Gaining insight from your customers is always important. This is your way of getting to know them better and figuring out how to improve your product or service – or even web design – to better fit their needs. However, creating a good survey that people will want to respond to is a bit more difficult than it seems at a first glance.
Your questions need to be highly relevant and all work for the same goal. They have to be specific, clear and understandable. But there are other factors involved as well. That’s why so many business owners make these mistakes:
- Asking too many questions
This is the number one mistake people make when creating surveys. Users expect your survey to take a few minutes and they will either get tired and just mindlessly respond or give up completely. Sticking to under 25 questions is the best practice – you won’t bore your readers but you will get all the information you need.
- Leading your respondents
You have created a survey for the purpose of gathering data and finding something new, not confirming what you already believe. So many people do this and it’s a bad choice. It will not give you correct information but something entirely different. Make your questions and answers unbiased and clean of any language that may lead users to respond in a certain way.
- Not allowing customers to clarify
Most surveys have this exact problem – they offer a bunch of answers but no clear space for clarifying. Users often feel pressed to answer even if the answer doesn’t reflect their true opinion. Add a box where users could type an explanation and you’ll get better and more specific answers.
- Using absolutes
Most respondents don’t do something ‘always’ or ‘never’ and they don’t feel in extremes as well – especially about products or services. So, posing a question where there are only extreme options is a bad idea. What would be better is to add a scale between the two extremes and allow people to move it towards their general opinion.
- Not having ‘other’ option
You can add as many options to your answers as you want, some users will still not be able to pick one of them because that simply doesn’t fit their opinion. “This is why it’s a good idea to add ‘other’ option to each question and allow users to elaborate what that other thing is. This will give you a better overview of how your respondents truly feel and it won’t press them to answer”, – explains Gina Porter, a Communication Manager at Bigassignments and Revieweal writer.
- Always requiring answers
While some of your respondents will have clear opinion on each question and each answer will matter to them, some people will simply not care about your subject and they won’t have a clear opinion. This is where bad data happens – there is no ‘skip’ option, so those users pick any option just to be done with the question. Rather than having this happen, include the ‘skip this question’ or ‘no specific opinion’.
- Too many options or missing answers
In some cases, you can have too many options on your questions. With too many choices people get distracted and start picking anything that comes to them first instead of giving you their honest and valuable opinion. The same can happen if you always require only one answer – people often have multiple favourites or want to tick of several boxes, allow them to. Add multiple choice whenever possible.
How To Write Accurate Questions
Accuracy in your questions is extremely important for multiple reasons. For one, obviously, it adds clarity – people will be able to easily understand what you are trying to say. The other is more subtle – it’s about how grammar and spelling mistakes are perceived, especially when coming from a business. These mistakes can make you look unprofessional, illiterate and overall, they can break the trust that your audience has in you.
Here is a list of useful tools that will help you eliminate those mistakes:
– StateOfWriting and Top writing services are general writing guides that will help you with accurate writing.
– Ukwritings is an online editing tool that can help every word of your survey count.
– Academ advisor offers guides on structuring your copy and forming your questions.
– Boomessays and Essayroo are tools that can generate catchy subheadings, titles, descriptions and so on to grab your reader’s attention.
– My Writing Way and Paper Fellows proofreading guide that can help you catch all those small mistakes and make your survey look perfect.
Final Thoughts
Creating a good survey isn’t easy and people often make mistakes. What’s important to remember is that you always have to keep improving and optimizing and that every mistake is fixable. Follow these tips to figure out what you need to improve and the most simple and effective way to do it.
Author Bio:
Freddie Tubbs is a communication manager and marketing strategist at Academized and Oxessays. He regularly takes part in marketing and tech events, and contributes posts to Write my essay blogs.
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