survey

Best practices for creating effective and meaningful surveys

Whether you’re collecting customer feedback, evaluating employees, or planning an event, the first step in creating an effective survey is to brush up on survey science fundamentals.

 

The idea is simple, but how do you make a survey engaging enough to be effective? It isn’t that tough if you keep the consumer in mind when you develop and create the survey. Having a clear goal and using it to personalize your survey questions will assist you in collecting the data you seek.

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Here are a few top tips and methods for keeping your survey on track:

Set a specific, attainable aim for your survey:

What is the definition of a specific, attainable goal? Let us look at an example. Assume you want to know why your clients are leaving at such a high rate. Instead of saying, “I want to better comprehend customer happiness.” Your goal should be something along the lines of, “I want to discover the primary variables that are causing our customers to leave—whether these reasons are caused by internal or external forces.”

 

Once you have established your aim, you can use it to prioritize the top questions you want to ask.

Save the more personal questions for last:

Treat your survey as if it were a conversation. Would you start a conversation by asking someone their age? Most likely not. Instead, you would start with small talk and work your way up to more personal themes. Similarly, keep your initial set of questions brief and uncomplicated, and then gradually progress to more intimate queries (which often take the form of demographic questions).

Do not allow your survey to become too lengthy:

Most of the time, your survey respondents are doing you a favor by taking your survey. What better approach to show your appreciation for their time than by not taking up too much of it? You will be rewarded with a greater completion rate and more meaningful responses to the questions you decide to include.

Use closed-ended questions as much as possible:

What do we mean when we say “closed-ended questions”? We are talking about questions with pre-populated answer options for the respondent to choose from, such as multiple choice or checkbox inquiries. These questions are simpler for respondents to answer and will give you quantitative data for your evaluation.

Think about incorporating a survey incentive:

If you want to receive a lot of responses, offering some sort of incentive can assist. Respondents could be awarded a hamper draw or given a gift card if they answer all your questions correctly.

Preview your survey before you send it:

Consider sending your survey only to discover that you neglected to include a question. Or that you omitted a few critical answer options for one of the questions you posed. In any situation, you will most likely be upset and receive outcomes that fall short of your expectations.

 

Preview your survey to avoid any mistakes in its design. Even better, share it with others so they can catch any errors you might miss.

Optimize your Survey flow:

Check that the survey language is customer/consumer-friendly:

Write it in their words. Their views, attitudes, and language should be accurately reflected in the response choice(s). If you are unfamiliar with consumer terminology, it is best to undertake qualitative research before creating your survey. This will allow you to comprehend how consumers discuss your category and brand.

 

Every survey completed is a courtesy done for your organization to assist you in gaining useful insights and data. Even if a participant agrees to do your survey, if the questions are not intriguing and engaging, the data you collect will not be as useful.

 

To minimize high survey bounce rates, creating an actionable survey with relevant, simplified, and easy questions is needed. A well-written survey with a clear focus will yield more valuable information at a greater completion rate than a poorly written survey with no clear goal.

How can MIMO help?

Our robust online survey tools make it simple to develop surveys, collect responses, and turn data into insights. You will be well on your way to collecting actionable findings if you have created a successful survey with well-designed questions. At MIMO, our research experts are constantly focused on gathering the best data for clients- data that is relevant and impactful. If you have any further questions, please let us know! For additional information on creating an effective survey for your target audience, contact us.

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