10 Best Practices That Always Work for Online Surveys

As the world is going digital at an incredible pace, online surveys are becoming more effective for gathering feedback and insights. Whether performing market research, evaluating consumer satisfaction, or testing product ideas or promotional campaigns, online surveys deliver the most impactful data, especially when performed by the best online survey companies. Have you ever wondered why these survey companies have significantly high response rates and how they deliver accurate data regularly? They use numerous techniques to maximize the output quality. Out of them, we have handpicked the 10 best practices for online surveys that always work. If you implement these in your online surveying strategies, you can get the most effective results that will help you enhance your offerings and boost customer satisfaction rates. If not, your surveys will remain poorly interacted or unopened, leading to low-quality data collection.

1. Keep Your Surveys Short & Crisp

Think as if you’re a respondent and answer which kind of survey you would like to complete without getting bored - Long or Short? The latter is an obvious choice here. There is proven research to confirm that shorter surveys have a significantly higher completion rate. Surveys with duration under 5 minutes have an 80% completion rate, while those over 10 minutes have that of just 40%. So, avoid unnecessary questions, and lengthy sentences, and keep things brief.

2. User-Friendly Design is a Must

Design is an often neglected component of online surveys, but it plays a key role in boosting engagement rate. A visually clean interface with large buttons and easy navigation ensures a smooth experience for the respondent. So, they are less likely to leave the survey mid-way. You should also optimize the survey for smartphones and tablets, as around 85% of the respondents coming from social media platforms are using these. If you’re ignoring this and assuming all the respondents will be on the computer, you’re inviting a poor response rate.

3. Make the Survey Incredibly Personal

Add a personal touch to your surveys. If you’re only sending generic ones, your response rate will suffer. However, when you send highly customized ones tailored to your audience’s preferences and behavior, they will surely open and complete it. To create personalized and engaging surveys, choose a topic that interests your audience. For instance, if the primary respondents are corporate professionals, you can select topics like ‘Market research for startups’ instead of something like ‘Future of politics in your country’. You should also add a personalized human touch to the survey invitation. You can address recipients by their names, establish a relationship, and use references from their past interactions. This simple trick can boost open rates by 20%.

4. Clear & Simple Language + Plenty of Visuals

Don’t use Shakespeare-esque language in your online surveys. Instead, write your questions in simple and easy-to-understand language. Ensure that the questions are brief and not too complex. The straightforward, conversational tone is the most ideal way to ask questions. Additionally, try adding visuals like images, videos, infographics, etc., in your surveys. For instance, you can replace a 1-10 scale with faces or expressions for answers. You can also display a visual progress bar, motivating respondents to keep going. These simple but impactful changes can significantly increase the completion rate. Successful global online survey companies always leverage such tactics.

5. Your Questions Must Capture Attention

If your survey questions fail to capture the attention of the respondents, you’ll fail the task. The questions must be attractive from the beginning and shouldn’t have a generic vibe. For instance, a shopper is more likely to answer- “Loving our shop? Let us know what else we add!” instead of “Please share product suggestions.” It doesn’t matter how engaging your survey is if it fails to capture the participant’s attention initially. So, focus on this part a lot. Draw people in with titles that are catchy and curious. Use vibrant colors and appealing visuals to lead them to the main questionnaire.

6. Keep Sensitive Questions For Climax

You should always start your survey with attention-grabbing but light and straightforward questions. And, keep the sensitive and personal questions to the end. Once you’re nearing it, you can gradually move toward them, often taking the form of demographic queries & opinions. It’s better to stick with close-ended questions - the ones that use multiple-choice boxes or checkboxes as answers, if you want a great completion rate. They are easier for respondents and provide you with quantitative data for research. On the other hand, open-ended questions (free response questions) deliver more qualitative data, but they take a longer time to answer. Respondents often ignore them. Don’t include more than 1 or 2 of them, and place them at the end.

7. Use a Balanced Mix of Questions

Having a balanced mix of questions saves the participant from getting bored and quitting the survey. You can add various types of questions including multiple-choice questions, checkboxes, and visual queries. You can also mix up the wording style, appearance, and response type for questions to continue capturing your audience’s attention and saving them from boredom.

8. Provide Incentives to Genuine Respondents

Adding incentives for genuine participants is a nice way to keep them motivated and show gratitude to loyal customers. Over 75% of customers like businesses and brands that provide incentives and prefer them for purchases. You can add various types of incentives such as discount coupons, free products, digital downloads, monetary benefits, and exclusive access to promotional events. Additionally, you can also add a personalized note full of gratitude at the conclusion. This will motivate the user to keep coming back for your surveys.

9. Pre-Test Your Survey & Take External Opinion

Always preview your survey before you send it. Forgetting questions or properly optimizing components is common but disastrous, especially when you’re working for global online survey companies. Pre-testing is a simple but effective trick to safeguard yourself. Two eyes are always better than one. So, bring an external person to test the survey with you. They can point out the errors and shortcomings that you may have missed. This is what the very best market research company will do.

10. Send the Survey at an Ideal Time

After vigorous research from the best online survey companies, it has been revealed that the time you send a survey matters a lot. Sending a survey when people are usually busy with something else, which is more important, would lead to ignorance. For example, people take a nap after their meal in the afternoon. If you send a survey while they are lying down for a nap, you won’t receive any engagement. That’s why 2 p.m. is the least productive time of the day. Meanwhile, sending out surveys at 6 a.m. or in the evening between 6 and 9 p.m. is a smart way to bring it in front of the respondent's eyes. Mondays are known to be the most effective day to send online surveys, as revealed by a highly reputed online survey company.

Final Take

These are the 10 best practices that always work for online surveys. We have gathered them from decades of experience of the best online survey companies. Implementing them in your surveys is a sure-shot way to get the maximum open rate and the highest engagement rate. If you are looking for a reliable and reputable market research firm with impeccable expertise and proven experience in global market research, look no further than Unimrkt Research. With ISO20252 and ISO 27001 certifications under our belt, we're one of the leading market research firms that operates in over 22 languages. Call us at +91-124-424-5210, email us at sales@unimrkt.com or fill out our contact form, and we will get back to you shortly.