We live in an age that’s often referred to as the Information Age. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise since information has become the lifeblood of modern companies. And when it comes to collecting information, surveys are the best possible solution.
When done right, they can help you find out whatever you want about your product, service, staff, customer support and so on. But creating an effective survey isn’t easy and that’s why we’ve come up with five tips that are guaranteed to help you do so.
Know your goals.
Before you start conducting a survey, you have to know what exactly you’re trying to accomplish. Fail to do this, and you’ll be left with a bunch of completed surveys that hold no value to you.
Therefore, you’re going to need clearly-defined goals even before you start creating your survey questions.
So, do you want to enhance your product and you want to hear what your customers have to say about it? Or you want to make sure your staff is being as polite as possible?
Once you know answers to these questions, you’ll finally be able to come up with the right questions for your survey. If you’re struggling to identify your goals, try writing down exactly what you want to achieve in no more than three sentences.
Come up with clear questions.
We’ve already said that coming up with the right questions is the key to creating a successful survey. However, if there’s something wrong with your questions, they’re hardly going to hold any value to you. That’s why it’s very important that you put enough time and effort into coming up with clear questions for your survey.
By this, we mean you should ask only one thing at a time and ask only for straightforward opinions of your customers. We also recommend not making your survey too long, since that can make the person who’s taking the survey bored and less likely to give you the right answers.
Last but not least, if you’re asking multiple-choice questions, you also need to make sure there are all kinds of possible answers.
Select your template.
Most of the tools you can use for creating a survey for your business allow you to choose the template for your survey.
This can come in pretty handy since you won’t be starting from scratch. All you’ll have to do is insert the questions that’ll help you achieve the goals you’ve come up with.
While there are plenty of templates you can choose from, the one you should go with usually depends on your personal preferences.
Ask the provider to show you all the templates they offer and identifying the one that best fits your needs should be a real piece of cake. Most of these templates have been specifically designed to make the survey more fun and more effective.
Review it.
Once you have everything you need it’s time to take one last look at your survey before it’s time for consumers to take it. This is something you’ll want to do in order to ensure that your survey is fun and easy to do.
A great way to do this is to have some of your employees take the survey and tell you what they think of it.
That way, you’ll be able to make some last-minute changes. This should also help you identify any spelling or grammar mistakes, which are definitely something you’ll want to keep at bay. Once this is done, it’s finally time to send your survey to the people who’re going to participate in it. Since there are more and more people who decide to take paid surveys, there’s no need to worry about not having enough participants.
Collect and review responses.
As we’ve already said, finding people who’re going to take your survey should be a real piece of cake. Once they’re done taking your survey it’s time for you to collect all the responses and analyze all the answers you got.
This is also something you’ll need to put some extra effort since any mistakes could have a negative impact on your company’s future.
Once you’ve reviewed all the responses, it’ll be up to you to make business decisions according to the data you’ve collected. If there’s something most of the people who took your survey agree on, make sure you start implementing it as soon as possible. When it comes to things not all of the participants agree on, you might want to do some further testing before you make any decisions.
Follow these 5 tips and creating a survey that’ll help you make the right business decisions shouldn’t be too difficult. If you notice your business has benefited from your survey, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t keep doing the same in the future as well.
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Lauren Wiseman is marketing specialist, contributor to Bizzmarkblog, and entrepreneur, currently based in Melbourne. She helps clients grow their personal and professional brands in fast-changing and demanding market environment. Covering finance and investment topics, Lauren strongly believes in holistic approach to business.