The first order is where an online brand is decided. The product arrived, or it didn't. The packaging survived, or it didn't. The serum suited their skin, or it's going in a drawer. A first-time buyer who has a good week becomes a second order; one who has a bad week quietly never comes back, and you never find out why.
A post-purchase survey is how you find out. Sent at the right moment, with the right few questions and a reason to answer, it tells you what went wrong while there is still time to fix it for this customer, and gives the ones who are happy a nudge toward the second order.
This guide covers what to ask, when to send it, how to link every answer back to its order, and how to turn the thank-you into a repeat purchase.
Send it a week after delivery, not at checkout
Surveys on the order confirmation page catch people at the moment they know least: they haven't received anything yet. Ask about checkout there if you like, but the survey that matters goes out about a week after delivery. By then the customer has opened the box, tried the product and formed an opinion.
In practice that means a link in your post-delivery email, a WhatsApp follow-up, or a message on the order status page for people who come back to check on delivery.
Eight questions for a first order
Here is a check-in that takes a little over a minute. Each question is there for a reason.
- How happy are you with your first order? A five-star rating. One number you can track across every order batch and every product launch.
- What let you down? Shown only when the rating is two stars or lower, with options such as "It arrived late", "Damaged packaging", "Not what I expected" and "Didn't suit my skin". Happy customers skip it; unhappy ones tell you precisely what to fix.
- Did your order arrive when we said it would? Multiple choice. Delivery promises are the most common silent reason for a bad first order.
- How well did the packaging hold up? A rating. Breakage is expensive twice: the refund and the lost customer.
- How does it feel after a week? A 1–7 scale works well for anything people use over time.
- Is the price fair for what you got? Multiple choice. Better to hear "too expensive" in a survey than to guess it from churn.
- How did you first hear about us? A dropdown with your real channels. It's the cheapest attribution data you'll ever get.
- How likely are you to order again? A 0–10 scale. Hearsay reports it as a Net Promoter Score in Analytics.
You can have the AI builder draft this for you. Tell it "A week after delivery I want to check in with first-time buyers: how the order went and whether they'd buy again", then "if someone's unhappy, ask them what went wrong", and it adds the follow-up question and its branching rule. Every draft is fully editable before you publish.
Tie every answer to its order
A survey answer is far more useful when you know which order it came from: you can check the courier, the batch, the SKU, and reply to the right person.
Hearsay survey links accept a reference: add ?ref= with an order id and it's stored with the response. It appears in the CSV export as the Reference column and in every webhook payload.
For Shopify, the Integrations page gives you ready-made snippets for a published survey. It adds a shopify channel and builds the link with Shopify's order id filled in by Liquid:
<a href="https://your-site/s/SURVEY?source=shopify&ref={{ order.id }}">Tell us how your order went</a>
Paste it into your order confirmation or shipping notifications, or into the order status page. Every response from those links is counted under the Shopify channel and carries its order id. (This is included on the Business plan.)
The coupon that brings the second order
Attach a reward to the survey and every customer who finishes gets a coupon on the thank-you screen. For a first-time buyer, a reward on the next order is the most useful thank-you you can give:
- Make it conditional on a second order. "₹200 off your next order over ₹500", "£5 off your next order" or "$5 off your next order" keeps the margin sensible.
- Use unique codes. Generate a batch in your store, download it as a CSV, and upload it to the reward (up to 100,000 codes). Each customer gets their own code, so one leaked on a coupon site can only be used once.
- Set an expiry that matches your reorder cycle. For skincare, thirty to forty-five days.
- Keep the bot check on. Codes only go to customers who finish the survey and pass a bot check; each response gets at most one code.
If you run more than one brand, set a default reward on each brand and the reward form fills itself in for that brand's surveys.
Compare where the answers come from
Give each place you send the survey its own channel: the post-delivery email, the WhatsApp follow-up, the order status page, an Instagram story. Analytics then shows opens, completions and conversion per channel.
Email reaches every buyer; a message on WhatsApp or Instagram reaches them where they already spend their time. Which one actually converts better for your customers is exactly what the channel card tells you, and it tells you where to put the link first.
Send the answers where your team works
On the Business plan, a webhook sends each response to a URL you choose as it happens. Point it at Zapier ("Webhooks by Zapier", Catch Hook) or Make ("Custom webhook") and you can:
- add every response as a row in a Google Sheet your support team already watches;
- tag unhappy first-time buyers in your email tool for a personal follow-up;
- post low ratings to a team chat channel.
Every payload includes the answers with their question wording, the channel and the order reference, and a separate reward.issued event carries the coupon the customer received. Deliveries are signed, so you can check they came from Hearsay.
What to do with the answers
- Reply to every unhappy first-time buyer within a day. The order reference tells you exactly which order to look at.
- Group the "what let you down" answers by week. A spike in "Damaged packaging" after you changed boxes is a finding worth a lot.
- Read the "how did you hear about us" answers against your ad spend. It's rough, but it's free.
- Watch how many coupon codes come back in your store's discount report. Second orders from first-time buyers are the number the whole loop is for.
Try it
Start with the first-order check-in. Give the AI builder this brief:
A week after delivery I want to check in with first-time buyers: how the order went, delivery and packaging, whether it's worth the price, how they heard about us, and whether they'd order again. If someone's unhappy, ask what went wrong.
Then add a reward for the next order, create a Shopify channel from the Integrations page, and paste the snippet into your shipping notification.