25 Tips for Creating Awesome Surveys

I’ve got some cool tips for you on how to make amazing surveys. Check them out below!

1. Make your questions clear and easy to understand.

2. Keep your survey short and to the point. Nobody likes long surveys!

3. Use multiple-choice questions to make it easier for people to respond.

4. Avoid using jargon or complicated language that might confuse your respondents.

5. Pay attention to the order of your questions. Start with the easy ones to get people warmed up.

6. Use a mix of question types like rating scales, open-ended questions, and yes/no questions.

7. Add a progress bar to let people know how far along they are in the survey.

8. Be mindful of the time it takes for someone to complete your survey.

9. Test your survey with a few people before sending it out to ensure it’s working correctly.

10. Offer incentives to encourage people to participate in your survey.

11. Make your survey visually appealing by using colors, images, or icons.

12. Use skip logic to customize the survey based on someone’s previous responses.

13. Avoid leading or biased questions that might sway people’s opinions.

14. Keep your survey anonymous to encourage honest responses.

15. Ask only for the information you really need. Don’t overload people with unnecessary questions.

16. Use plain language and avoid using technical terms or acronyms.

17. Offer a progress-saving option so people can come back later to finish the survey.

18. Use pre-populated answers for questions that are easy to answer.

19. Let people know how their feedback will be used to make improvements.

20. Personalize your survey by addressing the respondents by their names.

21. Provide a prefer not to answer option for sensitive questions.

22. Use clear instructions and examples to explain what you expect from respondents.

23. Use a mix of rating scales like Likert scales, star ratings, or smiley faces.

24. Send reminders to those who haven’t completed your survey yet.

25. Thank your respondents for taking the time to complete your survey. Appreciation goes a long way!

I hope you find these tips helpful for creating awesome surveys. Remember, keeping things simple, clear, and engaging will lead to better responses!

Did you know that surveys can be a super useful tool for small businesses like yours? You can use them to gather feedback from your customers, find out what your target audience needs and wants, and even get insights into how your employees see your company.

But hold on a sec, it’s not as easy as just asking a bunch of random questions. If you want to get the most out of your surveys, there are some best practices you should follow. These tips will help you get more responses, accurate results, and crystal-clear data that can guide your business in the right direction.

Here are some survey best practices:

When I want to get the best results from my market research efforts, I make sure to carefully plan my survey design. This means creating surveys regularly for my small business, like sending questions to customers after they’ve made a purchase, studying markets before introducing new products or services, and checking in with my employees to see if they’re satisfied with their current working conditions. But before I dive into crafting my questions, I always keep these best practices in mind.

1. Define Your Goals

Before you start creating your survey, think about what you want to achieve. These goals will guide your decisions as you design and implement the survey, as well as analyze the results. Remember your goal to keep the number of questions limited and ensure everything stays focused. If there are other topics that don’t align with your current objectives, you can always do another survey later.

2. Who’s Your Audience?

To get the best results, your survey should reach the people you actually want to hear from. If you’re developing a new product for women in their 50’s, sending questions to millennials won’t give you the insights you need. Clearly define who you want to hear from and why before designing your survey.

3. Keep It Brief

4. Let’s Start with Easy Questions

If I want people to complete my survey, I need to make sure the questions aren’t too tough or personal right from the start. To make it easier for them, I can begin by asking simple questions with predefined choices. This way, they’ll feel more comfortable and likely to continue. I should save any open-ended or intrusive questions about personal or demographic info for later in the survey.

5. Give People Choices

There’s a right time and place for open-ended questions, but if I want to collect data that’s easier to measure, multiple-choice questions are the way to go. These questions are simpler for people to answer, so I should try to use them for most of the survey questions.

6. Watch Out for Tricky Questions

If I ask you two questions at once, it can be hard for you to answer accurately. Let’s say I ask, Do you like pancakes and bacon for breakfast? Well, maybe you love pancakes but not bacon, so how would you answer? It’s better to separate these kinds of questions or make the wording clearer, so they don’t confuse you.

7. Don’t Ask Leading Questions

If I ask something like, Wouldn’t you love to see a product like this on your store shelves? I’m more likely to get positive responses than if I ask, How likely are you to purchase this product? With the first type of question, you might be more inclined to tell me what I want to hear. But as a small business, I should be more concerned with getting accurate feedback rather than seeking reassurance. So, it’s best to keep the questions as neutral as possible to get people’s genuine feelings.

8. Make Sure Your Options are Balanced

Let’s talk about a sneaky way to influence answers. One way is to give options that clearly favor a certain direction. For example, instead of giving responses like strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, neutral, disagree, which gives people more chances to agree, try to keep things balanced with just one neutral option.

9. Don’t Use Too Many Open-Ended Questions

10. Give Me Choices I Can’t Mix

When I answer a question, I should only be able to choose one option. It shouldn’t be possible for two answers to overlap and be both correct. Sometimes this happens when we use numbers. For example, if I have to pick a range and the options are: 0-10, 10-20, and 20-30, it can get confusing. Let’s say I choose 20, I could technically select either the second or third option. To avoid this confusion, use options like: 0-10, 11-20, and 21-30. This way, there’s no room for mixed answers.

