(31-Mar-10) It's business owner's worst nightmare: Customers walk in the door and walk right back out.
For Twiddy & Company, a 95-person firm that connects vacation renters with beach houses in North Carolina's Outer Banks, that meant customers clicking on their Web site and promptly abandoning it. "One day we said, 'Our bounce rates are high. People are exiting our site, and that's a metric expression of frustration,'" says Ross Twiddy, the company's marketing director. "Wouldn't it be nice to know what they were thinking?"
Eager for answers, Twiddy & Co. deployed a customer feedback tool from Kampyle in November. Forget about static surveys and mind-numbing polls. These days, online analytics solutions from vendors such as Kampyle, Get Satisfaction, and UserVoice are helping small businesses gain a high-level understanding of their customers' online experience.