In today‘s highly competitive business landscape, online surveys have become an essential tool for gathering customer and market insights. However, crafting an effective survey requires strategic planning and execution.
In my 10+ years working in web scraping and data extraction, I‘ve helped numerous companies improve their online surveys to yield more useful, actionable data. In this comprehensive 2,000+ word guide, I‘ll share the top 12 best practices I‘ve found critical for conducting online surveys that deliver reliable results.
Whether you‘re looking to gain customer feedback, measure brand awareness, test a new concept or understand key market trends, following these research-backed tips will help you get higher quality data and powerful insights from your survey efforts.
The Rising Importance of Online Surveys
Online surveys have seen explosive growth over the past decade. As per Statista, the global survey software market is projected to reach $7.35 billion by 2028, with a 12% CAGR. What‘s driving this growth?
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Lower costs: Online surveys are significantly more affordable than telephone or face-to-face surveys. Distribution via email and web links practically eliminates variable costs.
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Faster implementation: Web-based surveys can be created, distributed and analyzed rapidly using survey software tools.
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Higher accessibility: Online surveys make it easier to reach broad, geographically dispersed respondent pools.
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More convenient for respondents: Taking a survey via mobile or web is less disruptive and more convenient for respondents compared to phone or in-person surveys.
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Automated analysis: Survey tools make it easier to analyze and visualize results from closed and open-ended questions. Text analysis and sentiment scoring automate qualitative data analysis.
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Environmentally friendly: Online surveys help reduce paper waste associated with print surveys and transportation impacts of in-person surveys.
However, with the ease of creating online surveys comes potential pitfalls – poorly worded questions, biased samples, low response rates and more. Follow these 12 tips to get reliable insights from your web-based surveys.
1. Define Your Target Population and Required Sample Size
Your survey data is only as good as the respondents who provide it. The first step is clearly defining your target population that the survey aims to study.
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Who are you trying to analyze or learn from? Customers, prospective customers, general population?
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What are the key demographic factors? Age, location, gender, income level?
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What specific inclusion or exclusion criteria must be met? Purchased Product X, visited Store Y in the last 6 months?
Once you define the target population, determine the minimum sample size needed to achieve statistical significance. Use a sample size calculator to input your population details and margin of error.
For example, if your target population is 10,000 customers with +/- 5% margin of error, the minimum sample size would be 370 completed surveys.
Pro Tip: Over-sample by 25-50% to account for incomplete/disqualified responses. For the above example, aim for 500 survey completes.
2. Create a Representative, Unbiased Sample
Your survey sample should proportionately reflect the demographics of your target population to yield valid, reliable insights. Avoid sampling biases that may skew your data.
Leverage Probability Sampling Methods
Simple random sampling gives every target population member an equal chance of selection. Systematic sampling selects respondents using a fixed interval (every 5th site visitor for example). Stratified sampling ensures appropriate representation across subgroups by sampling evenly across demographic strata.
Use Representative Respondent Pools
General population panels such as SurveyMonkey Audience offer diverse, high-quality respondent pools to improve sample representativeness. You can also leverage consumer panels and focus groups for your specific customer profile.
Weigh and Quota Sampling
If certain groups are overrepresented in your initial sample, you can apply weighting and quotas to balance the final data set. For example, if 60% of respondents are male vs. 40% female while your target population is 50/50, downweight male responses to rebalance the sample.
Check for Biases
Review your sampled data against target population demographics to spot potential sampling biases. For example, if your sample skews higher income, urban, and more educated, your survey conclusions may not apply equally to your broader consumer base.
3. Screen Respondents with Qualifying Questions
Adding screening questions helps ensure only qualified respondents from your target audience complete the full survey. Useful screens include:
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Product Usage: Do you own/use Product X?
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Purchase History: Have you shopped at Retailer Y in the past 6 months?
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Demographics: What is your age range? What gender do you identify as?
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Geolocation: In which state/country do you reside?
You can also screen by behaviors like visiting a certain website, having an account with your company, reading specific publications and more. Disqualify respondents who fail your screening criteria to filter out “bad” data upfront.
Pro Tip: Place screening questions at the start of surveys to minimize disqualified responses from completing the full questionnaire.
4. Keep it Anonymous to Increase Participation
Perceived anonymity is a major factor influencing willingness to take and openly complete a survey. Guarantee respondents that their data will remain private and anonymous.
Don’t Collect Identifying Information
Only gather personal information essential for screening and analysis. Avoid requesting names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses or other direct identifiers.
Use Random ID Numbers
Assign each completed response a unique randomized ID number. Analyze and report data by ID rather than individual names or profiles.
Explain How Anonymity is Protected
In your survey welcome screen, explain steps taken to protect anonymity, who may see data, how long records are retained and other policies assuring confidentiality.
Host Surveys Securely
Use secure web connections (HTTPS) for survey links. Store response data on secure servers or cloud platforms that are encrypted and access controlled.
Following strict data anonymity practices yields higher participation, more candid responses and fuller survey completion.
5. Choose the Optimal Survey Channels for Your Audience
There are tradeoffs to different survey modes in terms of cost, speed, reach and response quality.
Web and Mobile Surveys: Fast and inexpensive but limited to online populations. Optimized for self-administration.
Email Surveys: Easy distribution to broad email lists but lower response rates.
SMS/Text Surveys: Good for short, quick interactions on mobile devices.
