Top 10 tips for a successful online questionnaire
Online surveys and questionnaires allow you to create a dialogue with web users and measure their satisfaction levels. You can also understand and analyse the needs of your market effectively, whatever your sector: public services, industry, associations, services, health, retail, tourism, etc.
Today, data collection is a major challenge for organisations that want to target their communication campaigns more effectively. Let's take a look at the tips for successful online questionnaires, the best software tools and how to achieve your objectives when designing your surveys.
Why create an online questionnaire?
Whether you're the director of an SME, a self-employed entrepreneur or the head of an association, you have a lot of key information to learn about your target audience. Who are your customers? What do they think of your services? How can you improve your efficiency and better meet their needs?
These are all essential questions to help you increase your efficiency and ensure the success of your decision-making. With the development of advanced online questionnaire solutions, you can define and send out different types of survey:
- Market research, to launch a new project or offer a new service;
- A marketing survey, to obtain detailed information about your industry and your competitors;
- A satisfaction survey, to find out what your customers think and develop your products;
- Data collection, to conduct research and establish your expertise;
- A questionnaire to evaluate your website, to analyse online behaviour and optimise the user experience.
These different types of questionnaire enable you to collect quantitative and qualitative data to enhance your customer knowledge, make the right decisions and measure the results of the actions you take. Creating an online survey form is a real management tool.
10 tips for a successful online questionnaire
1. Start by clearly defining your objectives.
To avoid superfluous questions, focus first on your priority subjects and objectives. Start your survey with the questions that are essential for your company or association.
2. Always contextualise your questionnaire.
In your introduction, tell your panel: the purpose of the survey, the response time in minutes and the confidentiality rules. Limit the number of identity questions and prefer an anonymous questionnaire to gather as many responses as possible.
3. Be as concise as possible.
The shorter your online questionnaire, the more responses you'll get. If the form is long, consider dividing the questions into different pages with a progress bar. The golden rule: no more than 10 questions per page.
4. Write the questions precisely.
Get straight to the point and remain accessible, using sentences that are easy to understand and avoiding asking several questions in one go. Questions such as "How would you rate the restaurant's atmosphere and welcome? should be avoided, otherwise you'll be collecting data that you can't use.
5. Don't direct your questions.
If you want to target your customers and find out what they think of your products or services, remain neutral and avoid any bias in their answers. Don't influence their answers by using overly categorising adjectives.
6. Don't force your respondents to answer.
Don't make questions compulsory; this is a common mistake in online questionnaires. There's nothing more frustrating for a respondent than not being able to validate their answers because of a missing answer. Also remember to define alternative options such as "Don't know" or "Other" fields.
7. Ask very few open-ended questions.
Once again, apply the law of least effort to your panel of respondents. By limiting the number of open questions you can boost your participation and conversion rates, and make it easier to analyse your results later on.
8. Organise your questionnaire into several parts.
Respondents need to know where they are and what subject or theme they are answering. Make sure that the form is organised logically, with separate headings or sections. It is best to create a page for each group of questions relating to the same subject.
9. Don't neglect the design of your questionnaire.
The more attractive and user experience-oriented your online questionnaire, the more likely you are to maximise the number of responses. For greater professionalism, take the time to adapt the design of the survey to your site's graphic charter.
10. Choose the right publication method.
Before sending out your survey, make sure you choose the right channel for distributing your online questionnaire, based on the habits of your target audience and your sector of activity: by e-mail, via social networks, a press release, etc.
Want to go further?
Have you thought about creating questionnaires with drawers, setting up personalised exit pages or using table or matrix questions? Find out more tips by downloading the white paper on the 20 most effective tips for successful online questionnaires. You'll also learn how to avoid bias and offer an incentive to encourage your customers to complete the form to the end...
The 4 steps to follow when creating an online questionnaire
Are you ready to create your first online questionnaire and collect your first data? Here are the four main steps to follow to make your survey a success:
Step 1: Create the questionnaire
With good online questionnaire software, you have dozens of customisable question types and features to create your own customised pro survey form. Be careful to choose questions that are short, precise and easy to complete.
Step 2: Customise the design
Creating an online questionnaire also means taking care with the design and customisation. Choosing the layout, fonts, colours, graphics and animations all contribute to the attractiveness of your survey and promote brand recognition among your customers.
Stage 3: Distributing the survey online
This is where the question of hosting your online survey comes in. You have the choice of publishing it: integrating your survey into your website, publishing it via an anonymous link, sending it by e-mail, or distributing it on social networks.
Step 4: Analysing the results
Once the survey is complete, it's time to analyse and study the results! Questionnaire software often offers automatic, customisable reports to help you understand and break down your results.
How do you choose the right online questionnaire software?
To ensure the success of your evaluation surveys, satisfaction surveys and market research, the choice of software and hosting for your online questionnaire is an important step. Choose professional web tools that are easy to use and set up.
If you consider the best solutions on the market, like Eval&GO for example, you can get the most out of your surveys with :
- Customised options, an intuitive interface and a professional questionnaire editor to easily create advanced scenarios, which can integrate and organise all types of questions logically and efficiently, in a pleasing graphic charter.
- Secure hosting conditions for the questionnaire, with automatic back-ups and network functionalities for distributing the survey via all existing channels: social networks, e-mail, link sharing, QR Code, website, blog, etc.
- Real-time results, dashboards and full automated reports based on your performance indicators to guide you in your decision-making, exploit your results and manage your quality monitoring.
- Simple contact management tools to import and export your lists of targets and respondents and turn your online questionnaire into a genuine marketing campaign.
Finally, before you get started, carry out a number of tests with your questionnaire creation solution first ! Expert software and the most popular managers offer trial versions and free demos to help you determine which type of account best suits your needs.
Making a success of your online questionnaire: a question of common sense
An online questionnaire is an effective way of targeting your customer base, gaining a better understanding of your audience and always providing more accurate answers to their needs. To help you develop your product and service offering or gain a better understanding of the challenges facing your market and sector of activity, follow our tips and advice to optimise the wording of your questions. When it comes to online surveys and research tools, opt for professional web solutions with advanced hosting, contact management and reporting features. Your conversion rate and sales depend on it.
Article translated from French