11. Keep It Nice and Neat

I bet you have some survey questions that give you similar options to choose from, like strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree. When you offer these options, it’s important to keep them in the same order and format. This helps to avoid confusing people. For example, if someone is used to clicking the option on the right when they agree with a statement, they might accidentally click the wrong option if you switch things around.

12. Make it Easy to Understand

It’s easy for people to use fancy words or terms when talking about a product or idea, especially if they’re working in a specific industry. But when you’re surveying customers or potential customers, it’s important to use language they can easily understand. Put yourself in their shoes and think about how you would explain the questions. You could even ask people from your target audience for their input when creating questions. That way, you can make sure everyone understands what you’re asking.

13. Be Clear and Precise

14. Adding More Choices for Greater Accuracy

If you want really specific information, offer more options for people to choose from. When you only have a positive and negative choice, you might miss out on the opinions of those who feel neutral. More choices will give you a better understanding of how people truly feel.

15. Avoid Repeating Yourself

There are different ways to ask a question. But if you ask similar questions multiple times, it can confuse or frustrate people, which can affect the quality of your data. It also makes your survey longer than necessary, leading to fewer responses.

16. Enhance Clarity with Images or Videos

Did you know that some survey platforms give you the option to include photos or videos along with your questions? Cool, right? Sometimes, it’s hard to explain things using just words, so having these features can make your survey easier to understand and help clarify points or ideas in a jiffy. This is especially handy when you’re introducing new products or comparing different options. Just make sure to use high-quality images or videos that match what you’re looking for.

17. Keep Personal Questions for Later

So, here’s the thing: if you ask personal or invasive questions right at the beginning of a survey, people are more likely to bail out. I mean, who wants to answer personal stuff from a total stranger, right? But once you’ve built trust and explained why you need their info, they’re more likely to stick around. Even basic things like their first name, last name, email address, and demographic info should be saved for the end.

18. Find a Good Mix of Participants

If you want to ask your customers some questions, it’s best to make sure that the people you ask represent all your different types of customers. Not everyone will reply, but your information won’t be very accurate if you only ask one type of customer. Instead, try to group your respondents based on things like where they live and who they are, and try to get answers from people in all those groups.

19. Think about how many responses you need

It’s also important to get enough information for your survey to be reliable. The number of responses you need depends on what you want to find out. For example, if you want to survey your small team, you might only need 20 responses. But if you want to survey your customers about a new product, you might need 1,000 or more responses.

20. Give people a reason to answer

Step 21: Share Your Goals with Others

If I want more people to take my survey, it’s important that they understand why I’m asking. If I’m surveying my coworkers, I can explain that I want to use their responses to improve our workplace. If I’m surveying customers, I can let them know that I want to enhance customer service and develop new products that they’ll love.

Step 22: Test Your Survey Before Sending

Even if I’ve followed all the best practices for creating a survey, there might still be mistakes or confusing parts that I haven’t noticed. So, before I send it out, I should take the survey myself or ask someone else to do it. This way, I can make sure that every question is clear and aligns with my original goals.

Step 23: Visualize the Feedback

Once you’ve gathered the answers, it’s time to analyze them. It can be easier to understand the information when you use visuals like charts and graphs. Some survey tools can do this for you, or you can use a design program to create these visuals. They can be helpful when presenting to your team or when you want to better understand the responses from survey takers.

24. Categorize the Responses

You should also explore the data further to find any trends. For example, while your overall customer base might like your new product idea, if you look at different age groups, you might notice that older consumers love it more than younger consumers. This insight can help you decide who to target when marketing the new product, giving you the best chance of success in your new endeavors.

If you want your surveys to be useful, you need to actually use the information you gather. Some survey questions may not require immediate action, but you should analyze the overall trends and think about whether any changes might be needed. This could involve improving your customer service strategy or creating a new marketing plan for certain customers.

Creating a Survey

There are several methods for creating surveys, both online and offline. Some of the most popular options include:

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey has a range of options for conducting surveys for all kinds of businesses. They provide templates for things like finding out how satisfied your customers are, getting feedback from your employees, or gathering opinions from the public. You can use their online platform to send surveys to the people you want to hear from, or you can send surveys to your own customers or employees using your email list.

Zoho Survey

Zoho Survey is a free tool you can use to create surveys. It has different types of questions and themes to choose from. You can send surveys through email, embed them on your website, or even distribute them offline. They also have ready-made templates and paid plans for those who want to have a more comprehensive survey strategy.

Survey Gizmo

If you want to explore other options, take a look at: 25 Survey Tools for Your Business

Final Thoughts

So, whether you’re just starting out on your journey of market research or you’re stuck on a tricky survey question for your team, it’s super important to keep your survey design and strategy front and center.

Here’s the deal: following the best practices I’ve mentioned above will not only help you stay focused on your company’s goals but will also give you more precise results and ultimately lead to better outcomes.

So, keep rocking that market research game, my friend! You got this!