6 Types of Survey Questions and Examples of What to Ask

What are the types of survey questions and examples of what to ask?

1. Open-ended
2. Closed-ended
3. Nominal
4. Likert scale
5. Rating scale
6. Yes or No

Overview

• Survey questions are essential for gathering valuable customer feedback to enhance business decisions.
• Using open-ended and closed-ended questions helps businesses gain deeper insights into customer experiences, preferences, and satisfaction levels.
• Diverse question types like nominal, Likert scale, and rating scales allow companies to make data-driven improvements and foster stronger customer relationships.

Efficient survey questions are key to gathering valuable customer feedback directly from your website. Since businesses can’t always interact with visitors in real-time, well-placed surveys help capture insights about user needs, experiences, and expectations. Understanding these responses allows you to improve your website, enhance user experience, and strengthen customer relationships.

In the past, websites relied on generic, one-size-fits-all surveys that lacked depth, making it harder to pinpoint specific issues or preferences. Today, by using diverse types of survey questions, businesses can collect precise, actionable feedback—empowering them to make smarter, data-driven decisions.

Open-ended

Open-ended survey inquiries give your respondents the freedom to answer in their own words, which provides rich and detailed perspectives into their thoughts and experiences. These questions are important to unfold particular feedback or suggestions through your website.

To obtain answers that hold significant feedback, you have to ask engaging and certain questions that fascinate your visitors to fill out the survey. Here are some of the examples:

• What factors influenced your decision to buy this product?
• What other products or services would you like to see us offer?
• How can we improve your experience with us?
• What other information would you like to see on this page?

Closed-ended

With closed-ended questions, respondents are set to answer predefined options, making it more convenient to respond and easier to analyze data. These types of survey queries are categorized as nominal, Likert, and rating scales, and yes or no—which we’ll get into later— and are perfect for measuring customer satisfaction levels.

These are important for website surveys as studies revealed that the average attention span of a human significantly shrunk over the years. From 12 seconds in 2000 to only 8 seconds in 2013.

Nominal

It is a type of closed-ended survey question that is designed to categorize responses into different and non-overlapping groups. It presents respondents with multiple answer options, where the response selections are non-numerical in nature. With this, you can let users opt for one or multiple survey responses.

Here are some of the examples:

Which social media platform do you use most frequently?

a) Facebook
b) Instagram
c) Twitter
d) LinkedIn

Where did you hear about us?

a) Social Media
b) Friends or Peers
c) Online Ad
d) Relatives

Likert Scale

Likert or summative scale questions are used to measure respondents’ attitudes and preferences by providing sets of answers, usually from strong satisfaction to strong dissatisfaction. These are perfect for gauging customer satisfaction demands, or insights in a systematic format.

With this, customers could answer statements like “How satisfied are you with the quality of our product?” by the following scale breakdowns:

• Very Dissatisfied: Indicates a strong negative feeling about the experience or service.
• Dissatisfied: Shows a moderate level of dissatisfaction.
• Neutral: Represents a neutral opinion, where the person is not particularly happy or unhappy.
• Satisfied: Indicates a moderate level of satisfaction.
• Very Satisfied: Represents a strong positive feeling about the experience or service.

Rating Scale

Known as Net Promoter Score, respondents can assess certain aspects of a product, service, or experience with answers on a numerical scale. The rating scale may look like:

• 1 – Very Poor
• 2 – Poor
• 3 – Fair
• 4 – Good
• 5 – Excellent

This type of survey question helps businesses collect quantifiable data that can be easily analyzed to evaluate performance or satisfaction levels. Utilizing this scale can help you distinguish areas that need enhancement and track customer sentiment over time.

Here are the example statements:

1. On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate your overall experience with our service?
2. How would you rate the quality of the product you purchased from us?
3. On a scale of 1 to 5, how likely are you to use our service again?

Yes or No

Yes or No questions, also known as binary or dichotomy, are straightforward and deliver respondents only two possible answers. These are valuable for promptly collecting clear responses that can help businesses make immediate decisions or evaluate customer satisfaction in certain aspects.

These inquiries may be limiting in nature, but they help you gain a swift sense of the respondent’s sentiment about the efficiency of a particular product or service feature. The following statements are their examples:

1. Was our website easy to navigate?
2. Would you consider purchasing from us again?
3. Did you encounter any issues with our product?
4. Would you recommend our service to a friend?

Key Takeaway

Like with other research, the various types of survey questions for customer feedback in businesses are more important than ever. These queries serve as a direct line of communication with customers, helping businesses understand their needs, preferences, and areas for improvement.

Ready to launch surveys for your business? Qeryz can assist you in managing surveys and fueling business growth with insights backed by data. Visit our website or sign up for a free account today to get started!