UX surveys are a precious research method for every business. With them, you can collect detailed customer feedback about what customers think about your products and services. And just as these need to be customer-oriented, so do your surveys. The best UX survey is one that is engaging enough that customers finish it while containing meaningful questions that will give accurate data about their customer journey.
Conducting UX surveys with relevant questions is crucial in designing new products and improving existing ones. Here are the best practices regarding the making of a user experience survey that help grow your business.
What are UX surveys and why conduct UX research?
A well-designed UX research survey helps furnish valuable feedback about digital products with quantitative and qualitative data regarding user experience and interaction with your website, app, or other digital services.
These types of surveys are not so much focused on understanding user behavior on your website or app as much as what your customers think about the product and how satisfied they are with its features.
That said, UX surveys are a great addition to all the other work you do to improve your digital products. Along with heatmaps, session recordings, A/B testing, and usability testing, conducting UX research surveys on customer experience helps you see the whole picture.
How can a UX research survey help you improve your business?
When you conduct UX surveys and ask meaningful and carefully written questions, you gather valuable feedback about the customer journey and product experience. This can help during various stages of product development.
If just beginning the product-development journey, then market research surveys can help with concept testing and target audience profiling.
If launching a new product—but don’t know how the target audience will react—conducting product research surveys will help the decision-making process.
For example, if developing new software, well-written software user experience survey questions will provide needed insights that will increase the odds of bringing to market a product that will succeed.
You can also use UX research surveys to improve existing products. For example, an app user experience survey focusing on the key tools and features of an app can help you understand needed changes that will improve the customer experience.
UX survey best practices: How to make the best user experience surveys
In order to gain accurate and valuable feedback, UX surveys need to be focused on customers, who will appreciate the addressing of specific points that are important to them, which may be their pain points. Here are the five best practices for making a UX survey design:
1. Define the problem your UX survey is meant to solve
The goal of UX survey research is to solve the problems of customers. So, before writing UX research survey questions, find out which problems customers encounter when using your product. Focus on which ones to explore the most and keep these in mind throughout the entire survey-making process.
2. Know the important types of UX survey questions
The most crucial part of every survey is its questions. Numerous question types can be used in UX survey design, but combining more of them gives the best results.
Start by asking closed-ended questions. Then, use our question branching or skip logic feature to ask more detailed open-ended questions that explore areas that require more specific information.
Use user experience survey questions to cover the topics important to your customers—and your company. You can find a UX survey example among our free survey templates and examples.
3. Beware of bias: Don’t ask leading questions
Gathering accurate feedback that will give valuable insights means you need to make sure your survey is objective. There should be no leading questions and these types of bias must be avoided:
- Confirmation bias: Asking for data that will confirm your hypothesis. For example, the question “Why do you like using our app?” implies that users are satisfied when they may not be.
- Framing effect: Asking questions that lead users to answer in a certain way. For example, instead of asking, Do you like our new app features?” keep the question neutral and ask, “What are your thoughts on our new app features?”
- Unbalanced scales: Asking scale questions in which the given answers cover only limited choices. For example, asking the question “How do you like our app?” with answer choices from “1 (a little)” to “5 (a lot)” presupposes that your users do like your app.
4. Keep UX survey questions short, simple, clear, and neutral
Whether launching a new product or improving an existing app or website, the user experience survey questions chosen need to be relevant to both users and your business.
After deciding on the topics to be covered, you need to write questions. Pay attention to the wording. Keep questions to the point, and don’t let them be misleading. Make sure to use neutral language that is easy to understand. Keep questions short and don’t ask about several things with one question.
5. Provide incentives for completing the survey
Providing incentives to users can significantly increase response and completion rates. Incentives can be in the form of coupons, discounts, gift cards, free trials, and related inducements.
However, keep in mind that, even though incentives drive higher completion rates, they may also negatively impact the accuracy of the collected data. This is because some users may put more thought into the survey, while others may complete it quickly just to get the promised incentive.
UX survey question examples
Closed-ended questions are a great way to start a survey. They let you ask detailed questions about specific features while providing accurate quantitative data. Here are some closed-ended user experience survey questions you can use in your next UX survey:
- How often do you use our app?
- How would you rate your overall experience with our software on a scale from 1 (very bad) to 5 (very good)?
- Which of these features do you use the most? Rank them from the most used to the least used.
- On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the useability of our app?
- How likely are you to recommend our app to colleagues and friends?
With open-ended questions, users can answer questions in their own words. Provide space for them to share their own ideas on how to improve your product and allow them to bring up topics not covered in the survey. Here are a few examples of open-ended questions:
- What is your overall experience with our platform?
- How would you rate your experience with our app?
- Did you experience some difficulties while using our software?
- What do you think about our new product feature?
- If you could change something about our app, what would it be?
- If you could add a new feature to our software, what would it be?
Use a survey to ask for specific feedback on different features, such as the user interface, onboarding experience, useability, design, navigation menu, speed, error messages, etc. The more specific questions are, the more accurate the feedback you get.
Choose the right online survey tool for UX surveys
Among all of the survey-making tools on the market, SurveyPlanet is the one that will help bring the most out of your research efforts.
You can make an unlimited number of surveys, choose between hundreds of pre-written questions, and gather an unlimited number of responses. We offer you ready-made templates or a chance to design questionnaires to make a quick-and-easy survey.
Sign up for a free SurveyPlanet account, explore our useful features, choose between many types of UX surveys, and find a UX survey template that fits your needs. Bring customer experience management to the next level while improving the user experience of your product or service and grow your business with SurveyPlanet!
Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash