Composing a Survey: 8 Pointers
Yesterday we set out to compose our first survey in an effort to learn something about online sales and marketing. The process turned up a few ideas I wanted to share here.
First of all, a disclaimer: I know there are experts who will disagree with these comments and I certainly don’t pretend to know everything about obtaining information for market analysis. These are merely some thoughts that occurred to me as we went about the process.
1. Don’t test your respondent’s patience. Sam and I have done many interviews with small business folks for various reasons including coaching and research, and we’ve have always had the luxury of sitting down over a latte in a comfortable environment where we can really chew the fat (and pay for the coffee). However a survey isn’t quite so cozy. That progress bar is there so that your kindly respondent can measure how much longer he has to endure your pesky questions before he can leave, and if it fills up too slowly, he is bound to lose interest. Keep it as short as possible and don’t waste his precious time. He’s doing YOU a favor.
2. If you can’t keep it short, at least maintain some cohesion. If the respondent once begins to ask herself, “What in heaven’s name is the point of that question?” or worse, thinks, “None of your darn business,” then she will bail, even if she’ already completed part of your survey. Stay on subject by first clearly defining what you want to accomplish with your survey. And if a “no” answer means she can skip to the next section, then let her know.
3. Don’t skew your results by asking questions that answer themselves. For example,” Would your business benefit if you could clearly understand your customers so that your advertising dollars were never wasted?” Duh. Who would click “no”?
4. Don’t water down your results by offering opinions and yes/no answers. For example, “Do you prefer skirts over shorts in the summer because they are cooler in hot weather and look better on most women?” (Well, when you put it that way…) An authentic answer is more helpful than reading what you want to hear.
5. Do use yes/no questions to separate your pool of respondents and to define your goals. When it comes to analyzing the data (and depending on your object, of course) in some cases it will be easier to make sense of answers from a person who answered “no” to the question “Have you ever sent a text message?” than the person who leaves blank the question “What kind of smart phone do you own?” When you are trying to narrow your pool and ferret out the importance of certain surveys, these “pruning” questions are necessary. Don’t assume your pool of respondents are all that similar; you might be in for a confusing surprise.
6. Ask permission to follow up. It’s good manners. Seth Godin says so.
7. SurveyMonkey.com is cool. I can think of all sorts of new ways to use it, including getting input for a coming family reunion I’m not even in charge of planning. (You can’t take the busy out of a busybody.) A few glitches I discovered: Sometimes when I deleted a question, the question was repeated. Similarly, sometimes when I went to add a new question, the previous question was repeated. I found that if you stop loading the page and refresh the screen, most times the problem cleared up. Also, we haven’t received any responses to our survey yet, so I can’t say how easy it is to read results. I’m guessing with all their satisfied customers, it’s pretty smooth. All in all, an impressive experience. Creating the sequence of the pages, and the flow of questions really helped us distill what we most needed to know from what we merely wanted to know.
If you want to see it, please click here to take survey. I’d love some feedback on the survey itself AND on your online email and marketing experience. If you have a couple of precious minutes to spare today, please fill it out.
Oh, I almost forgot.
8. Don’t forget to say thank you.
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