My small client asked about having an exit survey and I initially dissuaded her from doing it citing visitor annoyance as the issue. I just visited a website and was confronted with the exit survey window provided by forsee results.com
If you have experience with exit surveys, was it worthwhile and did you use a service or code it yourself.
TIA
I’ve never coded an exit survey but from my personal experience I’ve also never participated in one either. To me, it just seems like an annoyance.
The only time I’ve participated in surveys is when I’ve purchased a product or service. Visiting a website just isn’t enough for me to spend my time giving feedback.
According to me Exit Survey Popups are always annoying so never implement that.
I believe they have a time and place, it just isn’t for the casual web visitor who browses your website.
Exit Surveys can be very effective ways to capture feedback. Of course not everyone, or even most people will participate but that’s ok, the goal is to get a sample of your traffic, not the entire visitor base. If done well it’s actually pretty amazing how wide of an array of visitors will participate.
Exit surveys are a classic example of damaging usability. While it does grab their attention it breaks their natural browsing flow and acts very spammy in how it operates (using the default “you want to exit? help me first!”). Doing anything which interrupts the users ability to successfully browse between pages or websites is not only a bad idea, it increases the chances that new visitors will fail to return. Surveys are meant to be voluntary methods of getting the more social visitors of a website involved, trying to force it upon anyone is asking for trouble, it’ll anger the less “involved” people or the privacy fans. 
I would not use ANYTHING that pops up and prevents the user from leaving immediately. As posted above, make the site as user friendly as possible.
Even if you implement it, you won’t get accurate feedback unless there is a “Screw you for wasting my time with this pop-up” option.
I don’t disagree with the opinions put forth, although my request was…
"If you have experience with exit surveys, was it worthwhile and did you use a service or code it yourself. "
Well to be fair MGM, I have had experience with exit surveys… and in every case it’s been measuring the amount of hassle and hatred they cause users who report they never visited the website again as the result of the intrusion. If it doesn’t meet your users needs, it’ll cost you in traffic.
Again, I would not propose exit surveys to a client (there are other effective ways to gather feedback), however, I wanted to hear from people who have done them and how they did them. When dissuading a client, it’s helpful to have more than opinions to make a recommendation.
Alex, thanks for answering at least half of my original question.
Perhaps direct them to some accessibility or usability research on popup’s or invasive browsing (something which targets the mechanism).
There’s tonnes of material out there which would provide a decent argument for your clients against using such techniques.
Exit surveys are not that much of an annoyance to practically all people.
Pop ups asking “are you sure you want to leave?” are.
You, and some of the posters here are equatiing the two as the same. They are not.
And they sure as hell are not spammy.
I’m with Ted on this one:
Exit Surveys can be very effective ways to capture feedback. Of course not everyone, or even most people will participate but that’s ok, the goal is to get a sample of your traffic, not the entire visitor base. If done well it’s actually pretty amazing how wide of an array of visitors will participate.
A webmaster will get very VERY few of his visitors filling them out simply becaause they just don’t want to be bothered with them, both off and online, but overtime it can still help a webmaster out.
That site you gave did it wrong, though. A visitor should never be asked once he gets in if he wants to participate in a survey. It is too easy for him to just click the “no.”
Wait until they leave, and put the survey in front of them, with an option to close out of it.
Will they be so annoyed that they will never come back? Of course not!
If they like a site, it doesn’t matter. If they do not, or if they are just “eh” over it, it doesn’t matter anyway.
Also, if it is the kind of a site where the webmaster is selling somethig, exit pop-ups are just fine because the odds are that they will not come back anyway.
Make sense?
No, I have never used them.
But, as a seasoned consultant in marketing and advertising, I have much more experience. They can be good, and it doesn’t hurt anything, as said above. I tell my readers to go ahead and use them.
I don’t do surveys because I gauge it by how long they have stayed on the page, and how many sales I make for every 100 or so visitors.
I have also asked people to look at the pages for critique, so…
He may want to do those things instead.
Now, what a webmaster can also do, if he is not sure about exit surveys, is to ask the questions a little at a time, and have the questions already on the page. Put them inbetween the content. All they have to do is quickly read the question, and click “yes” or “no.” and then move on to reading the rest of the page.
Try to think outside the box.
Well to be fair MGM, I have had experience with exit surveys… and in every case it’s been measuring the amount of hassle and hatred they cause users who report they never visited the website again as the result of the intrusion.
No, you haven’t.