How to Optimize Your Survey for Mobile

How can you achieve mobile optimization for your surveys?

1. Limit Large Matrix Questions
2. Be Concise
3. Divide the Questions
4. Don’t Use Large Images

Mobile survey optimization is something that has eluded many businesses when they’re asking for feedback from their customers, but this shouldn’t be the case. Many people would be spending more time on their mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. With this in mind, it’s just as well that you draft up a survey framework that’s easily accessible by your potential respondents no matter where they are. 

One mistake that you may make when it comes to writing surveys, is that you’re approaching it in a fixated view that people are widely making use of laptops or computers. This greatly hampers your chances of creating an ergonomic survey. Don’t be surprised when you find that a great percentage of your respondents have inevitably exited the survey even before completion. Reducing this rate is fortunately as easy as adopting simple, yet best mobile survey practices. Continue reading to learn more.

Limit Large Matrix Questions

You’ve probably answered at least one survey in your entire lifetime, and you might even find that most of the questions are formatted in a multiple choice-like scheme. These types of formatted questions are convenient and don’t require much effort at the end of the survey respondent. However, they do become a burden when they’re lengthy and difficult to access.

The first rule on mobile optimization of surveys is to limit the use of large matrix questions. Large matrix questions refer to groups of multiple-choice queries that are presented to the respondent in a framework that consists of rows and columns. A set of preformed questions are presented to the respondent, and they simply need to pick one which best suits them

The trouble with matrix questions is sometimes the text-wrapping can make it difficult to read, especially in the more compact screens used for mobile phones. For larger tablets, this might not necessarily be a common occurrence, but it’s still best to steer clear from using them. For example, a respondent would likely have to do a landscape reorientation of their phone screens just so they could read the set of matrix questions in its entirety. As such, you’d want to make sure that you shorten your matrix questions, or limit the number of choices that you input. In this way, your respondents won’t have to toggle their auto screen rotate just to fit the questionnaire on their screens. 

Be Concise

Another great tip you can use in optimizing your survey for mobile devices, is to be concise. Conciseness doesn’t merely apply to the length of your survey, but also in the way the questions are framed. Surveys are meant to gather invaluable data from your respondents — there’s no point in crafting a survey that contains questions that are only for the purpose of padding the entire survey proper. 

Make sure that each of the questions are drafted in such a way that they clearly express what is being asked from the participant. The language of your survey should also be determined, depending on your target audience — this allows you to use a much simpler language or alternatively, gives you the freedom to use jargon. 

Conciseness greatly plays an important role in the technical aspects of your survey as well. This is especially useful in close-ended questions, ensuring that their framing is just adequate enough to be understood by the respondent.

Divide the Questions

If you’re planning to disseminate a lengthy survey that may take around 30 to 60 minutes to complete, then you’ll benefit from dividing the questions. Keep in mind that your respondents are already freeing up a few moments of their time by answering your survey. You certainly wouldn’t want to worsen their experience by making them answer more than what their attention span may be capable of. 

With this in mind, it’s important that you divide the questions of your survey. Group the questions based on your preferences. In this way, your respondents won’t have to scroll aimlessly in a single page, in an effort to reach the end of the survey. Breaking large groups of questions into bits and pieces makes the survey itself more manageable and less tedious to accomplish.

Don’t Use Large Images

Just as you would have trouble formatting images in your everyday word processor or spreadsheets, you also wouldn’t want to inconvenience your respondents by making them deal with large images on their mobile devices. Using images of this size can significantly mess up all the other kinds of formatting that you may have used on your mobile survey, thereby rendering all your efforts moot.

This doesn’t mean, however, that you should entirely do away with using images. After all, these graphics can be useful when it comes to providing the respondents with a more concrete illustration of something. There will likely be two types of survey features that may need images, namely image selections, and banners. It’s advisable to use no more than 200x200px for the former, and subsequently no greater than 750px wide and 200px tall for the latter. Once your images exceed the recommended sizing, it’s a good idea to modify them.

Key Takeaway

If you want to achieve mobile survey optimization conciseness is key. The goal is to have all of your respondents achieve a 100% completion on your survey. The key to this is by optimizing certain aspects, like multiple choice questions, image sizing, text-wrapping, and the length of the question.

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