How To Write Online Survey Questions Like An Expert?

Online surveys or polls are essential for all businesses today. It is because polling and surveys play a significant role in shaping business strategies and marketing tactics.

Moreover, you are getting valuable customer insights through the surveys. You might come across a lot of websites that are conducting surveys regularly to bring changes in their product features, services, and business strategies. The crucial part of any survey is to collect precise and accurate data from the respondents.

But not all businesses are getting accurate data.

Do you know why?

The businesses are not creating efficient online survey questions. Everything is dependent on the what and how the questions get displayed in front of respondents. The customers should find the questions worthy enough to provide the answers. While creating online survey questions, you might make mistakes and these mistakes can bring down all the efforts.

So, do you want to avoid it? Yes!

You can take the help of experts to design online questions that increase the effectiveness of the survey. Moreover, it will help in increasing the response rate of the online survey. The chances of getting accurate data to improve by four-folds.

Here, we bring you expert tips for creating the best online survey questions.

#1 You Should Have A Specific Survey Objective

Before you start formulating questions for the online survey, choose a specific topic.

With the help of the topic, you would be able to maintain the relevance of the questions that you need to add to the survey.

For instance, you will be aware of what type of questions fit the survey objective. Filter out the non-relevant questions. Or if you are conducting an online survey for the product review. For such an objective, you cannot include irrelevant questions.

#2 Ensure That You Are Maintaining A Proper Flow Of The Questions

Now that you have filtered all the essential questions for the online survey, it is time to decide the proper flow. Every question is related to another. So, decide which questions should be used in the beginning and which at the end.

#3 You Should Avoid Any Personal Questions

Most often, the response rate of the online survey decreases due to the inclusion of personal questions. People do not feel safe while providing answers to the personal questions used in the survey. Therefore, you should avoid personal questions. It will increase the effectiveness and response rate of the online survey.

#4 Focus On Including Closed-Ended Questions

Usually, the close-ended questions have a one-word answer. It becomes easy for the businesses as well as the respondents. People do not have the entire day to sit and provide long textual answers to the online survey questions. They may feel that the online survey is time-consuming. With close-ended questions, you can eliminate this issue. You can choose multiple-choice questions, rating scale questions, and images. It will increase the response rate and effectiveness of online surveys.

#5 Do Not Include Multiple Questions In One

While you are creating online survey questions, keep it simple. Including multiple questions in one vital question will increase ambiguity. The chances of getting accurate questions will decrease.

For instance, check this question – “Which Product Do You Find The Best From Our Brand?

Why Is It So? Here the respondents get confused while providing the answers.

You can ask one question at a time to increase the clarity of the questions.

#6 Ensure That You Are Using Simple Language

If you want to gain correct answers to the questions, use simple language. Simple language with easily understandable words makes it easier for the respondents to provide the correct answers. Not everyone can understand sophisticated words and complex question formation.

#7 You Should Maintain The Consistency of The Rating Scale

When you are using different questions with a rating scale, ensure that there is consistency. For instance, you use a rating scale between 1 and 5 for one question and then use the same scale for all the rating scale questions.

It should not be between 1 and 10.

It will lead to confusion and inaccurate data collection.

Summary

If you want to increase the effectiveness and response rate of the online surveys and polls. Focus on designing the correct questions. The aforementioned expert tips will help you to do the same. You can use the PollDeep platform to create and design amazing polls without any hassle.

What Features Are Important In A Free Survey Maker

Online polls and surveys are an effective way to understand your target audience. When you are getting feedback from the target audience, you know where your business is going wrong.

You can bring revolutionary changes in the business strategies that will help you improve the business products, services, formulate new tactics, and much more. Nowadays, you can come across a lot of businesses that are making use of the survey maker. They are using it for various purposes.

Sometimes to gauge customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. Businesses use online surveys to track market positioning and gauge the level of competition. Online surveys are highly beneficial for businesses. You should know the right way to use it. Moreover, before you use a free survey maker, get to know about the essential features offered by the platform or tool.

If the free survey maker does not offer you high-quality and useful features, you are just wasting time on it. You will not get anything by using that online free survey maker.

So What Are Some Of The Essential Features Of The Free Survey Maker?

#1 Free Survey Maker Should Have a Wide Range Of Template Design

You cannot consider a single survey template ideal for all businesses. The survey template for the entertainment business should be different from the entertainment business.

So free survey makers should have a wide range of templates. The businesses can choose the most suitable one for them. The template should have a varied design, colors, and layout. It should help you to make your online survey look appealing.

#2 The Free Survey Maker Should Have A Specific Survey Logic

This feature is essential for every online survey. This feature helps make the online surveys convenient for the respondents. The respondents have the flexibility to skip the question or entire section based on their preferences.

If they do not want to offer an answer to any personal question, they can skip it. This feature is also helpful in segregating the respondents from attending to some questions. If the questions do not apply to specific respondents because they do not fit into the specified category, the entire section will be skipped automatically.

#3 Customization Of The Look And Feel Of The Online Survey

You are already getting a wide range of templates for your online survey. But sometimes, you wish to make changes in the look and feel of the template. A free survey maker should offer customization features to make changes in the templates. You can change the colors, designs, images, fonts, etc. You can even add the company logo to make the online survey look professional.

#4 Easy Data Analysis

Free survey makers should not just provide you with features to conduct online surveys. It should also support analyzing the data received. You might have asked the questions to thousands of respondents. It is not possible to scan through every answer. You should get the data in a table form or charts or bar graphs. It helps in easy analysis of the data. You can go through the chart and bar graphs and use them to improvise your business. Manual data analysis is very tedious and not practical when dealing with a large volume of data.

#5 Online Surveys Integration In Websites And Social Media

You have designed the online survey, but you need to reach out to the right people. Without reaching your target audience, you can't get feedback or data to work on. So the free survey makers should have features of website integration. The online surveys should be easy to embed in the website and social media platforms. It is essential to gain a response from maximum people.

#6 There Should Be A Flexibility Of Conditional Questions

The free survey maker should have the provision of adding conditional questions to the survey. These conditional questions may be multiple-choice, random questions selection, or a multimedia section. Besides, there should be a way to save common questions, so that you do not have to add them frequently.

#7 The Free Survey Maker Should Support Multiple Languages

Not all the customers would have proficiency in understanding and answering the English language. The respondents can belong to any native language. Therefore, it is better to have the support of multiple languages in an online survey tool.

Summary:

Using an online survey has become a necessity. It is essential to understand the requirements of the customers. Moreover, it helps know whether the customers are happy with your services or not. But that does not mean you can use any free survey maker. The features of the online survey tool must be high profile to make the survey's best. 

Fun Ways To Use Online Poll In Your Next Virtual Event

In the current situation, we can observe that most of the events, whether it be seminars or conferences, are being held online through virtual platforms. And experts assume that the situation would remain the same in the coming times as well.

In virtual events, you must understand how to take control of the event and keep your audience engaged for a longer period. But how to do that? The attention span of the audience is quite short. It becomes difficult to verify whether your audience is taking an interest in the event or not. 

In such a situation, the best thing you can do is make use of the online polls. Polls are considered the best companion for virtual events (meetings, conferences, webinars, or any other event) because they will be helpful in keeping your target audience engaged and also encourage interaction.

You can make use of the online polls in some innovative and fun ways that will help you to not just make your events engaging but also get you useful insights that can be further used to improve such events. Here are some essential and fun ways to integrate online polls into your virtual events.

#1 You Must Keep Your Polls Questions Simple And Understandable

You do not want your target audience to feel bored and uninterested during the events. You can keep them engaged by asking a few questions in between the virtual event. But make sure that the questions are simple yet interesting. The question should be relevant but not very subjective — you can make use of the multiple-choice questions so that it would be easy for the audience to answer. 

The questions for the virtual events should be formed in a strategic way. It should be interesting for the audience and also fetch useful data for you.

If the audience does not understand the questions or find themselves unable to answer the question, they will usually skip it — this is not a good sign for your virtual event.

#2 You Can Include WordCloud In The Online Polls

According to the experts, it has been analyzed that the word clouds can be easily integrated into the online polls in a way to provide an introduction to the topic and also increase audience engagement.

It would be a different experience for the audience, and they will take a keen interest in the word cloud and also participate to answer the questions. It will not only improve the user engagement but also fetch you huge insightful data that you can later on use for analysis. 

#3 You Can Introduce Fun As Well As Educational Quizzes To Improve The Quality Of The Virtual Event

Through quizzes, you can add slight competition to the event. Besides this, it will also keep the audience feeling lively and energetic, and not bored throughout the event. But you must make sure that the quizzes are not very time-consuming or else the event would become quite long. It should be short and interesting enough to grab the attention of the attendees and ensure that they are being attentive.

