benchmarking. Because the survey is standardized across the Bizrate Insights network, you can compare your performance against your category and direct competitors.
Google Seller Ratings. Ratings and reviews are syndicated to search engines through Bizrate’s direct partnerships with Google, Bing, and Yahoo (in place since 2010), activating Seller Ratings on your paid ads and improving organic visibility.
NPS tracking. Likelihood-to-recommend is captured at every touchpoint, so you can track Net Promoter Score from checkout through delivery.
Unlimited responses. One price regardless of volume — there’s no cap on invitations or responses, so every customer voice is captured even during peak periods.
The Online Buyer Survey is available on all plans, from the free Growth plan through Advanced, Pro, and Enterprise options.
Getting Started
Installing Bizrate Insights
Surveys & Customer Feedback
Digging Into Your Data
Promote Your Site
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