Our ultimate list of tips & best practices to make each survey highly effective.
High response rates and qualitative responses, that’s our goal! And even though it’s easy to set up and distribute a survey, getting the answers you need can still be challenging.
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Or you can read the main takeaways from down below.
1. Make your survey actionable
It happens too often that people aren’t asking the right type of questions. A questionnaire is only as effective as its questions. These questions need to be evaluated quickly and they need to produce data that can be acted upon. That’s why you need to define upfront what you want to know before you start your research. This will prevent extra work later on in the process.
2. Keep the attention of your respondent until the very last question
Even the most entertaining survey will fall short when your respondents’ attention wears thin. Nobody has time to take a 30-minute survey. So limit yourself to the most relevant questions! This is where good preparation will win you the game. On the other hand, you have to make sure that everything you need is in there.
3. Use interactive questions
Improve the respondent’s experience with interactive questions. Interactive questions allow the respondent to do more than just tick a box or write an answer. They invite you to “play around” using interactive question types like sliders or dragging questions.
These question types will make it more entertaining for your respondent. They will be less likely to leave the survey prematurely.
Here are some examples of interactive question types:
Rating question
Ordinal question
Open question: Upload a picture
Of course, there are plenty more survey questions that will boost interactivity. Here is a list of interactive survey questions that you can use to build your own survey.
Incentivize your respondent
There’s a reason Hollywood is big business: we all like to be entertained. But a survey has to be one of the least entertaining things in people’s mind. Fortunately, they don’t have to be!
Create surveys respondents want to take AND complete. There are plenty of options to do so: the use of multimedia such as images, audio, and video or by personalizing your questionnaire with piping. Another option is adding gamifying widgets such as a digital scratch card or a slot machine to give people the opportunity to win a prize, but make sure the prize doesn’t influence the answers of your respondents. These are all little things that pack a BIG punch.
Another way to incentivize the respondent is by promising to give them feedback at the end of the survey? You can present some benchmarks and let them compare themselves with average scores. You can even add a download button in the final screen, where you offer a personalized PDF report about the survey results.
Get more elaborate answers
When you have the right type of question and a short, personal and engaging survey, it’s important to know that people will be more likely to give longer answers. Make use of this opportunity to add an open question, ideal for getting very useful and sometimes unexpected insights!
Want to learn more?
September 13, 2017 update: Thank you DanforBlog for spreading the word about Pointerpro and how to make surveys more interactive all the way to Indonesia!