#4 Include Some Fun Questions Through Online Polls 

When the questions are funny and interesting, it will increase the level of audience engagement. You can also include questions, which have to be answered through ratings to know whether your attendees are finding the event useful and interesting or not. In this way, you can increase the effectiveness of the virtual event. 

#5 Don’t Include Any Sort Of Personal Questions

No one would like to answer personal questions, and thus, you would find that more and more people are either skipping the question or not providing a proper answer to it. This will decrease the quality of the virtual event and make the entire event dull and boring. Moreover, the attendees would not even like to complete the event.

Summary

Online polls are essential in the current scenario as well as in the future for all businesses, organizations, and industries. While covering different types of virtual events, meetings, or webinars. Through polls, you can not just grab the attention of your audience but also keep them engaged till the last minute. You can convey your message effectively and in an efficient manner. You can make use of PollDeep for creating online polls and integrating them into virtual events.

Use Marketing Strategy To Your Survey To Make It More Worthy

An online poll or survey is considered as an effective marketing strategy and assessment tool. An online poll maker gives you a chance to engage with your clients and collect pertinent information for you to stay informed. But, when using a poll creator for business decisions, it is a must that you also promote them to all your target audience to make the most out of your survey and enjoy its real worth.

When you create a survey with an online poll maker, there are several marketing strategies that you can use:

Embed on Your Webpage or Blog

Embedding is among the advanced methods used for sharing and marketing your survey on any page. When you embed a survey, your audience can take the survey directly on your site with no need to leave it. Embedding is perfect when your main purpose is branding since the respondents will take the survey on your website or URL.

Share on Social Media Platforms

It is not a secret that almost all users today have their own social media accounts in Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If you want to market your survey effectively, sharing it on these platforms is one of the wisest things you can do. With this, you can be sure that you can reach more of your target audience, and there will also be a higher chance that they will see your survey. They will also feel more inclined and interested to check it out.

List Your Survey in Bulletin Boards, Forums, and Groups

These public portals usually have discussion threads allotted for specific subjects. Look for the topic which matches your survey, and post a short invitation or entry. You can get the best results with this particular method if you use forums or groups where in you are member and where you usually post entries which attract the interest of readers.

Create a Press Release

If you want to write a press release, you have to be careful not to make it sound as if it is an ad for your survey. Remember that press releases are meant for piquing interest through offering readers information that is stimulating, sensitive, surprising, or new. You can use your press release for subtly promoting your survey which will ignite curiosity.

Use Incentives

You can use incentives like drawings, giveaways, and contests to interest in your survey and promote its social sharing. Invite more people to participate in your survey and give them an incentive after they complete it. If you go for this method, however, just make sure that you are clear about the details of your incentives. Make sure you also follow through the incentives you offer so people will spread the news about your survey.

It is never enough to just use the best online poll maker. If you really want to make the most out of your survey, using the above marketing strategies can make it more worthy not only for your respondents, but also for you or your company.

You Can Eliminate Survey Fatigue By Fixing These 3 Things

Was there ever a time when you asked your respondents about their experience while taking your survey? Did they find your free online surveys too long? Did you ask if they felt like your online polling is way too complicated for them, if not too personal?

Most of you will probably think that asking for your respondents’ feedback about the survey itself is something unusual. However, every time you make or prepare an online survey, it is a must to always keep your respondents in mind, with their sanity and time being your topmost priority.  Even if you use the best online survey creator, everything will be useless if your poll is too difficult, enough to make your respondents suffer from survey fatigue which could have a drastic effect on the quality of data you will get.

So, how do you make the most out of your online quiz creator or free poll maker to ensure that no signs of fatigue will creep into the bodies and minds of your respondents?

Here are the top three things that you should fix once and for all.

Excessive Number of Questions

If you will require an answer for every survey question you have, your respondents will not be able to continue with your survey without giving their answers even when they don’t really want to do it.

Once they feel that they cannot skip your questions, they will feel frustrated, and needless to say, this frustration is one of the biggest culprits behind survey fatigue. Actually, only a few respondents will bother to go back and give the right answers, while others will never react too well about it.

While it doesn’t mean that you should not require answer to your questions, especially when it comes to the most critical question, you have to know how many and which questions really require to be answered.

