Best questions for ecommerce shopper survey about trust and security

Here are some of the best questions for an ecommerce shopper survey about trust and security, plus smart tips on making your own. If you want to build such a survey in seconds, Specific has you covered.

Best open-ended questions for ecommerce shopper survey about trust and security

Open-ended questions help you discover the real thoughts, experiences, and stories behind shopper decisions. They give respondents space to share what truly matters—going beyond surface-level feedback to specific triggers or pain points. Open-ends are especially valuable when you want details you can't anticipate in advance, or when you’re hunting for new insights that could drive action.

1. What makes you feel secure when shopping with an online store?

2. Can you describe a time when you didn’t trust an ecommerce website? What happened?

3. What would make you abandon a purchase during checkout?

4. How do you decide if a website is trustworthy enough to share your payment details?

5. What specific features or signs give you confidence that a site is secure?

6. Have you ever experienced fraud or data theft after online shopping? Please share your experience.

7. How does a site’s privacy policy impact your decision to shop there?

8. Describe the most important thing an online shop could do to earn your trust.

9. What security features do you look for at checkout?

10. Is there anything missing from most online shops that would help you feel safer?

With open-ended questions, you get context about the shopper’s journey and security concerns—important, since 82% of online shoppers worry about the security of their payment details when making purchases [2]. Understanding their stories helps you design more trustworthy ecommerce experiences.

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for ecommerce shopper survey about trust and security

Single-select multiple-choice questions are ideal when you need quantifiable data or want to kickstart a conversation. They're easy for respondents—fast to answer, less cognitive load—and you can always follow up for detail. They shine when measuring the prevalence of key concerns, such as trust signals or perceived security.

Question: Which of the following trust signals do you notice first on an ecommerce site?

• Security seals and badges

• Customer reviews and ratings

• Clear contact information

• Well-designed user experience

• Other

Question: What is your main concern when entering your payment details online?

• Potential fraud or scams

• Data privacy or misuse

• Lack of clear return/refund policy

• None of the above

Question: Have you ever abandoned a purchase because you didn’t trust the website?

• Yes

• No

When to follow up with "why?" It's always good to ask "why" when you want deeper context. If someone selects "Yes" to abandoning a purchase for trust reasons, follow up: "Can you tell us what about the website made you hesitate?" This is where you can gather the stories behind the stats.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Give respondents an "Other" option if existing choices may not capture their experience—especially in dynamic, fast-changing areas like online security. The followup question lets you uncover unique, unexpected insights directly from shoppers themselves.

With 90% of consumers abandoning carts due to security concerns [1], these structured questions make it simple to spot which issues turn trust into action or hesitation.

NPS question: Is it relevant for trust and security?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customers' likelihood to recommend you—a potent signal of trust. For ecommerce, where trust and security are key to retention and growth, an NPS-driven question tells you if shoppers would vouch for your shop, knowing all the trust and security hurdles. It’s quick to implement, powerful for benchmarking, and Specific will automatically tailor follow-up questions based on whether they’re a promoter, passive, or detractor.

Curious how it works? Try our NPS survey for ecommerce shoppers about trust and security—pre-built to save time and increase actionable insights.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-ups are the secret sauce. Surveys that dig deeper with smart follow-up questions yield richer context—letting you pinpoint why people feel the way they do. Specific’s AI-powered follow-up questions adapt in real time, probing for clarification, reasoning, and real-world stories just like a sharp interviewer would. The result? Better feedback, faster, and with less back-and-forth (say goodbye to long email chains).

• Shopper: "I didn’t trust the payment process."

• AI follow-up: "Can you share what made the payment process seem untrustworthy to you?"

How many followups to ask? Two to three contextual follow-ups are usually enough to drill into the details, while giving shoppers the option to skip if they’ve said all they want. Specific lets you pick this setting—so you never overwhelm respondents, but always get the depth that drives insights.

This makes it a conversational survey: Every followup keeps the interaction fluid, so it feels more like a helpful conversation than a cold form. Respondents stay engaged—and often share more than they would in a traditional survey.

AI analysis of responses: Even with open text and loads of nuance, analyzing responses is easy now. With AI-powered response analysis, you don’t have to wade through unstructured data—simply ask the AI for summaries, top reasons, or direct quotes for your report.

Automated followups are a new way to uncover customer truth. Try generating your survey and see how natural it feels.

How to prompt ChatGPT (or other GPTs) to generate great survey questions

If you want to craft survey questions yourself—or just get fresh ideas fast—prompting AI makes it simple. Here’s an effective starter prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for ecommerce shopper survey about trust and security.

But for even better results, always give the AI as much detail as possible about your audience, your goals, and the specific situation. Here’s what adding more context might look like:

Act as a research specialist for ecommerce shopper trust. My goal is to understand why shoppers might distrust online stores, abandon carts, or hesitate at checkout. Suggest 10 open-ended questions about trust and security concerns online shoppers face, with a focus on practical improvements we could make.

Next, have the AI group your questions by themes:

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

Once you see the categories, pick those most valuable to your business and dig deeper—

Generate 10 questions for categories site security, checkout process, and data privacy.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey feels like chatting with a human expert, instead of ticking boxes on a form. Each answer can spark a tailored follow-up question, so respondents feel truly heard—and you uncover richer insight. This is where AI-powered survey generation breaks away from the old static approach.

Why use AI for ecommerce shopper surveys? Security concerns are constantly evolving. AI-generated surveys adapt in real time to what shoppers say, helping you keep pace. You can launch, edit, and analyze surveys in a fraction of the time, and collect meaningful feedback that you’d never capture in a generic form. For an AI survey example that feels more like a two-way conversation, Specific offers best-in-class experience—it makes feedback engaging both for you and your respondents.

If you want a step-by-step guide, check out how to create a survey for ecommerce shoppers on trust and security in minutes.

See this trust and security survey example now

Get actionable feedback with engaging, conversational surveys powered by AI. See how easy it is to understand real shopper concerns—build trust, boost retention, and drive loyalty today with the smartest questions for ecommerce trust and security.