Why Customer Feedback Is Crucial for Ebook Sales

If you really want to know what people think about you — just ask. Yes, it might be painful sometimes. In fact, if you’re lucky, it will be painful. Growth usually involves a bit of discomfort. It’s one of those eternal facts of life; before you can improve, you have to learn what you’ve been doing wrong. This is why customer feedback is crucial for ebook sales.

It’s the Best Way to Find Out What They Like

Sure, you can make some extrapolations based on sales data. After all, if people are buying an ebook they must like it. But how many more ebooks could you sell if you knew exactly what your customers were looking for and took definitive steps to provide it?

People Like to Think Their Opinions Have Weight

Do you feel good when a friend asks your opinion about something? If you’re a regular at a restaurant and the owner asks what you think about some improvements she’s planning—and seems sincerely interested in your response—would you feel better about choosing to eat there? Everybody likes to think the way they feel is important to others. Asking for customer feedback and implementing it says to your ebook online stores’ customers you care about them and you’re doing everything you can to make your store their store.

See Yourself through Others’ Eyes

 Just as you drive your car from the inside, you operate your business from the inside, too. While you do get a look at your car every time you walk up to it, your awareness is colored by the fact it’s yours. Your ecommerce site works the same way. You know it’s set up the way it is because you made a conscious decision to do so and this justifies its configuration in your mind. However, you’re not shopping the site; your customers are. Far better to take their advice about the way they’d like to see things arranged so they can find them easily, purchase them quickly, and do so more often—yes?

Keep Your Finger on the Pulse of the Marketplace

 Ok, just for a moment, let’s say it’s circa 2000 and you’re doing huge business selling personal portable CD players (think Sony Discman). Sales are great, but one day, a customer asks if you have a MP3 player. You don’t know what that is, so you go look it up and learn the device only works with a personal computer. You think, “That’s way too much trouble, nobody’s going to bother with it,” and double down on CD players. The following year, Apple introduces the iPod and the iTunes store and you pass it off as yet another gimmick with no future. Now, flash forward to today. You’re probably reading this on an iPhone with a built-in MP3 player. Had you listened to customer feedback, you could have ridden the leading edge of the wave, rather than chasing it after it passed.

Who knows what the next hot technology in the ebook arena is going to be? Your customers do; even if all they know for sure is they’re curious about some new thing. This is why customer feedback is crucial for ebook sales. Listening to it and learning from it will significantly reduce the pain of growing your business.. Ultimately, anything you do to improve the customer’s shopping experience on your site is going to translate into more sales. In other words, when you pay attention, they pay cash.