Surveys Requiring 10 Minutes or More to be Completed

You have your busy days, and so do your respondents. Having said that, it is completely understandable why many people will be hesitant about taking a survey which will take more than 10 minutes of their precious time, or worse, even 20 minutes. Those who take these surveys genuinely want to voice out their opinions. Yes, they care enough but not enough that they will be willing to spend a big chunk of their lunch break just to answer your survey. Always consider the schedules of your respondents when making your survey to avoid an excessively long one that can only ignite survey fatigue.

Forgetting about Boundaries

You probably think of your online survey as a mere way of asking for information, but for your respondents, this might not be the case. They might find the questions sensitive, and asking them questions which could make them feel uncomfortable only increases survey fatigue. Some of the information that respondents don’t feel like providing include their phone or email, full name, income, zip code, and ethnicity or race.

Let's Agree NOT to Use Agree/Disagree Questions in Online Poll

For some weird reason, human nature seems to have it ingrained to stay agreeable and positive even during the toughest situations. But, did you know that this life virtue is also applicable in surveys? The truth is, this particular virtue might even introduce bias in your online survey.

According to studies, there are several ways on how your agree/disagree questions you use in your poll online can urge your respondents to answer them in such a way that doesn’t necessarily reflect their real opinions.

The Problems with Agree/Disagree Questions for Your Online Surveys

Online polling experts have found out that there are two primary types of problem which can arise when you use the usual agree/disagree questions.

• Straightlining

One of the ways that an agree/disagree question can cause problems is through making it easier to go through several questions of your online polling and choose the same answer each and every time even without really reading the choices you provided. Having several questions in a row with almost the same answer options such as agree or disagree might end up boring your respondents. They could still provide their responses to every question but they don’t carefully consider which response is truly the best and most suitable.

• Acquiescence bias

It is almost again human nature for people to say things such as yes to things or even agree with things even when they don’t feel that way. Try to imagine this: If your coworker asks you do like her new dress, you will feel the need to agree with her, right? Studies have revealed that this tendency is also applicable when people answer survey questions as well.

According to experts, item specific questions have options of response which are specific to a certain question. They claim that instead of sticking to a one size fits all scale which will apply to several agree/disagree questions, you can go for a scale with a wording that has been tailored to match the unique wording of the question.

What It Means for Your Online Surveys

If your online poll makes your respondents feel bored when you ask them a series of agree/disagree questions, chances are they will not be that conscientious or focused when they give their response. After all, what will be the point of asking these questions when you know that your respondents will not really even try to answer them well?

While the item specific questions will require an extra effort to answer as compared to the agree/disagree questions, there is no need to worry because their benefits far outweigh their drawbacks. When people exert more effort, it means that they will have more care and concentration when they make their response. This will then lead to a more carefully considered response which translates to more accurate data for you.

Even if you use the best online survey creator, everything will be useless if you cannot get the data you need. If you want the survey experience to be good not just for your respondents but for you as well, let’s agree not to use agree/disagree questions in your next free online surveys.

How to Impress Your Respondents With Useful Features In Online Poll?

Every time you create survey online, you expect your respondents to be inclined and interested to answer your survey questions. You use the best survey software and double check your survey question order. You learn how to make survey questions in the hopes of attracting more people to provide their answers. But, did you know that there are some useful features which can help you impress your respondents without trying too hard?

Customizing your online poll with several features can give you the perfect chance to highlight the logo of your organization or company, boost your response rate and simply make your poll more fun than ever.

Two of the best ways for customizing your survey can be found easily in the survey itself and you can also make the changes to a deployed survey.

The Power of Logos

Make sure you add your logo to your online poll title which can be used for promoting your brand at the same time. What makes logos great is that aside from improving brand awareness and making it instantly recognizable among your target audience, people tend to be attracted to visual things and the right logo designs and colors can do the trick to impress them right from the get-go.

Choose a Matching Design Theme

Instead of having simple spaces between your questions, why not add some bars to separate theme. Here, there are endless possibilities you can try and you can make it as varied and unique as your surveys are. You can change the color scheme of your online poll or create a whole new theme which suits your poll and your personal preferences as well. Just make sure that you don’t go overboard or else, you might end up distracting your respondents for providing their answers to your survey questions.

Advanced Tips for Survey Customization

Colors and logos are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the opportunity of customizing your survey to impress your respondents with the personal and professional feel of your survey that could lead to increased response rates.

