Are you feeling baffled by the number of survey features that online tools offer? Not sure which features are the most important for your research and how should you select a research survey software? Read on to find how QuestionPro can help you solve your dilemma.
Investing in QuestionPro survey software gives you access to some of the most advanced online survey creation, distribution, and analysis tools available. You can create a survey using one of our hundreds of survey and question templates. Follow that up with our powerful analytics tools to help you decode your survey results and create an action plan to improve your organization.
Check out our top 20 survey features to learn more about what QuestionPro can do for you.
You can use a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey to determine how many customers are recommending your business to family and friends. A Net Promoter Score survey is a one-question survey that asks respondents to rate their experience with your brand and how likely they are to recommend your brand. The scale runs from 0-10, with 0 being “Very Unlikely” and 10 being “Very Likely” for a recommendation.
Answers to an NPS survey help you determine the loyalty between your customers and your brand. A score of 9-10 implies the customer is likely to be a promoter of your business. Promoters are loyal to a brand and actively recommend your company to their friends and colleagues. Customers who give a score in the range of 7 to 8 are considered as passives. Detractors are the ones who give a score of 0-6. These are the ones who are not happy and are likely to stop buying your products and services. Having a good NPS score helps you grow brand awareness and increase word-of-mouth marketing.
The purpose of conjoint analysis is to decipher how people make complex choices. You make many choices every day, most without even realizing it. You can use conjoint analysis to help determine what choices a customer will make during the buying process.
Conjoint analysis is an essential part of market research. It gives you insight into the thought process of your target customers as they decide what products to buy or services to use. A lot of businesses miss out on the benefits of conjoint analysis because it seems too complicated or confusing. Luckily, you can enjoy the advantages of conjoint analysis with the help of QuestionPro.
Sometimes called best-worst scaling, you can use MaxDiff analysis to determine your survey respondents’ preferences for different things. MaxDiff analysis is similar to conjoint analysis, but market researchers find it much easier to use.
Like Conjoint analysis, MaxDiff looks at the choices people make when purchasing a product or choosing a service provider. The star questions show respondents a list of items or features, then ask them to rate each item as “most important” or “least important.” Such analysis shows you which features are most important to a customer. You can use this information to create products and features that are most wanted by customers.
One of the biggest challenges of conducting online research is encouraging people to respond. The best way to get a higher response rate is to make the survey interesting and engaging. With QuestionPro, you can embed audio files into your questionnaire to help engage respondents.
Audio surveys also allow you to convey more information about your product, services, or business than text-only surveys. Such questions can help respondents better remember the information they received. Many survey participants quickly scan text to answer the survey faster. Audio files encourage them to slow down and think about their answers.
For example, an audio clip could help quickly explain the features of a product before you ask respondents to rate the importance of each of them.
Using videos in your surveys can be even more engaging than using audio files. Video is a visually appealing medium that also requires more attention than text or images alone. It leads to more accurate responses and a higher response rate.
A video survey can also help create a human experience for respondents without requiring one-on-one interviews or phone calls. Many respondents prefer feeling like they’re working with a human as opposed to answering questions on a machine.
Skip logic and branching features allow you to create “intelligent” surveys. Skip logic moves a respondent to various places or pages in the questionnaire based on answers to conditional or screening questions. Such programming helps keep the survey relevant for the respondents and decreases the chance of a respondent dropping out.
For example, you want to survey mobile phone usage. Your conditional question asks if the respondent uses social media on their phone. If they answer yes, they’re given a set of questions related to social media use. If they respond no, the survey software skips the social media questions and sends the respondent to the next relevant question set.
Text piping is another feature that helps to create an intelligent-feeling survey. It works by using the answer from a previous question in the text of a later question. This makes your respondents feel important and heard, as the survey “learns” what they answered in a previous question.
Text piping is easiest to understand using an example. Let’s say you ask a question to participants about their preferred brand of a coffee shop. Your respondent answers “Starbucks.” Your next question is an open-ended question that asks the respondent to describe why they like Starbucks the most.
You can add more control to your survey by password protecting it. A password-protected survey requires respondents to enter a password to complete the survey. You have two password protection choices with QuestionPro. You can either create a global password or an email address and password combination.
Global passwords use one password to protect the survey. This feature allows anyone with the password the ability to access the survey. Email combination passwords, on the other hand, use a unique password for each email address. Respondents must enter their email address and individual password to respond to the survey.
QuestionPro allows you to add a survey timer or timeout feature to your surveys. Survey timers limit the amount of time a respondent has to answer the questions in a survey. If a respondent doesn’t answer all the questions in time, the survey closes automatically. The unfinished responses are marked as incomplete.
Survey timers are ideal for increasing response rates and decreasing survey dropouts. When a respondent sees they are being timed, they often focus more energy into completing the survey. Without a timer, a respondent might get distracted by something and never return to your research study.
Timed surveys can also be useful in the employee hiring process. For example, you can give a potential hire a quiz on the industry. By timing the survey, you limit the chance that the prospective employee can use outside resources to answer the questions.
