The Dozen "Dos"
12 tips for creating winning online surveys
Who's on first? Okay, so I am showing my age, but a poorly written survey can lead to results that make you feel like Costello trying to get an answer out of Abbott in that hilarious routine. So how do you create a survey that won't strike out? Here are 12 tips to get you started.
1) Start at the end
Ask yourself what you really want to learn from your survey. Keep in mind that your objective can be simple (understanding how well you are serving your customers) or complex (discovering new directions for your business). Once you know what you want to get out of your survey, you will have a much better idea of the questions you need to ask to get there.
2) Commit the time and resources to do it right
Proper planning and allocation of the necessary time and resources are vital to making your survey a success. Commit time for planning your surveys and you will get results that you can take action on.
3) Ask only what you need to know, not all that you want to know
What is it that you need to know right now to make good business decisions? Remember, you can always create another survey to cover other topics or to get more detailed information. Avoid the feeling that you need to get all the answers right away. That often results in one really long survey and a lower percentage of completed surveys (see the next tip).
4) Pay close attention to your survey's length
Length is critical. The longer the survey, the more likely people are to drop out before they finish it. Many people want to know how many questions to use; this metric is not nearly as important as the time it will take the respondent to get through the survey. Test your survey and try to keep the length from five to eight minutes for long-time customers and much shorter (one to three minutes) for new customers or prospects.
5) Use a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions
There are two types of information you can collect with your surveys.
- Quantitative information comes from close-ended questions that have definitive answers for the respondent to choose from. The answers you receive can be measured, evaluated, and analyzed.
- Qualitative information comes from open-ended questions that ask the respondent to answer in his or her own words about attitudes, opinions, and experiences. It may seem easier to create a survey with open-ended questions, but keep in mind that this data requires much more time to process and is rarely definitive. Also, open-ended questions require more effort on the part of the respondent, so you may get a lower response rate. While qualitative information is valuable, open-ended questions should be used sparingly.
6) Keep your survey interesting
When writing a survey, keep the respondent's experience in your thoughts. Although you need them to give you answers, you need to keep them engaged by asking interesting and relevant questions. One tactic is to vary the question types where appropriate. A long list of multiple choice questions (or any other type of question) can feel repetitive and become a chore to answer.
7) Determine how often to send your surveys
Your business goals will determine how you use surveys and how often you send them. A Chamber of Commerce could send a bi-annual members survey and also send a brief survey to attendees after each sponsored event. A retail store could send periodic surveys to its loyal customers to determine what new products they are most interested in, while a business consultant could send a satisfaction survey to clients after a project is completed. You do want to limit how often you send to the same pool of people. 2 to 3 times per person per year is a good place to start.
8) Carefully weigh the need for incentives
Incentives are gifts of small goods or cash that encourage participation. While offering them has been shown to increase response rates, don't rush into giving them away. Your customers may be perfectly happy to answer a brief survey with no incentive. Try creating your first survey without offering compensation to establish a baseline of responses to compare to future surveys; if response rates fall off as you go along, you can always offer incentives for later surveys. A few words of caution: once you start to offer rewards, people will come to expect them. Also, if your reward is too nice, people may give thoughtless answers simply to get the prize. In this case, how valuable is the response?
9) Use clear sentences and jargon-free wording
Writing questions in clear, simple language is critical to the success of a survey. The wording should be easy to read and the questions should be understood in the same context by all participants. Avoid using jargon or acronyms unless you are positive that all respondents will understand the meaning.
10) Test your surveys
While this step sounds obvious and everyone means to do it, testing the survey often gets cut in the rush to get a survey out. This mistake can have significant consequences if your wording is misunderstood, the flow doesn't work, or a five-minute survey takes closer to 25 minutes to complete. Have a friend or colleague uninvolved in its creation take it too. You'll likely get some invaluable feedback!
11) Follow-up on results
Once you have the results of your survey and you've made your business decisions and adjustments based on what you've learned, communicate these changes back to your respondents. It is particularly nice if you send a special email to all of the people who answered the survey thanking them once again and explaining how their input helped you to serve them better.
12) Take surveys
One of the best ways to hone your surveying skills is to take some of the surveys you receive. It's easier to understand what does and doesn't work when you are the one taking the survey. Pay attention to the arrangement of the questions, the length of the survey, and how the questions are asked. What you learn will help you to make your surveys better going forward.
Keep these "12 dos" in mind when creating your next survey and you'll "knock it out of the park" with results that will help you make well-informed decisions about the next steps for your business, organization, or event.
