Gaining as much information possible from a survey is the ultimate goal of any market researcher. Deducing how an audience will interact with the survey questions presented to them is only half the battle. To get the most out of a market research study, researchers must intrigue, captivate and engage their respondents.
Often times surveys can feel forced to participants, making them feel stressed or as if there is a hidden agenda behind the questions. So, we’ve come up with a few helpful tips when building your survey, so you get as much useful data as possible from your surveys!
1. Be Honest:
It is important to remember to inform your clientele exactly what type of data you’re extracting, why you are collecting it and what it will be used for in order to retain their trust and loyalty.
In many cases, those taking the surveys on a website are doing so because they were prompted to, and sense that they are obligated to do so. Whether they are or not, it is important to relay how important this is to the visitors and respondents, how much you really appreciate them taking their time to get you information to make their future experiences that much better.
2. Introduce the Progress Bar:
“You have completed 30% of your survey!” Now, doesn’t that sound accomplishing and give you a sense of achievement? Having a progress bar triggers a unique feeling of investment in the respondent who will subconsciously be motivated to complete the survey. Isn’t that amazing!
So it is always better to break up your survey into smaller bits. Like, have a few questions on one page and some more on the next one, and then some more again on the next.
3. Don’t Overwhelm:
In many cases, those taking a survey do not want to be doing so. Overwhelming the users may create cognitive work stress that they could eventually associate with the site, regardless of how reasonable that may be.
Break your survey up into separate blocks. Start off the survey with some simple general population questions. Then slowly ease them into the actual objective of the questionnaire. After which you would finally want to introduce them to the nitty gritty of the survey because by then they are already used to the flow of the survey.
If you start them off with the main bits of the survey right off the bat not only will they not be used to the flow of the survey but also get stressed and eventually leave without completing the survey. Thus, this ends in you not only not getting your data but also possibly losing some loyal site visitors.
4. Use logic in your surveys:
A lot of times surveys ask their respondents so many questions that are not even relevant to them at the time. With survey logic, you can implement features like branching, skipping, extraction and hiding questions based on the initial responses to the previous question in the survey or even based on prior data that you already have with regard to the particular respondent.
This helps improve the end user experience. Logic does not change the feel of the survey or the data that you collect if anything it helps improve the feel of the survey so that the respondent only is asked questions that are relevant to them. Thus making is simpler for the survey taker and the data that is collected is 100% accurate and relevant.
5. Incorporate Multimedia in your surveys:
When a survey proceeds to multiple pages, there is some extra space on each page. This gives you the freedom to add relevant pictures, videos or links to useful information in order to help the user understand the context of the question on a given page.
Well, that’s it for our top tips. Have any tips of your own—or questions for our QuestionPro experts? Let us know in the Comments below! And don’t forget to visit our amazing Help Center for even more handy tips & tricks.
