What are Custom Questions? What is the Purpose?

 

The purpose of the Questions Builder is to create custom questions for your product or service providers to answer when they add a product or service to sell on your marketplace. These questions should solicit answers about the product, service or service provider that are relevant to both the seller and buyer.

It’s important to have your categories, subcategories and tags set up before creating your custom questions. This is because the questions you create will directly apply to your categories, subcategories and tags. Remember, some of your subcategories may be linked to a specific category or to a group of categories and your tags may be linked to a specific subcategory or group of subcategories. You’ll notice that your subcategories and tags will intuitively become the answer choices to some of the questions you set up depending on how they’re linked. You can also set up your questions for your sellers to “select all that apply” or to type their answer in a free form text box.

There are so many ways to set up your custom questions and it may seem complex, so in this article we’ll simplify the process by breaking it down with examples.  

 

Creating Custom Questions for Sellers

Imagine yourself as if you were interviewing a potential vendor or service provider that wants to sell on your marketplace. What questions would you ask about their product or service? Which one of your categories does their item or service fall under? Are there specific questions you want to ask that relate to the category they selected?

You’ll want to start with setting up the questions that relate to your categories first. The vendor/service provider will select the category that best describes their item/service themselves, so it’s up to you to set up the questions that are to follow.

 

Product Marketplace Example:

Let’s say your marketplace allows women to buy and sell their gently used items. Your categories are: Clothing, Handbags and Jewelry. What individual questions would you ask for each category?

• Clothing

• What is the garment type?  
• What color(s) is the garment?
• What brand is the garment?

• Handbags

• What style is the handbag?  
• What material is the handbag made from?
• What brand is the handbag? 

• Jewelry

• What kind of jewelry item?  
• What material is the jewelry made from?
• What style is the jewelry item? 

 

Service Marketplace Example:

Let’s say you have a marketplace that offers pet sitting services. Your categories are: Daytime Pet Sitting, Overnight Pet Sitting and Dog Walking. What individual questions would you ask for each category?

• Daytime Pet Sitting

• What type of pet(s) will you watch?  
• Do you prefer the pet to be dropped off or will you pick up?

• Overnight Pet Sitting

• What type of pet(s) will you watch?
• Do you prefer the pet to be dropped off, will you pick up or no preference?
• Will you provide treats, toys, doggy bed?

• Dog Walking

• What size dog(s) will you walk?
• Up to how many dogs will you walk at one time?

 

As the marketplace owner, you’re not only setting up the custom questions, you’re also setting up the answer options to those custom questions that your sellers will choose from. Now, remember when you set-up your categories, subcategories and tags and how your subcategories linked to a specific category or multiple categories? This means that your answer options can and will often be the subcategories linked to that specific category. Let’s break this down in an example.

 

Product Marketplace Example:

Let’s go back to the marketplace that allows women to buy and sell their gently used items and the questions you asked per category. If the seller chose “Clothing” as their category, what are the subcategories you had previously set up to link to that category? Those linked subcategories include: Dress, Pants, Skirt, Shorts. Now, go back to the question you set up: What is the garment type? Will those linked subcategories work as answer options to that question? In this case, they do!

 

 

Product Marketplace Example 2:

 

 

Service Marketplace Example:

Back to the pet sitting marketplace and the questions you asked per category. If the seller chose “Dog Walking” as their category, what are the subcategories you had previously set up to link to that category? Those linked subcategories include: 1 Dog, 2 Dogs, 3 Dogs, 4 Dogs and Up to 5 Dogs. Now, go back to the question you set up: Up to how many dogs will you walk at one time? Will those linked subcategories work as answer options to that question?

 

You can also set up your answers to allow the seller to “select all that apply” which allows the seller to select multiple answer options if there’s more than one relevant answer. You’d simply add the text “select all that apply” when setting up your question.

 

Service Marketplace Example:

For the pet sitting marketplace, are there questions that would allow the pet sitter to select multiple answers? The answer is yes! You could set up the question “What size dog(s) will you watch? Select all that apply” because it’s possible that some service providers are willing to watch all dogs regardless of their size. In that case, the service provider would select all answer options.

 

Just as your linked subcategories can be set up as the answer options to questions asked for a specific category, your linked tags can also be set up as answer options to questions relating to the specific subcategory.

