Best questions for ecommerce shopper survey about reviews and ratings usefulness

Here are some of the best questions for an ecommerce shopper survey about reviews and ratings usefulness, plus tips for crafting questions that deliver insight. With Specific, you can build a high-quality survey like this in seconds.

Best open-ended questions for ecommerce shopper survey about reviews and ratings usefulness

Open-ended questions are the easiest way for us to unlock real, honest feedback from shoppers. They’re great for understanding “why,” finding gaps, and capturing perspectives we’d otherwise miss. Especially with reviews—where opinions are nuanced—we want more than yes/no answers. Here are the top ten open-ended questions to use:

1. How do reviews influence your decision to buy a product?

2. Can you describe a time when a review changed your mind about a product?

3. What makes a review helpful or trustworthy for you?

4. Have you ever been disappointed by a product despite high ratings? What happened?

5. Which review signals (e.g., star ratings, detailed comments, reviewer photos) matter most to you?

6. What do you do when you suspect a review might be fake?

7. How do you decide which reviews to trust or ignore?

8. When was the last time a negative review affected your opinion? Tell us about it.

9. If a product has mostly positive but a few negative reviews, how do you respond?

10. What would make reviews and ratings on our site more useful for you?

Using these questions, you’ll dig into what’s behind the numbers. In fact, 93% of consumers say online reviews influenced their decisions, underscoring how important detailed, actionable feedback can be for ecommerce teams. [1]

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for ecommerce shopper survey about reviews and ratings usefulness

Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when we need data we can chart, segment, and share quickly. They’re also useful for low-effort input—sometimes, a shopper won’t type out long answers, but will happily click a choice. It’s a good way to warm people up and surface topics for follow-ups. Here are three of the best single-select questions and their options:

Question: How often do you read product reviews before making a purchase?

• Always

• Often

• Sometimes

• Rarely

• Never

Question: Which aspect of reviews has the biggest impact on your buying decision?

• Star ratings

• Written comments

• Verified purchase badges

• Reviewer photos

• Other

Question: If a product’s reviews seem fake or suspicious, what do you do?

• Trust but verify with other sources

• Immediately look for alternatives

• Proceed with caution

• Ignore and move on

When to follow up with "why?" If a shopper selects a choice but we want the context (“Why do you trust written comments more than star ratings?”), that’s when a follow-up is gold. We uncover the reasoning and can address underlying issues—like skepticism about inflated ratings, which has been noted by 56% of online shoppers recently. [3]

When and why to add the "Other" choice? When the usual answers might miss something unique, the "Other" choice lets people share specifics we didn’t anticipate. Following up here gives direct access to new ideas or pain points we hadn’t considered—sometimes the most valuable part of a survey.

NPS-type question for ecommerce shopper survey about reviews and ratings usefulness

Let’s talk NPS—Net Promoter Score. Normally used to measure loyalty (“Would you recommend us?”), it adapts beautifully for understanding reviews’ impact: “How likely are you to recommend our reviews and ratings system to a friend shopping online?” This lets you gauge not just satisfaction but advocacy—essential for knowing if your site’s reviews are genuinely supporting shoppers. If you want a ready-made NPS survey for ecommerce shoppers on reviews, you can use Specific’s NPS survey builder for instant setup.

We’re seeing that products with a 4.2 – 4.7 average rating actually sell better than those rated 4.8 – 5.0, since moderate ratings are perceived as more authentic. [6] That’s exactly the sort of insight you’ll uncover using this approach.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions, especially when driven by AI, are a secret weapon in survey design. They help us clarify ambiguous answers, dig deeper into decision-making, and resolve contradictions instantly. With Specific's automatic AI follow-up questions feature, the survey evolves just like a real conversation—probing politely, adjusting tone, and extracting the details that structured forms miss.

• Ecommerce shopper: “I didn’t trust the glowing reviews, so I was skeptical.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you share what made those reviews feel untrustworthy to you?”

If we don’t ask follow-ups, we’re often left with vague remarks—leaving us guessing what actually matters.

How many follow-ups to ask? Generally, 2–3 follow-ups work best. If a respondent clearly answers the main point, the AI can skip further probing. In Specific, you can fine-tune this intensity—maximizing clarity while respecting people’s time.

This makes it a conversational survey: The sequence of dynamic follow-ups, clarifying and personalizing the experience, turns a simple Q&A into a flowing, human chat that’s genuinely engaging.

AI survey response analysis: Even with loads of text, it’s easy to analyze responses using AI survey response analysis tools. Summarizing, categorizing, and extracting key insights is hassle-free—even when you’re dealing with truly open, unstructured feedback.

These automated follow-up questions are a game changer. Try generating a survey with Specific and feel the difference in how you capture context.

Prompting GPT to generate great questions for ecommerce shopper surveys

If you want to use ChatGPT or another AI to help brainstorm or refine your survey, try starting with:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Ecommerce Shopper survey about Reviews And Ratings Usefulness.

But you can get far better results by giving more detail—your brand, your type of shoppers, your goal. For example:

Our team is looking to improve the trustworthiness and helpfulness of product reviews on our Ecommerce website. Our audience is diverse, but mostly makes purchases online at least twice a month. Please suggest 10 open-ended questions for a shopper survey about reviews and ratings usefulness that help us understand pain points, suggestions, and trust signals.

Next, categorize the ideas:

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

Pick categories you care about most, then go deeper:

Generate 10 questions for the categories “trust signals” and “pain points with fake reviews”.

This way, prompts get sharper, and the resulting survey is much more relevant—just like the ones you’d generate using the Specific AI survey generator or by chatting with the AI survey editor for instant changes.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey is what sets Specific apart: instead of stiff forms, it’s a chat with a smart agent. The survey adapts, asks clarifiers, and feels like talking to a real person—not just ticking boxes. This conversational approach lifts engagement, increases completion rates, and delivers richer, more honest feedback compared to old-school static forms.

With Specific, you’re not just deploying forms—you generate conversational AI surveys that engage and adapt dynamically. This leads to much stronger, more contextual data. For newcomers, check out our guide on how to create a survey for ecommerce shoppers focused on reviews and ratings.

Why use AI for ecommerce shopper surveys? It’s efficient, always-on, and uncovers deeper truths by asking what matters right when the respondent is most ready to share. An AI survey example built this way is not only easier for you to make, but offers shoppers and product teams a noticeably better experience. Plus, Specific’s conversational design and mobile-first UI make feedback smooth for everyone—creators and shoppers alike.

See this reviews and ratings usefulness survey example now

Try it today—see how fast you can create a shopper survey that asks smarter questions and delivers insights that others miss, all powered by AI and built for real engagement. Specific makes survey creation and analysis delightfully easy, from start to finish.