When you purchase a new item from a Yahoo! Store, you are asked if you'd like to provide feedback on the transaction. About two weeks after the initial purchase, an email from Yahoo! Stores shows up, asking you to provide feedback for the vendor. Whether your experience was good or bad, the opportunity is probably seized more often than not by customers.

Of course, I would bet that bad experiences are more likely to be posted than the good ones, but I'd bet the number is still substantial enough to affect the owner's website look and payment processes.

Does your website have a feedback form? Do you give your customers an opportunity to tell you how you did? Wouldn't those opinions help you shape your customer satisfaction and support foundations? I think so.

Your customer may have a great idea that would compliment your site, or a function that they would have liked (such as saving their information if they order often, so they don't have to fill in purchase forms over and over).

You can set up an automatic feedback email during the initial purchase, or you can send the customer a letter asking them to return to your site to provide information. Either way, this information can be valuable in making future visitors into customers!

William Hanke

Will Hanke runs Lighthouse Technologies, a web design and hosting firm. He is also the author of The Hosting Refugee (hostingrefugee.com) and The Webma$ter Smartass (webmastersmartass.com).