Effective Practices to Create Sure-Fire Surveys

Conducting surveys, whether your audience is small or large, is always a great decision for your business. It helps you understand how your audience thinks which can help you put a finger on exactly what’s wrong and what can be improved. However, creating surveys that are on point can be a little tricky. It requires you to think like a survey expert and the audience at the same time. 

There are some common mistakes while making surveys that can cost you both time and effort. But following these effective survey insights from experts will help you better understand how to build surveys that get you the most accurate results to help you make better decisions.

Have a Clear Purpose in Mind– To create a survey that gets you the most accurate results, you need to start off by having a clear understanding of what is it that you wish to achieve. So, define a clear and focused objective while looking at the bigger picture. This would help you complete the most important task of the project – creating clear and specific survey questions. Here’s an example to help you better – 

Goal 1: I want to know if my employees are satisfied.

Goal 2: I want to know what’s causing employee turnover. 

Goal 2 is clearly a well-defined objective since it would help you get to the root. 

Here’s what to take care of while defining the purpose of your survey: 

• Don’t beat around the bush; keep the questions straightforward.
• Focus on a single overall objective; trying to get results on multiple subjects can skew the results. 

Use an Online Survey Software –It’s always better to take professional technical assistance while creating online surveys for huge masses. And the most reliable is an online survey software. Online software for survey is SaaS solutions that assist you in effortlessly creating survey designs, collecting feedback, managing audience and analyzing survey responses. Efficient survey software can integrate with other tools and create an organized and smooth workflow for you. 

Here are a few other reasons why you need one: 

• You can use the free survey templates to create surveys with just a few clicks.
• With just a few clicks, drags and drops, you can personalize your surveys on an easy-to-use interface. 
• You can share your surveys with a wide audience directly through emails, links, SMS share, and more. 
• Create detailed reports and use them to get a panoramic view with the powerful reporting system. 
• Reduce overheads for administering the survey. 

Online survey software is a great investment in any business. Moreover, if you’re creating beginner level surveys, you can register for the free survey packages and try your hands on them.  

Be Extra Careful When Creating Survey Questionnaire –Many professionals have just the right technical support to create an online survey, but they end up wondering why their surveys don’t perform. The problem, most often, lies in the survey questionnaire. With monotonous, uncalculated questions, your audience either loses interest and quits the survey or stops giving truthful responses after a first few questions. 

To ensure that your audience completes the survey and takes time to share honest replies, here’s what you must do: 

• Use closed-ended questions and keep your questionnaire short. Most studies show that surveys that take 5 minutes or less to complete to receive a great response. 
• Give your audience 3 to 5 answer options to choose from. 
• Begin with easy and straightforward questions and put the personal demographic questions at the end. 
• Always allow your audience to skip a question entirely. 

Do Not Underestimate Survey Distribution –Many professionals make the mistake of assuming that the major work is done after the survey is created. They fail to understand that survey distribution, when not done correctly, can invalidate the purpose of survey collection. So, to ensure that the planning doesn’t fall apart here’s what must be done: 

• Along with the survey invite, share the purpose of the survey clearly. 
• Tell your audience how they would benefit from taking the survey. For example: “Your feedback will help us work on our menu and add more food items that you would like to have.”
• Specify the time expected to complete the survey.
• Don’t send out more than one reminder to take the survey.
• Thank everyone who took the survey and reassure them that their feedback will be taken seriously.

Refine the Results –As soon as the responses come trickling in, start acting on them. Arrange them in presentation programs and spreadsheets to be able to compare the results with the objective. Using an online survey tool is highly recommended since it allows you to create reports effortlessly and quickly. Moreover, it allows you to view and compare all your results without having to maintain n number of Excel sheets. 

Creating online surveys has become much more convenient, reliable and affordable.All you need to do is use these tried practices and ensure that you’re not throwing your time and money away.Just think like how you would while taking the survey and you’ll be all set. All the best!

Author Bio: 

Bhavika Sharma is a survey designer at SurveySparrow, where she designs surveys that work by making them more conversational and engaging, fetching 40% more responses. When she isn’t designing killer surveys, she loves to travel in search of adventure and to meet new people. Her travel experiences have taught her the importance of conversation and that is what she brings to the table while creating surveys or content for her readers.