Customer Query Forms?

rookaps

I am having a difficult time identifying who my key buyers are.  I would like to start gathering some demographic info to improve my marketing. 
From my current order form, I can obviously obtain location and gender.  I am thinking of putting a form on the site asking customers age group, profession, how they heard about us, etc?
Would such a form be practical after the checkout process?  Or perhaps as a follow-up email? 
As an aside, I just finished a web analytics course and one of the things that stood out in my mind was the fact that Amazon has made their checkout form as less busy as possible.  They found that excluding menu buttons, etc. helps customers focus on the checkout procedure only.  They were previously losing a signficant amount of folks during the checkout procedure -- too busy and cumbersome.rookaps2007-9-22 13:28:6

warner100

I just checked out your site. It looks a bit of a mess in my browser. Could be that your site has been built for IE? I, along with many millions of others use Firefox. May be worth checking?
warner1002007-9-23 3:34:47

JoeJustin

The best way to get people to fill out demographics is by offering them a coupon for a discount.   Make sure it`s an offer, somewhere in the check out process tell them that if they cann fill out the demographics form and receive a 10% discount.  Keep in mind that you will get some folks that will fill out fake data as well as garbage date like lkjsdfkjsdflkjdf.  But you will get a lot of folks that will honestly fill it out.Hope that helps!