Mystery Shopping is a tool used by market researchers to find out how a company can improve its products and services or to find out about a competitor’s products and services.
A “mystery shopper” is a person who poses as a customer. The mystery shopper goes through any or all parts of the customer journey – looking for information about a product or service, purchasing the product, attempting to make a return or get a refund, and so on.
The mystery shopper will then report on their experience:
How easy or hard was it to find what they needed?
How long did it take for someone to provide assistance?
Were the people who dealt with them polite and attentive?
Did the product they purchased fulfil their expectations?
How easy was it for them to return something and get their money back?
They often come prepared with a questionnaire, so they know exactly what to look for when they do their mystery shop.
Sometimes, a mystery shopper will perform competitor research by going through the same process with different competitors. For example, the shopper will go into a shop and ask for help purchasing a Christmas gift. The mystery shopper will go to different shops, always asking for the same thing.
Mystery shopping can be used to make improvements to your ecommerce site.
A mystery shopper can go through the process of looking for a product or service and then trying to purchase it on your site. If anything on your website is difficult or frustrating for them, or just doesn’t work, you know that you have to change it.
The advantage of using a mystery shopper to do this is that you don’t have to wait for a customer to encounter a problem – which might cause them to move to a competitor – before you realize that something needs to be fixed.
On the positive side, if the mystery shopper finds something on your website that they think is fantastic, you can move it to a more prominent position.
A mystery shopper can also research competitor websites for you and let you know what you can do to make your website better than your competitors’ websites.
There are professional mystery shoppers, but a mystery shopper can be a neighbour, a friend or a family member. The mystery shopper should not, however, be someone who is familiar with your website. They should never have seen your website before, and have no knowledge of how it was designed or how it is “supposed” to work. That is, they should be in the same position as a potential customer.
