You're leading an E-Commerce project. How do you effectively gather feedback from stakeholders?

Stakeholders vary depending on the stage the project is in. If the e-commerce project is in its early stages, such as the POC phase for an overhaul, the main stakeholders would include customers, web administrators, and customer service representatives. Personally, I find customer service teams to be a significant source of insights, as they can share both functional challenges and feedback on customer interactions. In the project scoping stage, it makes sense to involve the larger IT team, including system administrators, DevOps engineers, and IT or data architects. During the web development, the involvement of the business unit should be minimal, as their requirements should have been communicated during the wireframing/design phases.

Leading an E-Commerce project requires gathering feedback from stakeholders effectively. Start by identifying key stakeholders to understand who will provide valuable insights. Create surveys to gather structured feedback efficiently, ensuring questions are clear and relevant. Conduct interviews for in-depth understanding and to capture qualitative data. Utilize usability tests to observe real-time interactions and identify pain points. Review analytics to derive insights from user behavior and performance metrics. Implement feedback loops to continuously gather and incorporate stakeholder input, ensuring ongoing improvements. Finally, maintain open communication channels to address concerns and foster collaboration.

Start by figuring out who your stakeholders are. These are the people who have an interest in your e-commerce project. They could be internal teams like marketing and IT, or external parties like customers and suppliers. Understanding what each stakeholder wants and how they affect the project helps you ask for feedback that's useful to them. This way, you're asking the right questions to the right people, increasing the chances of getting valuable feedback.

When it comes to identifying stakeholders, first map out everyone impacted by your project - this includes internal teams like marketing, IT, and sales, as well as external parties like customers and suppliers. Create a detailed list and note their specific interests. Next, prioritize stakeholders based on their influence and interest in the project, and use this prioritization to tailor your feedback requests. For example, ask your marketing team about promotional strategies, while querying customers about their shopping experience. This targeted approach ensures you get precise, actionable insights.

Identify all key stakeholders, including customers, team members, and business partners. Schedule regular meetings or surveys to solicit their input. Use a variety of methods, such as one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and online feedback forms, to ensure comprehensive coverage. Clearly communicate the purpose of the feedback and how it will be used to improve the project. Actively listen and document all feedback received. Analyze the feedback to identify common themes and actionable insights. Finally, share the results with stakeholders and outline the steps you will take to address their concerns and suggestions.

Gathering feedback effectively from stakeholders in an E-Commerce project can significantly enhance its success. Creating surveys is a powerful approach for this purpose. Surveys enable you to reach a broad audience swiftly and collect structured, quantitative data that is straightforward to analyze. This method not only saves time but also ensures that you capture diverse perspectives and insights, helping you make informed decisions and adjustments to your project. By valuing stakeholder input, you foster engagement and collaboration, ultimately driving the project's success.

One effective way to encourage customer participation in public feedback surveys is to integrate the survey into a post-purchase automated workflow. Customers are more likely to complete the survey if they’re offered some form of compensation for their time, such as free delivery or a discount on their next purchase, depending on your brand’s commercial policy. Keep public surveys brief and to the point. On the other hand, internal surveys should be more targeted and tailored to the specific team involved, allowing for more detailed feedback. Ensure that the questions are relevant to the specific business unit. For example, don’t ask the customer support team about the best IT architecture for an upcoming project—know your audience.

Surveys can have a tremendous impact when done right. When designing surveys, start with a clear objective. Determine what specific insights you need and craft your questions accordingly. Use simple, straightforward language to ensure all respondents understand the questions, and avoid leading questions like "How great do you think our website is?" Instead, ask neutral ones like "How would you rate your experience on our website?" Tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms make it easy to create and distribute surveys. Pro tip: offering incentives, such as discounts or entry into a prize draw, can boost participation, and anonymity often results in more honest and valuable feedback.

If you're an agency, conduct 1-on-1 interviews with key decision-makers to understand their reasoning behind launching or overhauling their e-commerce project. For functional or application-related topics, workshops are more effective as they allow for the involvement of multiple stakeholders, ideally department representatives, and encourage a collaborative atmosphere. What may seem like a major issue for logistics, for example, might not be a priority from a budget POV for the finance department. Workshops help avoid unnecessary back and forth by facilitating alignment on priorities. After the workshop, be sure to send a summary of the meeting to all participants, highlighting key points and outlining the next steps in the process.

