Surveys are a useful tool in gauging your users’ attitude towards your brand and experience on your website. They can help you gain valuable insights into your users and provide ideas on how to improve the experience of your site. However, they also risk the chance of annoying your users, especially if not implemented properly. In this article, we will go through three tips for creating successful surveys that will give you the results and data you seek.
1. Keep your surveys short and sweet
Avoid creating surveys that are too long — you risk losing the interest of your user and they may leave your website as a result, increasing your bounce rate. In addition, longer surveys lead to low response rates and as a result, provide data that isn’t enough to represent the majority of your users. It isn’t necessary to ask all the questions — figure out which are the important ones by defining your research goals.
2. Ask for both quantitative and qualitative data in your surveys
While still keeping the survey short, it’s good to include both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. This will help you obtain data that is both quantitative and qualitative, giving you valuable insights into valuable information about your users.
You may think you already know the answers to those “why” questions, but leaving them open-ended can give you interesting insights you wouldn’t expect. Instead of providing a list of answers for users to pick from, try including an open-ended option.
Below are two good examples of quick surveys. They’re only two questions each and will help to provide both quantitative and qualitative data. Furthermore, they focus on user frustrations and pain points — that’s where the biggest insights and opportunities can arise.
3. Place your surveys at the right place, at the right time
Asking the right questions in your survey is important, but it’s not enough to ensure success if your survey isn’t timed right and placed at a location that’s less than ideal.
To grab your users’ attention, your survey should have a level of intrusiveness — just not too much to annoy your user and make them want to leave. It should still fit nicely into the user flow. Surveys can be masked into existing processes — this creates a lower barrier to the task, while still keeping your survey in a visible area. For example, it could be placed right after the end of an article, or immediately after the purchase flow on an e-Commerce website. This is because visitors who have engaged with your service would be more likely to participate and share their thoughts.
Additionally, surveys should be timed right. Be careful not to place them right at the beginning of the user flow, when users haven’t even had the time to explore and form an opinion about your site. Take note to also not hinder conversion or important user flows such as checking out. Instead, time surveys such that they only appear after users have spent a certain amount of time on your site or performed certain actions.
Good UX Design Leads To Happy Users
With these three tips in mind, you’re ready to start planning successful surveys for your new or redesigned website. The more user-friendly your website is, the happier your users will be and the easier it’ll be to reach your goals. Not sure what kind of survey would fit your website best, or how else to improve the UX design of your website? Drop us a line for more tips or a UX review of your website — we’d be more than happy to help!
