Best questions for ecommerce shopper survey about product discovery

Here are some of the best questions for an ecommerce shopper survey about product discovery, plus useful tips for crafting them. We’ve seen that you can build an engaging survey in seconds using Specific—no guesswork, just impactful questions.

Open-ended questions for ecommerce shoppers: unlocking deeper insights

Open-ended questions let shoppers express themselves freely, revealing nuanced opinions and surprising trends. Especially when exploring product discovery, this format uncovers unmet needs, pain points, and moments of delight that numbers alone never show. It’s key when you want unfiltered feedback, stories, or the why behind decisions.

In today’s landscape, 77% of online retailers say their customers don’t know exactly what product they want until they see it, so exploring discovery moments matters. [1]

1. Can you describe the last time you discovered a new product online? What stood out?

2. What do you enjoy most about discovering new products while shopping online?

3. What frustrates you when you try to find new products on ecommerce sites?

4. How do you usually come across products you’ve never seen before?

5. Can you walk me through the steps you take when searching for a product you want but haven’t bought before?

6. What features or tools help you most when exploring product options?

7. Tell us about a time when you gave up looking for a product online—what happened?

8. What makes you trust or want to try a product you find online?

9. In your experience, what’s missing from most product search or discovery tools?

10. How could online stores make exploring and finding new products easier for you?

Single-select multiple-choice questions for ecommerce shopper surveys

Single-select multiple-choice questions give structure—ideal for quantifying patterns, segmenting shopper types, or kickstarting the feedback flow. They make it easier for respondents to answer quickly, especially if your audience is multitasking on mobile. You can also use them before open-ended probes to narrow the topic, and then dig deeper with tailored follow-up questions.

Let’s look at three strong examples:

Question: What’s your main way of discovering new products online?

• Browsing retailer websites

• Social media ads or posts

• Search engines

• Recommendations from friends

• Online marketplaces (e.g., Amazon)

• Other

Question: How often do you try new brands or products when shopping online?

• Every purchase

• Frequently

• Occasionally

• Rarely

• Never

Question: Which feature is most important to you in helping discover new products?

• Personalized recommendations

• Advanced search filters

• User reviews

• Featured collections or trends

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" Start with a multiple-choice question, then drill down. For example, if a shopper says “social media ads,” following up with “Why do you trust products you see advertised on social media?” delivers context you’d never get from a checkbox alone.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always include "Other" when you suspect your list might miss unique answers. Following up with an open field lets you uncover unexpected sources—“Oh, actually I find new products through podcasts.” That’s gold you’d miss otherwise.

NPS: measuring advocacy in product discovery

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a proven way to measure customer advocacy. In the context of ecommerce shoppers and product discovery, NPS shows you not just satisfaction but how likely someone is to recommend your shop, brand, or discovery process to others—a huge signal when 52% of small businesses say word-of-mouth is their main discovery channel. [1] You can generate a tailored NPS survey for this topic instantly.

NPS asks something like: “How likely are you to recommend discovering products through our store to a friend or colleague?” Responses from 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely) help you segment promoters, passives, and detractors—unlocking targeted follow-ups for each group.

The power of follow-up questions

Automated follow-up questions are a game changer. They turn surveys from generic forms into smart conversations, unlocking context, clarifying answers, and surfacing the real “why” behind a shopper’s click or complaint. We’ve shared more detail on how automated follow-ups work here.

Specific’s AI follow-up engine generates these clarifying questions in real time, so you get the full story—without emailing back and forth or waiting days for clarity. That means richer insights, faster learning, and answers that actually make sense.

• Ecommerce shopper: “It’s hard to find stuff I like.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you share specific examples of products you had trouble finding or features that would have helped you?”

How many followups to ask? Two or three follow-ups is usually enough to capture clear intent and get past vague answers—while keeping things breezy. You can set Specific to skip to the next question once you’ve dug out the information you wanted.

This makes it a conversational survey: Real-time follow-ups give your survey the feel of a natural chat, so people open up more and stay engaged from start to finish.

AI survey response analysis is easy: Even though follow-ups generate lots of open text, Specific’s AI tools let you analyze all responses easily, surfacing trends and themes instantly from any amount of feedback.

These follow-up questions are a new kind of research superpower—give the AI survey generator a try and see just how interactive and insightful your interviews can get.

Prompt engineering: writing prompts for ChatGPT and GPT survey generators

Want to use generative AI or something like ChatGPT to draft great ecommerce survey questions? Start simple, then add context to increase relevance and precision.

Here’s a basic prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for ecommerce shopper survey about product discovery.

This gets strong first results. But AI always works best when it knows you, your goal, and your situation. Try this improved version:

I run an online fashion store focused on sustainable brands. I want to understand how shoppers discover new products and what influences their choices. Please generate 10 open-ended survey questions to uncover motivators, channels, and pain points in their discovery journey.

After you’ve got a set of questions, instruct the AI to sort them for rapid review:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Now, pick a category—like “search behavior” or “social media influences”—and ask:

Generate 10 questions for categories search behavior, product recommendations, and trust signals.

Building context and iterating on prompts makes AI-generated surveys much smarter.

What is a conversational survey? Manual vs. AI-generated surveys

A conversational survey isn’t just a boring form—it’s a smart, chat-like exchange that adapts to every response. Instead of static, one-size-fits-all questions, respondents get personalized, in-the-moment follow-ups. As a result, you collect richer, more honest data, even when people are on mobile or in a hurry.

Here’s how manual and AI-generated surveys compare, at a glance:

Why use AI for ecommerce shopper surveys? AI-driven surveys instantly adapt, clarify, and dive deeper—so you don’t miss out on the hidden context driving buyers’ decisions. With 79% of users bouncing if they can’t find what they want right away, you need insight, not just data. [1]

AI surveys, especially in a conversational format, deliver richer insights—no coding or endless setup. The Specific AI survey generator is built to maximize feedback and analyze responses in minutes, not days. If you want a step-by-step guide, check out how to create a survey for ecommerce shoppers about product discovery.

We designed Specific for the best conversational survey experience, making feedback frictionless and enjoyable—for both creators and the people sharing their stories.

See this product discovery survey example now

Ready to level up your understanding of how shoppers discover products? See a survey example in action and create your own with just a few clicks—fast insights, deeper context, and dynamic follow-ups await.