How to gauge opinions of those who don't buy/sign up?

Finding out why people reject what you're offering.

[esllou]

I had an idea for my site today. We offer access to downloads and we offer 2-3 free samples to entice sign ups and it seems to work quite well. The site isn't converting so we've undertaken a huge site spring clean involving G analytics, conversion tracking and website optimizer alongside some code clean up, adwords tweaks and other things besides.

I would like to know the opinions of those who don't sign up. To me, their opinions are even more important than those who do make the commitment and get out their credit cards. So from today, we're offering further free sample downloads to those who fill out a "guest survey" with questions on subjects ranging from "how did you find us?" to "what do you like/dislike about the site?".

My thinking is, if we get one diamond idea from this form every month, it will make all the e-mailing of free samples worthwhile. We may be missing something so obvious these last 4 years that the first form return will alert us to. Anyway, worth a try, I feel.

How else do you guage opinions of those who may come to your site and disappear a minute later never to be seen?

I've heard about usability services, eye tracking, pop-up user surveys and other similar ideas. What do you use?

[tangor]

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[esllou]

I've considered that but heard horrible things about its usefulness. How many submissions do you get? How many negative ones? Do bad pages become obvious and have you altered things because of the forms submitted?

[esllou]

Just some further information. I had two people respond to this survey today. One has now signed up and one said she's considering it.

And this is because I managed to get some communication going with them, which is an added bonus to discovering what my users do and don't like about my site. Once you have the lines of communication opened up, selling becomes a lot simpler. :)

[tangor]

Vary the text as needed for the application, but that is the general method I use. Works for voting, surveys, feedback, etc. As to how effective? Each reply is effective, but for every one I get there's several hundred or a thousand who don't. Something is better than nothing. :)