Doing online surveys can be very useful for companies, because they manage to obtain important data to be able to grow their business without investing large sums of money. Without surveys it is not possible to know how competitors behave and which strategies to apply in the reference market. There are several techniques you can apply to make the survey easier, for example calculate your survey sample with IdSurvey Sample Size Calculator to know how big your representative statistical sample should be. A survey sample is the set of subjects to be interviewed during a survey, which represents the object of the study, i.e. a much larger slice of the population. Before identifying them, it is important to understand what is the reason that leads you to carry out the survey. In fact, the objective must be extremely precise in order to give satisfactory results. Some questions you can ask yourself before starting to create the questionnaire are: who is the target? What information do you want to collect? What do you need it for? Once the situation is clear, you can start choosing the right questions. They should be short, intuitive, simple and never challenging. There are several rules that can help you create a winning survey, below you will find some useful advice if you are a beginner.

Harness the power of formatting

Formatting is key to creating a winning online survey. No one likes reading too long and confusingly organized writing. The ideal is to group similar questions to create a logical sequence, while also taking advantage of page breaks or titles to make users understand what you are asking them and what drives you to do so. Formatting, when used the right way, can help a lot.

Ask similar questions

When you have analyzed the size of the survey sample, you know who is the target you need to address and this makes things easier. If you want to get reliable and sure answers, try to ask questions similar to each other. It’s possible to ask the same question, but phrased in a different way. These questions can help you get confirmations when you are not really sure of the results obtained previously. Similar questions can also be great tools for measuring changes in the attitude of users over time.

Make questions short and simple

Questions that are too long and demanding tire users, who will be tempted to abandon the questionnaire before completing it. Ask short, simple questions that anyone can understand. In addition to reducing the length of the question, also be careful not to ask too many questions: a survey that is too long becomes boring. Limit yourself to formulating a dozen questions and make sure you ask them in an intuitive way.

Make the participants feel at ease

After determining the size of the survey sample, try to put participants at ease, without scaring them with too personal questions at the beginning of the questionnaire. If these questions are really important, ask them at the end. The survey must be captivating and designed to keep users focused, allowing them to skip questions they don’t feel like answering.

Try to be specific

Questions that are too general can confuse the interviewee and not give you good results, given that to proceed with data analysis you need to get specific answers. What you can do is create questions that address one concept at a time, so as not to create misunderstandings. Avoid questions divided into several parts, too general or confusing, users may find them too complicated and certainly do not want to waste time.

Avoid yes/no questions

Based on the objective you want to achieve and the size of the survey sample, you need to understand what types of questions to process. In general, yes/no questions are best avoided, as they do not capture the attention of undecided people, are too anonymous, and it is difficult to pick up on nuances in respondents’ opinions. Better to prefer more specific, direct questions and with the possibility of giving a more personal answer.

Avoid tables

Tables can be a good stylistic choice, but in reality they are a distraction for respondents who will be more focused on filling in the grid, rather than paying attention to the questions. This can compromise the reliability of the final data, making the entire survey unusable. Better to opt for simple but impactful graphics, which focus exclusively on the questions.

More words and less numbers

When designing a questionnaire be careful not to use too many numbers, words are much better. To indicate a degree of preference, different phrases can be used, which can be more specific than the use of “2” or “6”, which give us an idea but do not go into depth. Many truths can be hidden behind words, so we must try to give space to the interviewee using open questions too if needed.