How to defer an exit survey?

[Gavin.Atkinson]

This is not really an SEO related question but because we are all marketers here I'm hoping someone will have the answer I'm looking for.

I want users to be able to defer answering an exit survey until they are finished their visit to our website. We will invite them on entry, but give them a check box that says "Ask me when I'm finished this visit" or similar. We currently launch using "exit intent" detection, but users keep complaining that we're asking them too early (before they've had a chance to do anything). And this with 30 second delay and minimum two page visit.

The question I have is, how do we get a deferred survey back in their face at the end of the visit?

Back in the days before tabbed browsers, we'd have pre-loaded the survey in a "pop under" window and it would have been there when ever they finally closed the browser window. With tabbed browsers, this doesn't really work any more. We can open the survey in a new tab but leave focus on the active tab, but will the user ever really go to the new tab?

Is there a way to force focus to the new tab with the survey in it when the user leaves the website or closes the active tab? We don't want to change survey platforms (we've just done that), we need a solution that will allow us to deliver the survey within our own platform even if the browser handling happens somewhere else.

Anyone been able to do something like this? Does your solution also work for mobile devices?

[seomozinator]

Hello, my friend.

Very interesting! I'd like to hear more about what you accomplished so far and results, so, if you don't mind, can you private message me or make a oublic article/case study or something.

Now, concerning the question. No, I never done anything like that. I have an idea though:

• I'd look into cookie-based solutions. Not sure exactly how to implement, but idea would be to set the cookie for the session, read when it gets expired, therefore deleted, upon that event open new active tab.

P.S. The solution I would use for myself (only if that survey popping at the END of session is SUPER important) - write your own exit intent algorithm. The problem with all existing exit intent popup providers is that they all are not personalized. If you define exit intent based on your specific website, after research on exit behavior on your specific website, you should be able to come up with pretty accurate prediction of exit intent event.

[Gavin.Atkinson]

Hi Charles, what results are you interested in? Invitations vs completions? Or something else?

Our popup survey is pretty intensive, about 13 questions, but people don't seem to mind completing it. We used to only ask 4-5 questions and when we went to the bigger survey as part of a new impact measurement model I predicted a big drop in completions, but in fact we saw completions increase! Who can tell?

We don't seem to have much of an issue with detecting exit intent. I think we do that as well as anyone does (and no-one seems to do it really well). Out problem is with deferred delivery. We don't want to pop up the survey if the customer hasn't finished their journey, and for our site that can mean anything up to 10 or more pages. We want to ask them and then somehow show the survey when they're really leaving. That's the challenging piece.

I like the idea of reading the cookie after they exit, but can we really do that? It might be the answer.

[seomozinator]

The results I'm interested in are about "If that survey has helped you website". So, maybe impact on traffic volume, conversion rate and bounce rate.

We don't seem to have much of an issue with detecting exit intent. I think we do that as well as anyone does (and no-one seems to do it really well)

Exactly. So, if you say you don't have much issue with detecting exit intent, but at the same time saying that what you detect is incorrect, then how can yo say that you don't have an issue with detecting it?

About the cookies - look into .unload() or onunload events. Most likely, it's gonna be much more complicated than that, but that's where i'd start looking.