7 Reasons For Using Open-Ended Survey Questions?

Making the right choices between open-ended and closed survey questions, allows you to get only the data that best serves the goal of your customer, employee or market research survey.

You already know the difference between an open-ended question and a closed question, right?

Open-ended questions are the kind that don’t set specific options for response. For example, “What’s your reason for reading this blog post? Type your answer in the box below.”

Closed questions are the kind you can answer with one word or number, or by choosing from preset responses. For example, “How often do you visit this website? Once a day, once a week, once a month or once a year?”

The difference matters because when you’re designing a survey to collect feedback from customers or employees, the type of question you use influences the type of answers you get and the insights you can gain.

Let’s start by looking at when, how and why you’d want to use open-ended questions.

#1: Allow an infinite number of possible answers

The big plus of an open-ended question is that you’re not placing any limits on the response. That means your survey respondents can tell you anything they feel is relevant and anything they want you to know. Closed questions, on the other hand, drastically limit the possible responses.

#2: Collect more detail

Open-ended questions give your respondents the freedom and space to answer in as much detail as they like, too. Extra detail really helps to qualify and clarify their responses, yielding more accurate information and actionable insight for you.

#3: Learn something you didn’t expect

All this freedom to give any answer, of any length and with any level of detail, means that you’ll sometimes discover something completely unique and unexpected among your survey responses. Whether it’s a process innovation that’ll save the company money, or a marketing concept with the potential to boost your brand, these unanticipated answers can be extremely valuable.

#4: Get adequate answers to complex issues

Sometimes an open-ended question is the only way to collect the answers you need. In a situation that requires contextualisation, complex description and explanation, a simple Yes/No or multiple-choice answer just won’t cut it. When you’re asking someone to explain a decision or report a problem, for example, open-ended questions tend to work best.

#5: Encourage creative answers and self-expression

Given room to express themselves freely, some respondents will surprise you with their eloquence and creativity. An open-ended question frees respondents to convey their feedback and ideas to you in their own voices. You may also receive survey answers in unexpected formats, such as poetry, or a hyperlink to a blog post your respondent wrote on the topic in question.

#6: Understand how your respondents think

Free-form written answers reveal a great deal about the workings of the respondent’s mind. From the essential logic of their reasoning and the steps in their thinking process to their language choices and frame of reference, there’s a huge amount you can learn from reading their thoughts in their own words.

#7: Ask without knowing

The big problem with closed questions is that to design them into your survey, you’ll need to know roughly what answers you expect. If you’re testing a hypothesis, for example, it’s easy enough to come up with appropriate answer options that will support or refute it. But using open-ended questions lets you explore topics you don’t yet know enough about to form a hypothesis.

How Important is Introduction in an Online Poll?

Beginning is always the first thing which will set the path for the rest of the journey. The online survey is very important for getting useful inputs about many factors. The introduction of your online poll is crucial because it will decide the action of your respondents. After reading your introduction, participants will decide whether to go for answering the questions or to skip it. In short you can say that the introduction of the online survey acts like a hook for your respondents.

The way intro sets the right tone in an interview, in the same way it will set the stage for the online poll as well. State your facts and information clearly infront of the audience so that they make up their mind about the next move. The respondents are often very uncomfortable and suspicious about revealing their personal information. Try to think from the participant's point of view and you will come up with the best introduction for your online poll. Make sure you address all the concern which your respondents might be having and design your online survey accordingly. The several things which should be taken care of while writing the introduction are given below:-

1) The thank you: The beginning of the online poll with a thank you note will make your respondents comfortable and willing to participate. Besides showing your gratitude towards them, this thank you should also highlight the importance of their valuable inputs. Once they will understand that their input is given due importance, the participants will feel special.

2) The topic: It is very important for you to state the topic of the online poll in the very beginning. There are many respondents who would not be willing to reveal their details on certain things. Revealing the topic and the reason for the conduction of the survey will build trust. Your respondents will be encouraged to give honest and reliable answers.