Multiple-choice questions are one of the most common question types for nearly every kind of survey. They’re easy to use and allow respondents to answer quickly. Multiple-choice questions also come in many different sub-types. You can offer a simple, one-choice answer or more complex types, like a drag-and-drop multiple-choice question.
In addition to being more comfortable for respondents, multiple-choice questions are ideal for data analysis. The structured nature makes it easy to sort data and compare answers between respondents.
When you use multiple-choice questions, you want to make sure you always provide an “other” or “none of the above” choice. These choices help your respondents feel represented in the survey and work as a catch-all for outlying answers.
Rank order questions are a type of multiple-choice question that allows respondents to rank different items into a preferred order. There are several types of ranking questions. Choose from features like a drag-and-drop interactive ranking or drop-down multiple-choice ranking questions.
You can use ranking questions in different types of surveys, including market research or customer experience. For example, you run a restaurant and want to know what the most important aspects of dining are to your customers. You can ask them to rank their dining experience preferences from most to least important using quality of food, customer service, wait time, and price.
Matrix questions are a more complex type of multiple-choice question represented in a grid. Side-by-side matrix questions present an advanced matrix feature. You can use side-by-side matrix questions to help reduce the length of your survey by combining multiple questions into one grid.
You should be mindful when using side-by-side matrix questions. Matrixes may not always respond well on mobile devices. If they are too big, it will be confusing for respondents to follow.
Star ratings are a universally-accepted method to rate a product, service, or organization. If you’re like most people, you always check to see how many stars a product or service received from past customers before buying it. Star ratings take an overall feeling of a detailed review and make it easy to digest: more stars are positive, and fewer stars are negative.
A star rating question is a simple feature that allows respondents to rank different attributes using stars quickly. It works like a regular matrix question, but instead of radio circles or checkboxes, star rating questions use gold stars. This question adds a level of uniqueness to your survey and helps create an interactive experience with respondents. Instead of ranking features using circles, they’re actively rating each attribute.
Nothing is more straightforward than basic imagery that represents your feelings. Smiley face questions are a 5-point smiley face scale ranging from negative to positive expressions.
This question type helps you add visual elements to your survey and decrease the effort needed by respondents. The faster a respondent can understand and answer a question, the more likely they are to complete your survey.
A flex matrix question is part of the matrix grid family of questions. Commonly called a complex grid matrix, a flex matrix allows you to use multiple response types within one matrix question. Your rows remain the same, a feature or attribute, but you can change the question asked by each column.
For example, let’s say you want to know when an employee candidate is available for an interview. Your matrix could list each day of the week as a row. The first column offers checkboxes for day or evening availability. The second column asks respondents to type in a specific time range.
Heatmap analysis allows you to show an image to your respondents. You ask them to choose a spot on the image based on your question. Heatmapping is a tool that takes all of the answers from your respondents and adds color over the image, based on where people chose. Darker colors represent more responses in that area.
For example, you want an easy visualization of where your respondents live in the United States. You show them a map of the US and ask them to click their location. The map shows colored dots in the spots where respondents chose. Areas of the higher population appear with a darker, more concentrated color.
Slider scale questions are a type of ranking question. They use an interactive slider to allow respondents to answer. The respondent drags the indicator along the scale to the exact spot of their answer.
For example, you could ask someone to rate a product based on price, quality, and shipping time. Each attribute gets a slider with a scale relative to the question, such as 0-100. The respondent moves the slider to the appropriate number on the slider based on their opinions of each attribute.
A constant sum question is a type of rank order question. However, instead of simply ranking the answers, the respondent must divide their ranking by a numerical value. The answers must add up to a fixed number which can be configured by the survey-creator. This question allows the participant to place more weight on specific options.
For example, you might ask a participant to rank their favorite brands of mobile phone, such as Apple, LG, Samsung, and Motorola. One respondent might rank Apple as 100 and the rest as 0. Another might rate all equally as 25. Yet another respondent might have Samsung as their top choice with a rank of 60, Apple as second at 20, LG at third with 15, and Motorola as last with 5.
Drag-and-drop questions are a form of rank order scaling questions. This question type allows respondents to rank a series of brands, products, or features in order of importance. The respondent gets to click or tap on a feature interactively and physically move it into place in the ranking.
Adding a drag-and-drop question can help keep participants engaged during your survey. The interactive nature of a drag-and-drop question is both visually appealing and stimulating to the mind.
Having your multiple-choice question answers in a random order helps reduce order bias. Order bias is when a respondent tends to pick the first answer in a question. If you’re asking about pet food brand preferences, putting your brand at the top of each question could lead to skewed results.
QuestionPro randomizer questions automatically randomize the answer order of your questions. This question is an advanced question type that can help keep respondents engaged, as they have to read through each set of answers to find the one they want.
If you need any help on what survey features would suit your market research requirements, get in touch with us! We’d be happy to help you.
