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Online Survey Best Practices for Effective Results

Here are 8 best practices for creating and sending online surveys that work. If you are not following these you are killing your survey’s chances of getting filled up.

Here are 8 best practices for creating and sending online surveys that work. If you are not following these you are killing your survey’s chances of getting filled up.

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<strong>Online</strong> <strong>Survey</strong> <strong>Best</strong> <strong>Practices</strong> <strong>for</strong><br />

<strong>Effective</strong> <strong>Results</strong><br />

For businesses to develop and improve with every passing day, it is vital to know<br />

the areas of their business operations where they are lacking or the areas where<br />

more enhancements are possible. Everything isn’t mentioned in the rule books<br />

promulgated to run the organization. There are aspects which demand new<br />

study and research with the changing trends. For the said concept, it is<br />

important to know what is being liked and disliked by people, and what might<br />

interest them. To know this on a large scale, <strong>Survey</strong>s come out as the best<br />

option. In the contemporary world where everything is online, getting a survey<br />

done has become easier. But, like everything else, it comes with its own<br />

challenges. Let’s have a look at some online survey best practices to follow while<br />

conducting an online survey to get effective results.<br />

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1. Keep it short<br />

The first and <strong>for</strong>emost thing that you need to take care of is the length of the<br />

survey. It’s a busy world and nobody is interested in spending out much time<br />

filling out lengthy surveys. If your questionnaires are short, more people will<br />

participate in it and you get more results to compare and take actions<br />

accordingly. Most people tend to opt out in the middle if it is taking more than a<br />

few minutes to fill out a survey.<br />

2. Intelligent Questionnaire<br />

The designing of the questionnaire should be done intelligently. Don’t put in<br />

long answer questions to your survey. Thinking from the scratch is what people<br />

don’t like. Try to put in multiple choice questions. If it is important to get a few<br />

words from people filling out the survey, start with a yes/no option. For<br />

example, instead of ‘How do you think we can better our customer services?’<br />

You should ask ‘Are you satisfied with our customer services? If no, please<br />

provide your feedback on the same.’ It’s all about convincing and coaxing<br />

someone to answer your unwanted questions. Answering the first question<br />

needs somewhat taxing to your mind, while the second one takes you step by<br />

step towards answering the question. Try to use a rating scale questionnaire<br />

which would be easier to analyze. A uni<strong>for</strong>m method would make it easier to<br />

upload input data from which relevant output can be drawn through use of<br />

various softwares.<br />

3. Target Population<br />

When it comes to surveys, one size doesn’t fit all. Be specific about your target<br />

audience and create the survey accordingly. Use terms that they can relate to.<br />

For example, if you want to survey people of a particular region, you can use<br />

their local language. Similarly, if the survey is meant <strong>for</strong> youngsters, your tone<br />

can be funky that would attract and not bore the youngsters. For middle aged<br />

working people, you are expected to be more professional with the language<br />

and tone of the survey.<br />

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4. Clear and simple<br />

This one is one of the most important points to be considered while preparing a<br />

survey. The language should be very lucid. Each word of the survey should be<br />

clearly understood by the participant. If a survey contains jargons, the<br />

participant wouldn’t care about looking into the meaning of it. He will just skip<br />

the survey. The questions should also be direct without much beating around<br />

the bush. The participant of the survey must not feel like he is taking a test. It<br />

should be a simple activity which can be easily filled out without much ef<strong>for</strong>t.<br />

5. E-mail surveys<br />

Mailing out the surveys is always one of the options. When the survey is asked<br />

to be filled out in a pop-up, a click on the cross is all one needs to get rid of it.<br />

And then, even if one is willing to fill it out later, they won’t be interested in<br />

making ef<strong>for</strong>ts to find it again. Mailing the survey ensures that the survey stays<br />

in the inbox of the target respondents and that they can fill it out later given<br />

their convenience of time and place. It will also help you promote your survey. If<br />

you have a CRM system it becomes even easier to email surveys from within<br />

your CRM using an app like​ ​<strong>Survey</strong> Rocket​.<br />

6. Test your survey<br />

For anything that is important, a ‘test’ is mandatory. Same goes <strong>for</strong> surveys too.<br />

After you are done preparing the questionnaire, test it on various browsers,<br />

devices, and operating systems. It should work without any glitch and should be<br />

fast to load. Send it out to a first set of people, which includes insiders and close<br />

people. See if you are getting the desired results and are able to analyze the<br />

data received. Once you are done with the testing part, you can delete all the<br />

test data and send out the survey to the potential respondents.<br />

7. Rewards at the end<br />

This is a relatively new method being adopted by businesses to get their surveys<br />

filled. And, it definitely works! If it is your customers that are the potential<br />

respondents, you can offer them a certain discount on their next purchase if<br />

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they fill out the survey. A code is generated when the survey is filled which they<br />

can use to redeem their discount. Leading businesses like KFC, use their invoices<br />

to promote these kind of surveys where the bill number is filled out while filling<br />

out the survey, which they can use to get the discount on their next purchase.<br />

8. Compatibility on mobile<br />

People like to do things on the move, while they are on devices like their phones<br />

and tablets; they are more probable to be available to fill out the surveys.<br />

There<strong>for</strong>e, your survey should be compatible and look good on these devices<br />

with smaller screens as well. While testing your survey, mark it in the list to<br />

check the survey is working fine from various phone browsers and tablets.<br />

All these points will help you get more responses to your survey which you can<br />

further utilize <strong>for</strong> effective results. Apart from this, you should keep some simple<br />

etiquettes in mind. For example, using the words like ‘Please’ in the beginning of<br />

the survey and adding a one line thank you note after filling out the survey.<br />

Resources:<br />

https://store.biztechconsultancy.com/blog/online-survey-best-practice<br />

s-results/<br />

Reference :<br />

● https://store.biztechconsultancy.com/sugarcrm-survey-rocket.htm<br />

● https://store.biztechconsultancy.com/suitecrm-survey-rocket.htm<br />

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