3) The time for completion: Respect the importance of time for your respondents by telling them the time it will take to finish the survey. Let them decide whether they want to go for answering the questionnaire or not after knowing the time they will have to devote for it. It will show your concern for the respondent's schedule and make them feel that you care for them.

4) The confidentiality: Make sure that you state the purpose of the data collection and how it will be used. The respondents should know beforehand about the way their feedback is going to be used by the surveyor. After knowing about the confidentiality of the data, your participants will answer without any biasness and suspicion.

Whether designing a new product, coming up with a more cost-efficient production process or targeting a new market, today's business scenario is much more competitive and aggressive. The task of making a decision calls for much of brainstorming and here online poll comes in as a blessing for the managers. PollDeep, the ultimate online poll builder will be helpful for any business to conduct poll and make decision making a much more easier and comforting task.

How To Get Maximum From Your Online Poll?

Online survey has become the backbone for any business decision-making. It provides the feasibility to the respondents to reply as per their convenience. New and advanced online poll have the facility to customize and integrate elements. Usage of multimedia and customization has increased the response rate of online survey. 

                            

Launch a successful campaign to achieve success, gaining maximum response from your participants. Your audience should be fully aware and convinced about your survey if you want to get the most accurate and reliable information from them. Apart from adding email mailing lists, you can also feature article to web communities and newsgroups.

Try to make all your email invitations personal to get maximum response from the participants. According to a rough estimate, a personal salutation can increase the response rate by five per cent. Keep your email invite short and precise to make it engaging for your audience. Your email must give proper information about you and the purpose for conducting the survey. You should tell your participants about the benefits of survey for them. Give a link in your survey which will directly take your participants to questionnaire without wasting their time. Let them know the time which they will have to devote in order to complete the answers for the survey.

Your respondents should be aware about the use which their response will be put to. You should make it clear to them whether you will make their name public or keep it anonymous. Though it  seems a small thing, this can be a significant factor in getting fair and reliable information from the participants. You can send gentle reminders to your audience if you do not receive reply from them. You will surely not get reply from all the participants to whom you have emailed, this process will increase the response rate. Reminder is good but do not annoy your audience as it can bring down the numbers of participants and give you less information. Remove those respondents from the list who do not want to be disturbed and send reminders only to those who welcome it.

Give some incentives to those who complete it within stipulated time frame to motivate them. Your respondents would love to get some incentive such as money, gifts or prizes. Even a small token of gift or certificate will increase your survey's response rate. There will be participants who will reply to your questions even without a push but there will be shirkers who would need a push. Do not go for excessive fancy graphics as it can distract your audience from the online poll. Use proper and engaging graphics to improve the overall experience of your survey and increase the response rate.

Just remember that asking the right question to the right person at the right time can only give you the right result. PollDeep, the ultimate online poll creator can help you design and conduct the most relevant poll for your business. With latest features and technology, PollDeep has everything which makes it a strong and comprehensive poll creator. So trust your intuition and conduct an online poll, your business will never be the same again.

How To Make Your Online Poll Contagious?

Since the relevance and importance of Online poll is evident in the business decision-making process, being an entrepreneur you cannot skip it. These days business are heavily dependent on the  inputs provided by the online survey. You should make every effort to make your online survey engaging so that maximum respondents will give their valuable response. Listed below are some of the important tips which can make your online poll contagious attracting more participants. 

                           

1. Most Relevant: If you want to engage maximum participants, you will have to make it relevant to them. If your participants find your survey connected to them, there is every possibility that they will participate in the poll. Make your online poll hit at some of the most important areas of your target market to increase your response rate.

2. Right Timing: The timing of the launch of your online survey also has an impact on the response rate. You will have to keep a note of the market scenario and conduct your online poll at a time which will attract maximum audience. Go for a time which will be best for the participants to take part in that kind of survey.

