SurveyHints & Tips

Topic: Creating Your Survey

7 Steps for Creating Successful Online Surveys

The 7 steps laid out in this article are proven best practices, that when followed, will greatly increase the success of your surveys.

8 Tips for Writing Effective Survey Questions

Once you've identified the main objective for your survey, the next step is to write your questions. Use the following list as your guide through the possible pitfalls.

Don't Skip This Article!

Survey length and frequency are two of the most common concerns for organizations seeking customer feedback. If a survey is too long, recipients might quit before answering all of your questions. Similarly, if surveys are sent too frequently, you might not get many takers. Half-completed surveys, or ones that aren't even attempted, are a waste of your customers' time and missed opportunities for your business.

It's All in How You Ask

It doesn't matter how I ask my 12-year-old child a question; the answer is always one of the following: "it's alright," "whatever," or "uh huh." However, when it comes to your customers, how you ask a question will determine what kind of answer you receive. In the case of online surveys, the goal is to ask questions that will help you get responses that are truly useful and that you can take action on.

Listening to Customers Goes Beyond Answering the Phone

You think you offer great a product or service to your customers and members, but do you know that for sure? Are you taking the time to listen to what your customers are saying about you? If the answer to both questions is no, you could be missing out on some valuable insight that could help grow your business or organization, or better shape some of your processes. Fortunately, it?s pretty easy to ?hear? what your customers are saying through multiple feedback channels.

More Effective Inquiries

Online surveys are an easy way to get customer feedback that is critical to understanding your customer and their needs. But their feedback is only as good as the quality of your survey questions. Here are some ways to write more effective survey questions that will bring back more actionable and reliable results.

Quantifying Feedback

Have you heard the buzz around social media marketing and how it's a great way to get feedback about your business or organization? It definitely can be. Tools such as NutshellMail can be used to track what's being said about your products, services, or events on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, while Google Alerts can be used to scour the web for similar mentions.

Success Story - Nancy Juetten

To Nancy Juetten, a person's professional bio is a powerful key to attract clients, speaking engagements, and media opportunities. Through Juetten's consultancy -- Bellevue, Wash.-based Main Street Media Savvy -- she offers her popular Bye-Bye Boring Bio workbook, a Bye-Bye Boring Action Workshop, and an Extreme Bio Makeover service for business owners who find writing about their accomplishments just too hard to do on their own.

"In today's Internet age, a Google search can speak volumes about a company's brand, reputation, and offerings," Nancy explains. "That is why a compelling, client-attracting bio is an essential element in every business owner's marketing toolkit. My objective is to provide bio writing tools and personal support so my clients can reflect their brilliance to the marketplace and attract more of the opportunities they seek."

Surveys Go Beyond Questions

Building an online survey with compelling, relevant questions that will help you solicit feedback on your business, products, event, or future plans is easy with Constant Contact's pre-built templates, which you can easily tailor to suit your individual needs.

The Dozen "Dos"

Who's on first? Okay, so I am showing my age, but a poorly written survey can lead to results that make you feel like Costello trying to get an answer out of Abbott in that hilarious routine. So how do you create a survey that won't strike out? Here are 12 tips to get you started.

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