The user experience of surveys
Have you ever been hit by an online survey?
The ones that land in your inbox every now and then, entice you with gifts you do not want, pretend to value your opinion like no one ever did and almost always confuse you with long and never-ending scales of one to five.
Yes, you got me. I am talking about those annoying pop ups saying, “Take the survey and win a new vacuum cleaner!”. They seem irrelevant, a waste of time and not so much believable.
As a researcher, I understand the importance of surveys. These scales and opinions excite me. I also realize how these online surveys assist in making the research process leaner for any brand. But it takes no time for this research tool to turn awful from being useful.
If the users are not interested in these surveys, then my data brings me no good. These surveys literally are the voice of customer. As a research product, the user experience of online surveys matter.
To make my product user centered, here are a few things to consider when designing surveys on digital channels:
1. Optimize the Users’ Journey
It is one of those initial steps that could help in understanding the time spent by user to fill the survey. The length of a survey should always take into consideration the time taken to respond. On an average, if a survey takes more than 5–7 minutes, the users feel distracted and would click any of the buttons on screen to get done with the task and submit their response. This often leads to straight line responses.
It would be sensible to sharpen the research objective and be precise about the questions asked. Another technique is to display progress achieved in the survey, this gives a sense of time required to accomplish the task. Also, if there are similar set of questions getting repeated, can we look at ways to reduce response time?
For instance, if I am asking the question — “Which of the following activities do you perform using your mobile phone?”, and I also want to know the responses for tablets, then I do not need to ask two separate questions and increase the reading time for the user. I can create a grid and ask for all the options simultaneously. It is quite possible that for some activities, a user may be using mobile phone and for some others, it could be tablets, if he can see the list of options all at once, it makes the task easier.
Hence, keeping the users’ journey short and sweet is important.
2. Simplify the content
As for most digital products, content is king, so it is for online surveys. In this case if it is not to the point, it is not serving the purpose. Language, structure and tonality are the key factors while designing an online survey. The language must be consistent and easy to read. Not only the question language, but also the options list. I would like to reiterate here that survey research and qualitative research are not the same. Having worked with online surveys and qualitative verbatim, I can say that asking for an opinion through a set of statements is not quite the right way. It is essential to restrict the number of options given to select.
In one of the surveys for a liquor brand, there was a section on group segmentation. The client presented a list of 72 statements to best describe attitudes, feelings and needs of the user and requested the user to be sincere in selecting the statements. From those selected by user, the next question was directed to shorten the list to 10 statements. Likewise, in the following questions there were more statements to describe the feelings on how they would be drinking in the future. Now that is a lot to read, interpret and process for a user. To understand the needs, feelings and attitudes around a high involvement product, a survey would not be able to do justice. Surveys have a limitation to what kind of questions you can ask, if it is a question that needs an in-depth conversation, then giving statements does not reveal much.
Hence, the context and placement of content must be sharp focused to optimize the results from surveys.
3. Make the user feel included
When a brand is speaking to its users by means of surveys, it is worth being mindful of factors of inclusion. It is necessary that the opinions are collected from a fair sample of the user base. A simple demographic question asking the gender of the user can have an impact on the opinions you receive from your users. Only few of the brands are considering adding more options like “non-binary” or “other” along with the two standard options of male and female. This simply means that I am being considerate of my users’ responses and not forcing them to choose something they are personally not comfortable with.
4. What’s in it for the user?
Now we all know surveys are not something that people are naturally fond of. They are able to catch attention either because of the incentives they offer or because of the issues that people care for. To be fair to my users, I can’t just put a lucky draw for filling the survey. I mean, there are no free lunches, right? It is necessary to respect the fact that users put in their time on surveys. And if you heavily rely on online surveys to collect data on their behavior, then it is certainly a two-way street that should be benefiting both, the brand as well as the customers. One of the ways that I find interesting to incentivize users is through loyalty points. For every opinion, users get points to redeem. This not only avoids the direct cash offerings but also ensures a long-term relationship with respondents. In order to enhance my users’ experience with surveys, incentives play a huge role. In fact, how about a survey that directly asks users about the kind of incentives that are relevant to them?
Going back to my point on issues that surveys address to, I once dealt with a survey for a tobacco client. It was a concept testing study asking for preference on cigarette packs. I wasn’t surprised that there wasn’t much response rate. Turns out, people who smoke cigarettes, they care the least about pack designs. Of course, flavors matter, but how much of a pack design can influence your decision making in this case. On the other hand, I have seen a much higher response rate for concept testing for toy brands for children. The targeted mothers were excited about what next the brand could offer to their kids.
And so, I can comfortably say that relevance of research objective plays an important role.
5. Treat Surveys as a communication channel
Few days ago, I was explaining my friend how online surveys work and his reaction was -
“Oh, so these are real people sending real surveys!”
Trust me, this was not the first time someone said that to me. The general perception about surveys is that they are either a fake deal or automated by a robot.
I truly believe that it is solely the brand’s responsibility to bring some credibility to their communication with their users. And if surveys happen to be a means, then it is highly recommended that they are treated as a channel of communication.
One of the simplest ways to enhance the reliability of surveys is to personalize them. When a survey lands in my inbox and I see the email signed off by a real person and the invite cares to use my name, I may just be organically more inclined to spend my time on it.
Let’s face it: surveys receive a very limited attention span and screen time by users. They do not provide any immediate value to people who fill them. But for a researcher, they are a significant step to uncovering insights. To keep up the engagement and interaction of users with surveys, the above pointers only come as a prerequisite for a great survey experience!