 3. Attractive Look: Content is good but a little bit of animations and other appealing elements will surely attract more respondents. Using colorful fonts and typeface will engage more participants. Design an online poll which will be alluring in its look. The more respondents you will be able to attract with your survey's look, better it will be for respondent's engagement.

4. Mobile Compatible: More than 40% of your respondents will be replying through mobile so you cannot afford to miss this opportunity. Make sure that your online survey is completely functional on all devices. Integrate mobile compatible features in your online poll so that it gives a clean and consistent mobile experience to your participants.

5. Socially Active: The reach and extent of social media is increasing with each passing day. Upload your online poll on social media sites also to get maximum response from the commuters. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn can get you millions of participants within short span of time. The more viewers you will find on these platforms, better it will be for your online survey.

PollDeep, the most comprehensive and flexible free online poll creator is here to help you with any kind of survey that might be helpful to you. It has been designed after proper scrutiny and analysis of various features. It comes loaded with unique and latest features to help you with creating, managing and sharing the results of your online survey/poll. Through online poll you can connect to a larger number of respondents within a short period of time. The duration of time which is invested in these kind of survey is usually very less as compared to the time that is needed for a manual survey. Come, make your online poll contagious for your respondents to extract maximum from them. 

5 Tips to Avoid Survey Fatigue in Your Respondents

Survey fatigue is a growing and real problem faced by anyone who likes to collect data. If you want to continue to get some information from an audience, you should design survey projects, which are respectful of their time. This means it is important to avoid survey fatigue.

When designing a survey or using a survey creation tool, you have to keep the respondents fatigued-free and engaged. These following tips will help you run a survey that people will be pleased to take, not one that will contribute to growing feelings of resentment regarding the tendency to over survey.

Tip #1: Never Over Survey Your Audience

Surveys are popping up anywhere during these days. You will see them in grocery receipt, email inbox, and classic paper surveys. There is definitely nothing wrong with people wanting to get data, yet the prevalence of the surveys presents a challenge in keeping good response rates. Therefore, before you start designing a survey, make sure that you are not getting lost in the sea of requests for feedback or overloading the potential respondents with a lot of survey requests in a particular period of time.

Tip #2: Communicate the Value of the Survey

If your respondents can see how their response will be used, they’re much more likely to spend their time to your survey. Therefore, make that clear if possible. Regardless of your plans you might have your survey data, communicate in email invitations. If there are some incentives attached to responding, those must absolutely be included too.

Tip #3: Make It Simple to Answer the Survey Questions

You have done a good job communicating the value of your survey, so never destroy that goodwill through forcing a hard survey experience on the respondents. You may utilize to skip over the questions that are not relevant or get rid of entire sections of the survey based on responses to early question. Take some time to create a survey that provides you the most relevant information through showing only the questions to your respondents.

Tip #4: Ask Proper Survey Questions

When you are writing survey questions, it is simple to throw in extra ones. It is tempting to want to gather data in a single survey, yet you must always concentrate exclusively on the questions that’ll help you meet survey goals. Collecting many irrelevant data could make the analysis and action much difficult and adding some questions puts you at risk of a higher survey fatigue for the respondents. Keep the questions focused on what you need to learn from the survey. You should also be ruthless about getting rid of the things that are outside the scope.

Tip #5: Consider All Your Respondents

When in doubt regarding your survey design, you should try putting yourself in the shoes of your respondents. Maintaining a level of empathy can be challenging, particularly if you have got stakeholders making the demands for extra data. However, focusing on individuals who’ll be providing the data can offer you better data.

How To Increase Response Rates With Effective Survey Branding?

Well-structured quetionnaire and professional approach will increase the response rate of your online survey. Conducting an online poll/survey is helpful in taking meaningful business decisions. You can rely on the inputs gathered from the survey, if the response rate is high. There is no point conducting an online survey which yields low response rate. The response rate of your online survey can be increased with effective survey branding for better business decisions.

