RatePoint

Survey Tools: Tips for Designing a Great Online Survey

If done correctly, using RatePoint’s survey tools to create online surveys can be a valuable customer feedback asset.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad surveys out there.  The good news is that a lot of the mistakes can be avoided by following a few simple guidelines.

Before you get started:

Don’t jump in feet first and don’t copy any existing snail mail surveys or telephone surveys. The online medium is unique.  You want to ask yourself three questions about your online survey:

-    What is the purpose of your survey?
-    What kind of information do you need to make your decisions?
-    Which of your customers can give you that information?

Designing the Survey:
Set expectations at the beginning of your survey.  Let people know how long it will take, what you’re looking for, and why you chose them (and if appropriate, what they will get out of it!).  Start off with very simple yes/no questions and build to the harder questions later in the survey.  You don’t want your recipients to abandon the survey by putting a time consuming ranking questions right at the beginning!

A few other tips:
-    Avoid industry jargon (keep it simple!)
-    Be interesting and engaging, but limit the number of questions (keep it short!)
-    Ask one question at a time and avoid bias for particular answers (keep it direct!)

There are two types of questions that many people over-utilize: “open ended” and “ranking and rating” questions.  Open-ended questions take a lot of time, so you want to use them wisely and you also want to always make them optional.  Ranking and rating questions are sometimes good types of questions to ask, but don’t go overboard in the number of choices you make people rank or rate.  Keep it simple by making people choose the “top three” or “bottom three” of a carefully chosen list (general rule of thumb is a list of 10 or less).

Also, on multiple choice questions, always provide an “other” or a “don’t know” option so you don’t force people to pick an answer they don’t understand.

Getting Responses:
We get asked a lot about providing incentives.  Think carefully about your audience and the length of your survey, and decide if you even need an incentive.  If you decide you need one, remember the bigger the incentive, the greater chance you are going to get bad results.  Try to find a middle ground when choosing your incentive and don’t go overboard!

Another helpful strategy is to try splitting your survey recipients into different groups and testing out different introductory emails and/or incentives.  See what works with your customers!

Remember, Keep it Short! Keep it Simple! Keep it Direct!  Follow these rules and you’ll be sending out quality surveys in no time.