 

Product Marketplace Example:

Back to the marketplace that allows women to buy and sell their gently used items. Let’s say the vendor selected “Dress” as the answer to “What is the garment type?” What questions specific to the subcategory, Dress, would you ask? Would some of your linked tags to that specific subcategory work as your answer options?

 

Product Marketplace Example 2:

In this example, the vendor selected “Tote” as the answer to “What style is the handbag?” What questions specific to the subcategory, Tote, would you ask? Would some of your linked tags to that specific subcategory work as your answer options? As the example shows, tags will indeed work as answer options.

 

 

 

You can also set up your answers to allow the seller to “select all that apply” for tags that apply as answer options. You would need to add the text “select all that apply” as part of the question.

 

Service Marketplace Example:

For the pet sitting marketplace, let’s say the sitter selected all dog size answer options as their answer to “What type of pet(s) will you watch? Select all that apply.” because they are willing to watch all dogs regardless of size, but they did not select cats because they will not watch cats. Your next question might be “What certifications or special training do you have? Select all that apply”. In this case, the service provider would select any and all tag options that reflect certifications or training they’ve received.

 

Your questions don’t always have to be related to a specific category, subcategory or tag and you don’t always have to set up answer options. You may also ask questions that prompt a written response from the vendor. Remember, the questions you ask should solicit answers about the product, service or service provider that are relevant to both the seller and buyer.

 

Service Marketplace Example:

For the pet sitting marketplace, the service provider has established that the service they offer is “Dog Walking”. They are willing to walk up 5 dogs, per the answer they selected to the question: Up to how many dogs are you willing to walk? Regardless of how many dogs the service provider is willing to walk, you want to know how the service provider will handle a situation if the dog or dogs in their care were approached by an aggressive dog during a walk. In this case, you’d provide a free-form paragraph space for the service provider to answer in their own words.

 

Creating Default Questions

At this point, it’s understood that conditional questions can be assigned to a specific category or subcategory, meaning that the vendor/service provider will be asked varying questions depending on the category or subcategory they choose. The questions asked will vary depending on the category or subcategory chosen. What if the questions you want to ask the vendor/service provider relate to all your categories? What if you want to repeat the same question or series of questions regardless of the category the vendor or service provider selects? Instead of setting up the same question or series of questions for each category, you can set them up as default questions. This means that regardless of what category the vendor or service provider selects, they will be asked the same question or series of questions when going through adding their product or service on your marketplace. Let’s take a look at some examples.

 

Product Marketplace Example:

Think about a marketplace that allows users to list household items that they want to trade, buy or sell. Your categories include Furniture, Appliances and Electronics. You’ve concluded that you don’t have any category specific questions and that you want the vendor to simply and easily select a category, the appropriate subcategory and appropriate tags when listing the item they wish to trade, buy or sell. You would set up your questions as the example below.

Before we move on, it’s important to remember that regardless of how you set up your questions, your subcategories are still linked to your categories and your tags are still linked to your subcategories. This means that by default, if the vendor selected the category “Furniture”, only those linked subcategories to “Furniture” will appear as options. The subcategories linked to category “Electronics” would not appear as options to the category “Furniture”. This same rule applies to linked tags.

Now, let’s take a look at a service marketplace example.   

 

Service Marketplace Example:

Suppose you have a marketplace where users can book art teachers for one-on-one training. Your categories are At-Home Training and In-Studio Training. You’ve concluded that you don’t have any category specific questions, but you do have some questions that will require the service provider to answer in their own words. You would set up your questions such as the example below.

 

 

Rules to remember when setting up your custom questions:

• Have your categories, subcategories and tags set up before creating your custom questions. The questions you create will directly apply to either a specific category/subcategory, to a group of categories/subcategories or to all categories/subcategories.
• Some of your subcategories linked to a specific category or to a group of categories and some of your tags linked to a specific subcategory or group of subcategories will intuitively become the answer choices to some of the questions you set up.
• When applicable, you can set up your questions for your sellers to “select all that apply”
• At anytime, you can set up questions for your sellers to answer in their own words in a free form paragraph box for longer answers or free form text box for short answers.
• Any and all questions should solicit answers about the product, service or service provider that are relevant to both the seller and buyer.

 

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