Survey branding is an useful way to improve your survey's response rate. If more respondents reply to your questions, it brings more credibility to your gathered information. Following are the few ways in which you can brand your survey to get relevant and meaningful information.

1) Design of Logo: You can increase the authenticity and legitimacy of the survey by placing logo of your company on the questionnaire. The design of the logo should be appealing to urge respondents to take part in the online survey. If the logo is not popular among the audience, other images can be used to create a strong impact.

2) Style and Color: The color and style of the company also plays an important role in branding your survey. The online survey should follow the same style and color-combination as being used in the products. Your respondents associate your survey design with your company's products & services. Company's branding can be used on the borders of your survey for better results.

3) Strong Introduction: 'Well begun is half done' so make sure that you start your survey strongly by engaging your respondents. You can start your online poll with a welcome note stating your company name and the purpose of the survey. Your respondents should be confident that they are at the right place and what information is expected from them.

4) Maintaining Privacy: Most of the respondents will have privacy issues while answering questions on sensitive issues. You will have to gain the confidence of respondents that their inputs are safe and their privacy will not be compromised. You can assure your audience that all the information provided by them is confidential as per company's policy.

It is a well-known fact that you need to know the right information in order to flourish. PollDeep, an online poll creator can help your business gather these valuable inputs which will in turn provide a base for innovating and improvising your process. An online poll, conducted through Polldeep will give you an insider's view of the customers, competitors and your industry which can be used to gain advantage. In today's scenario of a competitive and aggressive business environment, designing a customer satisfaction poll is very important and significant. Whether designing a customer satisfaction poll for a new product, coming up with a more cost-efficient production process or targeting a new market, it calls for much brainstorming and an online poll is nothing less then a blessing for the business owners.

Why Online Poll is So Popular?

With the ever increasing competition in the market, businesses are under pressure of taking the most important decisions within short span of time. Online surveys have contributed considerably in providing the relevant information for business decision-making. There can be many ways in which surveys can be conducted like telephone, interviews, mail or internet. Though every medium has its own pros and cons, it's online survey which has taken the lead among all. 

 

Online poll has many benefits over other form of surveys. The main advantages of conducting an online survey are listed below. These are the reasons for popularity of online survey among people.

1) Cost Factor Attached: The cost benefit which online survey offers make it a clear winner among other surveys. You can conduct your survey at a very less cost as compared to telephone, in-person or other surveys. Your respondents just require a system and internet connection to take part in this survey. Online poll has reduced the cost of manpower and material, giving you better return on investment.

2) Proper Synchronization for Users: Your respondents will be happy to reply if you will take care of their ease and comfort. By integrating features which can skip or re-direct to some other questions, you can save time of your participants. If you will incorporate features for better user-experience, you will stand a better chance for higher response rate.

3) Less Biased for More Relevance: Since the participants are not in direct contact of the interviewer, he gives fair and unbiased reply. The respondents usually get intimidated by the presence of the staff and give their biased opinion. Through online surveys participants can answer the survey's questions from the comfort of their home. The data collected is more relevant and reliable for further processing.

4) Integration of Interesting Elements: With latest technology and advancements, you can add various interesting elements like video, audio and images into your online poll. Your respondents will surely find it more entertaining and engaging. Educating your participants will further add credibility to your brand increasing your response rate considerably.

5) Speedy Response: As stated above, business houses have to take speedy decisions so that they can survive in this competitive market. Online surveys give the much needed valuable inputs at a faster rate so that decisions can be taken. Speedy response give you important information which can be further processed according to the requirements and needs of the business.

PollDeep, the ultimate free online poll creator comes loaded with the best and unique features which makes it the most accomplished free online poll tool. PollDeep has been designed to help you in creating, managing and sharing your results easily. There are many features like maps and discover trends to help you locate your audience with ease and comfort. You can use it for conducting poll on various attributes like employee feedback poll, student research, customer satisfaction surveys and many more. Go for it to conduct the most result-oriented online poll.