# Are You Asking These Golden Questions?

## Introduction

Qualaroo Editorial Team is a diverse group of professionals passionate about customer experience management. We update you on the latest trends, dive into technical topics, and offer insights to elevate your business.

## Key Takeaways

- Ask the five Golden **questions** immediately after sign-up or course completion to learn sources, persuaders, and near-dropoffs—use free-text and exact wording to capture sharper signals, so pilot it with last week’s enrollees.
- Probe "which competitors or options—including doing nothing—did you consider?" to expose real alternatives and motivations, then align messaging and onboarding to what they actually value—fix the top recurring hesitation first.
- Use the open-ended challenge question to surface blockers and ideas, accept some noise, and tag themes into quick experiments, content, and manager coaching—iterate wording as patterns emerge and start one test this week.

If you read our last blog post, you now have a new understanding of [how to ask questions](https://qualaroo.com/marketers-guide-surveys/types-surveys-ask/). The second part of Sean’s recent webinar with Conversion Rate Experts covers the golden questions that can unlock insights that improve your conversion rates.

We know you’re ready to hear the Golden Questions, but before we get to them, note that Dr. Karl Blanks from [Conversion Rate Experts](https://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/) suggests you copy and paste the questions exactly as you see them. Questions, even when very slightly differently worded, perform differently.

You’ll also notice that we’ve listed the objectives first and the questions second. That’s because it’s not about the questions themselves but the answers—in particular what you do with the answers to better meet your user’s needs.

## The Golden Questions

### Question 1

**Objective:** Uncover Where Customers Come From  
**Ask:** "Where exactly did you first find out about us?"  
**Tips:**  
- Don’t force the visitor to shoehorn their response into a prewritten dropdown or multiple choice (e.g., not “Google,” “Magazine,” or “Friend”). Doing this forces the visitor to give you only information you already know.  
- Unique and precise answers are much more useful.

### Question 2

**Objective:** Identify Appeals  
**Ask:** "What persuaded you to purchase from us?"  
**Or** "Please list the top three things that persuaded you to use us rather than a competitor?"  
**Tips:**  
- Find out what the buyer is buying rather than what you think you’re selling. Maybe you think it’s some product specification, when in fact they’re buying something more abstract like image.

### Question 3

**Objective:** Understand Position Relative to Your Competitors  
**Ask:** "Which other options did you consider before choosing our Product Name?"  
**Or** "Which of our competitors, both online and offline, did you consider before choosing our Product Name?"  
**Tips:**  
- The second variation may yield better results if you have a lot of offline competitors.
- You may think you know who your competitors are, but answers to this question may surprise you. For example, as Blanks explains, your biggest competitor may in fact be disinterest—users choosing to buy nothing rather than commit to any one product or business.

### Question 4

**Objective:** Understand Reservations  
**Ask:** "What’s the one thing that nearly stopped you from buying from us?"  
**Or** "What was your biggest fear or concern about using us?"

### Question 5

**A Question We Love:** What was your biggest challenge, frustration or problem in finding the right Product Type online?  
**Tip:**  
- Though this question will most likely result in some irrelevant feedback and impractical ideas, all you need is a single great one that you haven’t thought of to make it worth it.

And there you have it! These five questions have been tested and retested for efficacy, and they’ve proven to deliver actionable insights again and again.

Though Blanks recommends you use exact wording when asking these questions for the first time, he does suggest iterating future questions based on the answers you get. In question #3, for example, the second option is an iteration of the first based on the fact that many users didn’t name offline competitors when asked the first question.

Next up we’ll share with you how the Conversion Rate Experts use Qualaroo to improve [CRO](https://qualaroo.com/beginners-guide-to-cro/) performance—and how you can too!