An on-site survey is a short question asked of a visitor while they're still on your storefront — usually scoped to a specific page, a specific product, or a moment when they've been on a page long enough to have an opinion. Unlike an emailed survey, it catches shoppers in the moment, while the experience is fresh. On Shopify specifically, a good on-site survey tool stores every response next to the replay of the session that prompted it, so you see what the visitor was doing when they answered.
Reading a survey answer next to its replay is closer to a confession than a comment.
Most survey tools give you a generic popup and a flat spreadsheet of answers. Propel asks the right question on the right page, and shows you what the visitor was doing on your store when they answered.
Choose where the survey fires: any page on the storefront, a specific product page, every product inside a collection, or only after a visitor has spent a set amount of time on the page. The right question shows up only at the moment it fits, which is also why response rates tend to be substantially higher than generic site-wide popups.
The buyers most likely to convert never see a survey at all. The ones already engaged enough to have an opinion — long dwell on a PDP, repeat visitors to a specific collection — get the prompt that actually fits where they are.
"Couldn't find the size I wanted" is useful. "Couldn't find the size I wanted" with the replay showing the visitor scrolled past the variant picker three times because it's hidden in a low-contrast accordion is actionable. Every survey response in Propel links back to the full replay of the session it was captured in. You see why they answered the way they did, not just what they said.
This is the differentiator merchants notice fastest. Reading raw survey answers is detective work; reading them next to the replay is closer to a confession.
Run a feedback prompt only on your best-selling product. Run a discovery question across every product in a single collection. Run a slow-burn time-on-page trigger on the long-form story page that takes a minute to read. Because the trigger reads from your Shopify catalog, not from a generic URL list, the scope keeps working as you add and rename products.
Generic survey tools show the same question to everyone because they don't know what your store sells. Propel knows the catalog because it's plugged into Shopify — so the question can fit the part of the store the visitor is on.
SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Hotjar Surveys, Qualaroo — they're all multi-platform tools. They render a popup on any page that loads their script, and the answer ends up in a separate dashboard, disconnected from the visitor's session. You read it as anonymous text and try to imagine what they were doing.
Propel is built on Shopify primitives. The survey trigger reads from your Shopify catalog, so the right page or the right product gets the right question — and every answer is stored next to the replay of the session that triggered it. The question fits the moment because the tool knows the moment. The answer fits a story because the story is right there.
To be honest: if you only need a one-off NPS blast unrelated to your storefront, Typeform is fine. We win when the question needs to know what page the visitor was on.
Trigger: scoped to your best-selling product page, fires after a long time-on-page threshold so the visitor has actually engaged. Question: "What's making you hesitate?" or "Anything you wish this page told you?" The answers usually surface specifics — sizing concerns, missing materials info, an unclear shipping promise — the kind of qualitative signal we walk through in our piece on why Shopify stores stop converting. Pair each answer with its replay to confirm the story, then ship the fix.
Trigger: every product inside a single collection — your seasonal launch, your highest-margin line, the category you most want to grow. Question: "What were you hoping to find here?" The same question across an entire collection surfaces the catalog gaps and the missing filters that visitors keep wishing for. Watch the replay next to each answer to see exactly what they tried before answering.
Trigger: any specific page, only after a visitor has been on it for long enough to actually have an opinion. Best fits long-form pages — your story, your sustainability page, a buying guide. Question: "Did this page answer what you came for?" Anyone who clicks "no" tells you what's missing in the next field, and the replay shows you whether they read it or skimmed.
Honest comparisons — including the cases where the other tool is the right fit.
Install Propel Replays and fire your first survey before lunch. Unlimited surveys on every paid plan. 7-day free trial. 35% off annual.