Interested in feedback? Keep your surveys short.
As a member of a number of associations and networking groups, I receive a lot of online surveys. It always amazes me how long and cumbersome many of them are. Inevitably they will be multi-page monsters that require me to type things in and fill in blanks. 99% of the time these requests end up falling prey to my delete key. Do the senders of these surveys really expect to get a reasonable response when the surveys are this long and complicated?
Most people today do not have the time or desire to spend 15 minutes answering a long, drawn-out survey. Actually, even getting attention in someone's email inbox is the first challenge.
It's been proven over and over that attention spans online are much shorter than offline. For this reason, it is important to write differently online, as well as present interactive forms and data differently. Most people would agree that more data gives you more accurate results. Therefore, encouraging as many people as possible to give you feedback would be a good thing. So how do you get as much data as possible?
In order to maximize your response rate, use the following guidelines:
- Keep your surveys short. 5-7 questions should be the maximum.
- Make all questions one-click multiple choice. Do not ask your readers to fill in blanks or type in text unless it’s an optional final questions for other comments.
- Keep your surveys one page.
Additionally, it’s a good idea to tell your readers that the process will take 2 minutes or less to complete. This sets expectations and reduces the anxiety caused by all the other awful surveys they received.
If you really want a useful response from your recipients, keep your surveys short and to the point. This will result in data you can actually use.
Want to talk more about this? Don't hesitate to call us (ask for Michael or Adam)
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