Often, respondents abandon a survey due to survey fatigue. If you want to increase your response rate, then it is important to have a good survey design. Below are 7 survey tips that you should consider while designing your survey to help avoid survey fatigue:
- Survey Length
Short and simple surveys always attract more respondents. The surveys that take longer than 15 minutes have a higher abandonment rate. Thus, shorter is usually better. If you can produce a 5-minute survey that still addresses your research objectives, you are winning! - Question Types
Selection question types in surveys are easier for respondents to answer. The Ambivista Survey Insights Suite contains many questions types that address this need, including checkbox, radio button, drop down menu and more. These question types are great because they allow the respondents to answer by simply clicking their mouse or tapping on their mobile device. Want an additional tip? Try to limit the answer options to keep your customers engaged. - Question Wording
To design a simple survey, avoid complex sentence structures. Most respondents prefer short and easy to understand questions. Include neutral questions and avoid leading questions to avoid biases to help make your customers feel comfortable. - Question Options
Try not to make any question mandatory as respondents may not feel comfortable giving answers to all your questions. You can always include an answer option that allows respondents to answer more freely such as “other”, “none of the above” or “prefer not to answer”. If you don’t, you may end up with a random answers that will ultimately skew your results and/or leading to greater survey abandonment. - Question Relevancy
Including irrelevant questions in the survey always decreases the response rate. The respondents often avoid completing surveys that include questions that are not relevant to them. If a survey is applicable to a diverse sample, be sure to allow survey takers to skip questions in the survey or select a “n/a” option. - Pre-populate survey questions
Do you already have information about your respondents, such as what they purchased, their department, or some other factors? If yes, then be smart and pre-populate certain survey questions by not asking for their information again. This way, you will remove the burden on your respondents from having to answer redundant or unnecessary questions. - Survey Progress
Consider using the progress bar option in your survey design if your survey is several pages long. With the progress bar, respondents can easily see how far along they are within the survey, thus giving them clear line of sight of the finish line.
There are many online survey tools available on the market that can help you design your survey. Follow the above-mentioned tips to improve the response rate by designing the perfect market research surveys.