Take time with individuals 1 on 1 and understand specific needs and requirements. Understanding their feelings in addition to objective requirements is easier to do 1 on 1 instead of in a room or on a zoom in front of their peers.

In-depth interviews are invaluable for capturing detailed, qualitative feedback. Start by identifying key stakeholders who have a deep understanding of or significant impact on your e-commerce project. Schedule 1:1 sessions and prepare a list of open-ended questions, such as: - "Can you describe a recent experience you had with our platform?" - "What improvements would you suggest for our checkout process?" Be prepared to follow the conversation wherever it leads to uncover hidden insights. These interviews not only provide rich feedback but also make stakeholders feel more engaged and valued.

Usability tests by stakeholders are essential not only for gathering data but also for anticipating specific environment configurations ahead of release demos. It's easy to overlook that each device—especially in larger enterprises—comes with its own unique setup, often without the stakeholder being aware of it. For instance, one of our luxury industry clients tested their new e-commerce platform on an HP device. When they started reporting display inconsistencies, we quickly discovered that all the company’s 13” laptops were pre-configured with a 1920px screen resolution (which exceeds the physical screen size) and a 150% zoom setting—an uncommon configuration. This setup had to be factored into our considerations moving forward.

It is important to remind here some differences between a) Usability Tests done all along the different stages of the project in order to focus on subjective feedback about satisfaction and overall CX, and b) User Acceptance Testing (UAT) which is usually executed before the roll-out and it is determined to find out bugs and failures.

Analytics and statistical data are more objective and can serve as tools to validate or challenge assumptions. They’re also an excellent way to avoid bias. When using data from Google Analytics (or similar tools) or heatmaps to support your claims, ensure you're comparing equivalent periods and that you have a sufficient data sample to avoid skewed results. For heatmaps, we recommend gathering data for at least three months before drawing any conclusions. If you're working on an existing e-commerce platform and deploying new features in an agile, continuous manner, be sure to release only one feature at a time to avoid distorting the analytics.

Feedback loops should be an integral part of the application management and maintenance process in any e-commerce project, especially when working with agile methodologies. Each piece of feedback should be reviewed, analyzed from both technical and business perspectives, scoped, and formalized in a ticketing system. Once logged, these tickets can be prioritized within the kanban, and relevant ones can be included in the next sprint, leading to a new release. This approach ensures continuous platform improvement and keeps all stakeholders actively engaged in the process.

Communication and feedback are the backbone of a successful project. Stakeholders are there to ensure the success of the project, so sharing what your plans are as well as how the project is progressing will greatly increase your odds of success. Create a regular cadence for communication with different stakeholder groups. Ask for feedback directly and frequently, and be willing to accept correction. It's difficult to overcommunicate as long as your communication is relevant to them.

Feedback is a important channel in the success for an e-commerce project. The aim is to serve our stakeholders better and grow the business to increase sales. It is important to analyze the collected feedback and use it to improve on service delivery. Check from the feedback if there is something you can use to improve your project. When you do this, you will be able to build strong relationships with stakeholders. Open communication channels to inform the stakeholders how you used their feedback. This will build trust between you and them.

Effective e-commerce projects are based on continuous feedback from stakeholders. Regular check-ins will keep everyone abreast of progress and deliver valuable insights. Well-rounded perspectives of stakeholders' opinions can be built by using surveys and a number of feed-back channels, such as via email or through dedicated tools. Quick actions on the feedback show its value and further collaboration. Open communication about the decisions made will let the project ensure the best possible outcome.

In my 10+ years of experience in the e-commerce industry, I’ve observed a recurring phenomenon: stakeholders often believe that website users or e-commerce customers share the same behavioral patterns and design preferences as themselves. This assumption can be counterproductive—and even harmful—when their personal preferences represent only a marginal demographic. To counteract this and gently shift stakeholder opinions, it’s essential to rely on industry-wide data. Keeping a few reliable sources at hand for reference can make a significant difference. Personally, I find Foxintelligence’s weekly newsletters and Contentsquare’s insights particularly useful.