• Email invitation – If you will send to your own email addresses list, it is most likely the very first place where your recipients are going to get information regarding your survey. You can customize the mail with the names of your respondent and make sure that you also include an explanation of who you are and why you seek the opinions of the respondents. This will not just add a more personalized feel for your survey in general but this will also have an added payoff of higher response rate.
• Survey end page – It is the very last page that your respondents are going to see at the end of the survey so you want to ensure that you will leave a good lasting impression. You can customize the pages with imaged, hyperlinked text or redirect your respondents to your own site.

These are just some of the best features you can add to impress your respondents. 

Best Way to Design a Matrix Question in Online Survey

If you take a look at the best survey sites, you will notice how they make use of different questions when they make online survey.

Every online poll is composed of questions that are designed according to the results that the free poll maker or online survey creator wants to get or acquire. Probably among the most common and famous of questions used not only in online surveys but even in traditional pen and paper surveys is none other than the matrix question.

The matrix question is basically multiple questions that are presented on a grid form. For an online survey creator, these bundled questions are easier to write and program. These questions are also generally easier to understand and answer in the case of the respondents since the answer options and scales pretty much stay the same in all the items.

But, it is this very surface simplicity of a matrix question that masks its notable drawbacks. For you to gather high quality data, it is important to be familiar with the main pitfalls of this particular type of question, especially now that more and more surveys are being done and answered using mobile devices.

As it is very easy to create these matrix questions, you will notice how this question type is overused by free poll makers. These provide a lot of response options and a lot of rows or items. This is what makes it hard for the respondents to read and it can even promote a poor behavior in taking surveys. They can opt for straight lining in which the respondents choose the same response for every item without giving each row a careful consideration or they can also randomly choose responses for the reason that they just want to finish everything and escape the matrix.

Simple Tips to Write Good Matrix Questions

• Try to keep the response options as short as possible. These response options are the columns of the possible responses.
• Display just five or even fewer response options.
• Ensure that the item wording is short. These items are the rows.
• Once again, display just five or fewer items.

You don’t have to worry in case your matrix questions don’t follow these guidelines as you can still use every question you have written. You can always improve the overall experience for the respondents and gather better data by doing either of these two things: you can choose to break up the matrix into several individual questions or you can break up the large matrix into smaller matrixes.

You also have to remember the fact that most online surveys are completed using mobile devices. For this reason, matrix questions in horizontal formatting are not great for smartphones so be careful when designing the questions and make them suitable for mobile viewing. This will ensure that you will get the answers that you need while ensuring seamless experience for your respondents. 

Effect of Question Order on the Completion Rate of Online Poll

Whether you use a free poll or a paid online polling tool to create your surveys, the question order you follow can have a direct effect on the responses you will get from your respondents.

This effect is sometimes most evident in the field of politics. When a poll maker asks people about the most important issue faced by the country, the answer they will give will be the object of focus for the answer they give to the next question. When the follow up question is whether they disapprove or approve how the president handles his job, most of the time, the respondents will answer the approval question while they judge the president mainly on how he handles the issue they consider as the most important.

It is a common phenomenon called priming. The respondents are being primed to think of a particular issue while they answer the next question.

Priming will have an effect even when the survey topic is not related to politics or not even controversial at all. For example, if your first question is about the favorite sport of a respondent, this may not be suitable if your next question is if they have any interest in participating on a company basketball team. When basketball is not high on your respondent’s list of favorite sports, they might be tempted to rate their interest lower in being part of the company team than if you ask about the team first before their favorite sport.

One more reason why the order of questions matters is that your respondents may feel the need of being as consistent as possible in their answers. For instance, when you ask a student to ask an extremely mind boggling math problem first before you ask them if they enjoy the math subject, they could be tempted to have a lower interest rate if they had difficulties in solving the math problem.

The response options from an earlier query may also affect subsequent answers. When you ask about their favorite out of four fruits and you ask the amount of fruit they eat in one week, they may focus their attention on just the four items and report a much lower number than if they were to consider a longer list of fruits.

How will you address the effects of question order when you create your poll using a survey creation tool? One feasible option is to randomize the questions in order for your respondents not to answer all the questions in a similar order. You can try question randomization which will let you know exactly just that. You can randomize the questions in order to decrease the effects of question order on your poll.

You see, more than the questions themselves, how you put the questions in order in your survey can either make or break the success of your poll. Make sure that you observe proper order of questions to get the results you need.