The internet has provided a great mechanism for market research. Where previous traditional methods include focus groups, panels or face to face interviews, via a wide range of mediums – the internet provides a cost effective route to getting the research you need when you need it at speed, and at a fraction of the cost.
This two part post firstly examines the tips on creating a great survey, and then the free and readily available online tools you can utilise to do so.
Marketers, entreupreneurs and business owners can all avail from taking a snapshot of their target market, at any one time.
Great tips on creating a survey
When you are setting out in creating a survey, the first (and perhaps obvious) thing to do is define goals. Goals that are quantifiable, and stick to them. To create a better response from your audience – only include questions that directly address the goals that you have set. Many people assume that the shorter the survey the more likely a response will be achieved. Wrong. The more engaged your audience is, the higher potential response.
There are a few things you can do to increase responses, here’s a couple.
1). Keep it simple, stupid
Keep it simple, short and to the point. Whilst length isn’t everything (as mentioned above), motivation will play a key role. Unless you decide to incentivise your survey, with a prize or other offering, you can expect response to be inversely proportional to length. Open ended questions can be useful in gauging opinion, but too many of them, and the responses will wane. The reason? People will feel like they are writing you an essay. Three questions which are closed, are better than one which is open ended.
2). Keep it interesting
Maintaining a potential respondants attention, is difficult. Providing intriguing questions that will involve them, and encourage them to read on and continue responding is the key to a great survey. Starting and ending with the most interesting questions is a useful tip to keep them writing.
3). Keep it personal
Addressing your audience in a formal way, makes things seem a bit too much like a government census. We all know how annoying those are. These people are doing you a massive favour, and are spending time giving you the information you need. So above all you need to connect with them personally. Don’t be afraid to tell them the reasons you are surveying (if possible).
4). Test test test
Send a sample to a small subset of people. I’ve found that friends and family are not always the ideal testing group. They either appease you too easily, or will tear your survey to bits. A small (10-15) group, is best to start out with. Its easier to change a survey at this stage, than to realise you’ve made a boo-boo further down the line.
5). Reward & thank
As I mentioned earlier. These guys are doing you a huge favour. Can you offer something in return? A prize for the first 50 respondants? If you are on a really tight budget, the best thing you can do is show your gratitude. A personal thank you email is a simple and easy way to let them know you care.
This is the first of a two part post, stay tuned and subscribe for the follow up post on the free tools you can use for market research and surveying on the web.
posted:March 19, 2009 7:19 am
All great tips, I’d like to add a few more to your list that can help increase open rates of your online survey email:
1. Make your ‘From’ name easily recognizable by including your company name, or the name of an individual
2. Keep subject lines short – 35 characters or less
3. Subject lines should avoid words that trigger spam filters such as “important message” and “free”. Avoid using all caps, exclamation points, or dollar signs as well.
4. Send no more than one survey a week to each respondent
5. Create attractive messages by using the formatting toolbar to format the text or include images. Attractive emails are more likely to be opened. Email programs such as Outlook allow recipients to preview the email before opening it.
In addition to the tips in the post above, keep these tips in mind to increase your survey link click rate:
1. Tell invitation recipients how the survey will benefit them. For example, will you use the data you are collecting to improve your service to them?
2. Indicate how long the survey will take. You can estimate that 5 closed-ended questions take one minute, and 2 open-ended questions take one minute.
3. Assure confidentiality of responses
Donna