If you’re wondering how to conduct online surveys to get the best results, this guide is here to help you.
In theory, conducting an online survey is a clear and straightforward process. All you have to do is determine your goals and target audience and find the right questions to ask. But in practice, it’s a little trickier than that.
Ask yourself: How did you conduct the market survey you last worked on? Did it go smoothly, or were there any setbacks?
No matter if you’re just starting to use surveys or you have plenty of experience, knowing the correct steps in conducting online surveys is the only way to get the best results.
This article will present the seven basic steps to create a survey that will stand out while providing valuable survey responses.
How to conduct online surveys: Making a questionnaire
Answering the question of _how to conduct a survey _ can differ based on many factors. The most important ones are the research field, the survey topic, and who will be answering your surveys.
Every survey is a unique process, but understanding best practices will help you better understand what your survey needs and thereby bring you the best results. Here is a thorough description of each step in conducting online surveys.
Pay attention to your research field
Conducting online surveys can be done in many fields, but generally, there are four types of research: demographic research, market research, employee research, and customer research.
Market research surveys help you see what’s currently happening in the market—what sells and what doesn’t—and compare yourself with competitors to gain information that will help you improve performance.
Demographic research helps you analyze economic and population data to find the audience interested in your products or services. Customer research provides you with feedback from customers, while employee research gives you valuable job and industry-related feedback that can help you improve the employee experience at your company.
Once you’ve determined which field of research your survey falls into, it’s time to learn more about how to conduct survey research that will meet your needs.
Determine your research goals
The first thing to do before you start making a questionnaire is to ask yourself what your goals are. Decide on your objectives and the desired outcome. For example, if you’re wondering how to carry out market research, ask yourself why you’re doing it in the first place.
Do you want to conduct general market research and see how your competitors are doing, or do you want to improve customer experience with a particular product? Also, what will you be using the gathered information for?
You can create a survey to measure customer effort score and net promoter score, monitor your product service or overall customer satisfaction, or work to improve your brand image and brand loyalty.
Knowing your survey goals will help you find your target population and create the questions that will work best for them, as well as provide you with the data you need.
Pinpoint your target audience
Of course, we all want our surveys to have a high completion rate, but more important than this is to determine the right sample to target. That is why the next important point on how to conduct online surveys is to determine your target audience.
Do you plan on sending the survey to the general public, or do you have a specific audience in mind? The answer to this question will have a big impact on the questions you ask and their wording.
Think about the different categories of your existing customer base or new ones you want to attract. If you don’t know much about them, you can first conduct target audience profiling and then divide your findings into categories based on the demographic data you collect.
If you’re dealing with more than one demographic group, you may need more than one survey—or you can use skip logic in your questionnaire. Whichever option you choose, remember that getting feedback from the right people is much more important than getting lots of answers.
Only after determining the right sample can you focus on increasing your response rate. Use our survey sample size calculator to determine how many responses you will need to ensure accurate feedback.
Choose the right online survey software
Next up, write your questions and design your survey. But before that, you need to pick the right online survey tool that will help you make surveys from scratch, develop an already existing idea, or even help you brainstorm if you’re drawing a blank.
If you’re not really sure how to conduct online surveys—which questions to ask and which designs to use—well, we are here to help.
With SurveyPlanet, you can make an unlimited number of surveys and questions and also gather unlimited responses. Start your survey from scratch by making a custom theme, or choose among our countless pre-made survey templates and pre-written survey questions.
Write a welcome question to greet participants, then use question branching to control which questions they’re subsequently asked based on previous answers. With our software, you can also make surveys anonymous, customize them to match your brand, and embed them in emails or on a website.
Once you’ve gathered all the data, you can easily analyze it with our survey results filtering feature, as well as export data in a range of files. With SurveyPlanet’s various features and resources, conducting online surveys is a piece of cake. Check out our plans and pricing, then choose the one that meets your needs.
Write engaging and comprehensible questions
Creating survey questions is an important step in any type of online survey research. However, it comes only after you’ve realized your research goals and chosen your target audience.
This is because the form and the content of questions need to be based on your audience, the topic of your survey, and the goal you want to achieve. Only that process will provide valuable information about your research topic.
There are two question types to choose from: open-ended and closed-ended. Open-ended questions are those where the participants can create answers freely using their own wording and usually consist of a question with a box in which to write your answer.
Closed-ended questions provide pre-selected options and are divided into more subgroups. The most common are rating scale or Likert scale questions, yes-or-no questions, and multiple-choice questions.
Whichever type you choose, make sure to use simple, neutral, and unambiguous language. Create a list of questions, ask one at a time, don’t confuse the participants, and don’t word questions in such a way as to lead them to choose a certain answer.
Make a design that stands out
Apart from engaging and fun questions, a compelling survey design will make a survey stand out, which will be more interesting and encourage people to participate. This is especially true regarding how to conduct market research.
With SurveyPlanet software, you can choose one of our numerous pre-made survey templates or get creative and make your own custom theme from scratch. Use your brand’s fonts and colors, add images and logos, and make a unique questionnaire with our white-label survey feature.
Pick a distribution method and send out your survey
Once your survey is all set and ready to go, the last step regarding how to perform market research, or any other type of research for that matter, is to send the survey to your target audience.
However, you need to choose the right distribution method—and the right moment—to send out surveys. You can distribute surveys via email, social media, or online survey platforms. Decide on the best method to reach your target audience.
Also, don’t forget to keep your surveys accessible long enough to gather a good number of responses.
Conducting an online survey: What to do after a questionnaire has been sent out
Conducting an online survey doesn’t end with just the creation and distribution of your questionnaire. After you’ve gathered responses, you need to analyze them properly and make use of the information gathered.
Analyze the data gathered through your online survey
When doing an online survey, all the data is stored automatically, so you don’t have to do any data entry. Also, there’s no need to wait for the survey to be over in order to begin accessing the data. You can check the answers as they come in or even start analyzing them while the survey is still open.
There are many tips on how to analyze survey data, but the primary one is to use survey filtering and cross-tabulation, which is easy to do with SurveyPlanet. For easier management of information, you can also export data into different files and spreadsheets.
While analyzing the data, you can visualize it with graphs and charts or use word clouds for open-ended questions to see which responses were the most common.
Write a survey report and create your action plan
Once you’ve analyzed the data, it is time to make your report. In it, you should explain the findings, conclusions, and success in reaching the goals of the research.
Based on your findings and business goals, create an action plan and implement the needed changes that will help your business reach its full potential.
As you can see, conducting online research is not difficult. When applying best practices, great results can be expected. We hope we answered your questions about how to conduct online surveys well. Sign up for a SurveyPlanet account and start making excellent surveys today!
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