3 Ways You Can Increase Your Online Survey Responses
What are the ways you can increase your online survey responses?
- Make them feel special
- Give out incentives
- Keep your surveys relevant
More and more organizations are making use of surveys and WordPress survey plugins to gather information from their customers, employees, suppliers, and patients, and find out what they think and want. Surveys can give you accurate and measurable data that you probably would not be able to get in any other way.
The results you collect from surveys are important when making plans for your future, and are an excellent way to keep up with the problems, needs, and current affairs of your organization.
One common problem you might run into when trying to get feedback is a low response rate. Some people simply do not want to answer surveys and others, for a wide variety of reasons, cannot participate at all. A well-designed survey, however, along with the proper techniques to elicit a response, can help guarantee a healthy response rate.
You should be properly concerned if you have low survey response rates, so here are 3 ways you can increase your online survey responses.
Make Them Feel Special
It is a good idea to express your genuine appreciation for the participation of your audience in order to make them want to complete your survey. When you write your survey, let your participants know that you want to know what they think. Explaining how getting their feedback will directly impact the content you send them, your product offerings, et cetera will emphasize the fact that you value their opinions.
Being as specific as possible about the survey and the WordPress plugin you use allows them to understand how you are going to leverage their opinions and expertise. Be respectful of the time of your respondents by giving them an idea of how long it is going to take them to complete your survey. You should not just guess about the time it takes too; ask a coworker or a friend to take your survey and time them as they do it.
Use words such as “please”, “thank you”, and other generally respectful words throughout your survey. Always make sure to tell them how much you appreciate the fact that they are taking time from their busy days to do you a favor.
Give Out Incentives
You can’t rely on goodwill alone when it comes to surveys. Try offering incentives to boost your completion rates if you are having a hard time getting people to complete your surveys. There is no doubt that cash incentives, discounts, raffles, and gift cards increase response rates.
You might run into problems such as people rushing through your surveys just to get the prize. But for the most part, people still give honest answers even if their reason to take the survey is the incentives. You should also make sure that the incentives you give out will appeal to everyone in your targeted segment. A gift card for an online store will probably be more appealing to people than tickets to an amusement park for example.
Consider the “if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine” approach if you have a limited budget. Sharing the survey results with your survey takers in lieu of discounts or prizes often appeals to their desires to see how they compared to their peers.
Keep Your Surveys Relevant
You probably would not spend time on a survey that does not have the option to skip questions that are not relevant to you or does not give you a way to say “Does not apply”. Put yourself in the shoes of your respondents: If you put a question about their coffee habits but you do not drink coffee, not only would the survey be a waste of your time, the answers you would give would not be helpful or accurate.
Instead, give your respondents an out in your surveys to keep it relevant. Add screening questions in order to send them down the right path. By allowing your respondents to answer “Never or almost never” to a question, you can send them directly to the end of the survey and thank them for their time. This way, you don’t collect a bunch of opinions about your survey from people whose insight don’t necessarily apply.
Sending your respondents down the right path also lets you find out why the insights of those people do not necessarily apply to your survey. Use survey logic to send those that answered “Never or almost never” to another set of questions tailored to their answer choice if you are trying to market to a new or niche audience.
Key Takeaway
You would be hard-pressed to come up with accurate conclusions that generalize the behaviors and habits of your target markets if only, say, 12 people have answered your survey.
The more accurate responses you collect from your respondents, the better it is for your survey and research. You will be in a position to better analyze and identify data trends when you receive more precise responses.