QR Code Surveys: Allows quick survey access by scanning a code. Useful for on-site feedback.
Pop-up Website Surveys: Engage website visitors but can annoy some users.
Kiosk Surveys: Placement in physical locations allows targeted user feedback.
Telephone Surveys: More time intensive but accommodates respondents without internet access.
Paper/Print Surveys: Traditional method with low tech requirements but high implementation costs.
In-person interviews/focus groups: Yield deep insights but highly resource intensive.
Assess your audience demographics, survey length and complexity, cost constraints and required speed-to-insights. Often a mixed-mode approach maximizes response rates. For example, an email survey with telephone follow up for non-responders.
Pro Tip: Ensure surveys are mobile optimized. As of 2022, over 63% of website traffic comes from mobile devices.
6. Limit Survey Length and Respondent Burden
Long, overly complex surveys lead to survey fatigue and drop offs. Follow best practices to minimize respondent burden:
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Keep it short – 5 to 12 minutes is optimal for online surveys
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Limit questions per page – 3 to 5 questions maximum
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Use survey logic – Branch and skip to relevant follow up questions
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Offer progress indicators – Show survey completion progress
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Check mobile optimization – Ensure easy reading and navigation on mobile
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Support accessibility needs – Offer options for screen readers, fonts, contrast
The shorter and simpler your survey, the higher the completion rate. Remove any non-essential questions to keep it focused.
7. Construct Unbiased, Focused Questions
Crafting clear, unbiased questions takes skill but results in much higher quality data. Here are some proven question design tips:
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Avoid ambiguous wording – Be ultra specific so all respondents interpret the question the same way.
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Don‘t make assumptions – Don‘t lead respondents toward an expected answer.
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Ask one question at a time – Avoid double-barreled questions that confuse respondents.
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Reduce social desirability bias – Phrase sensitively to reduce pressure to give socially approved answers.
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Offer balanced answer scales/choices – Include a neutral midpoint and evenly balanced positive/negative options.
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Randomize answer order – Vary left-to-right order to remove position bias.
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Check reading level – Assess with a Flesch-Kincaid score of 7th-8th grade.
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Pilot test with representative users – Check interpretation and refine any unclear questions.
Unbiased, focused questions yield clean data that accurately measures what you intend to measure.
8. Motivate Participation through Engagement Elements
You can incorporate various design elements to boost survey completion:
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Incentives – Offer a draw entry, discount code or other reward for completing
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Gamification – Use scoring, badges, leaderboards to make surveys more fun
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Curated questions – Adapt questions based on earlier responses
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Progress indicators – Show how close respondents are to the end
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Thank you page – Express your appreciation for their time and input
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Email reminders – Followup with non-responders to improve response rate
The Forbes Insights survey Are You Playing the Engagement Game Effectively? found that gamification and personalization can improve survey response rates by as much as 40%.
Pro Tip: Tell survey respondents up front approximately how long the survey will take to set expectations.
9. Include Attention Check Questions
Add simple attention check questions periodically to assess whether respondents are thoughtfully answering or just randomly clicking. For example:
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Which of the following animals does NOT live on a farm? Cow, Sheep, Zebra, Chicken
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Please select Disagree for this question. Agree | Disagree
You can then programmatically filter out “cheater” responses that fail these checks before analyzing data. One academic study entitled Are Attention Check Questions a Threat to Scale Validity? found that 60% of respondents will fail attention checks and respond randomly when not incentivized.
Pro Tip: Keep your survey professional and don’t overdo attention checks. Excessive test questions frustrate users and damage completion rates.
10. Clean and Validate Your Data
Before analyzing survey results, it’s essential to clean your compiled data set:
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Check for incomplete responses – Discard surveys not fully completed
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Identify duplicate responses – Remove multiple surveys from the same user
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Filter based on attention checks – Remove “cheater” responses that failed validation checks
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Assess time spent – Discard rushed responses with abnormally fast completion times
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Evaluate write-in answers – Remove nonsensical open text responses
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Check demographic mix – Ensure you have an appropriately representative sample
Validating and cleaning raw survey data sets takes time but helps avoid drawing misleading conclusions. For very large data sets, AI assistance and automation tools can expedite the process.
11. Blend Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis
Approach survey analysis using a blend of quantitative and qualitative methods:
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Statistical analysis – Examine response frequencies, distributions, correlations for closed questions.
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Text analysis – Use sentiment analysis, topic clustering, and text summarize open text feedback.
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Compare segments – Look for variations across demographic factors like age, gender and location.
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Spot outliers – Identify responses that stand out from the norm and look for possible data entry errors.
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Highlight key verbatim quotes – Pull out representative open text comments to illustrate findings.
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Look for consensus and conflicts – Note areas of alignment as well as polarization among responses.
Blended analysis provides a more complete picture of both the “what” through quantitative statistics and the “why” through qualitative feedback.
12. Visually Communicate Findings
Present key survey findings through simple yet intuitive statistical charts, graphs and data visualizations.
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Use bar charts to compare categorical response frequencies
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Illustrate distributions with histograms or bell curve charts
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Convey relationships between variables using scatter plots and correlations
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Map geodata using geo-charts to display regional variations
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Create comparison tables to contrast different respondent segments
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Summarize open text using word clouds and topic clusters
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Design infographics to convey key takeaways and insights
The optimal visuals provide decision-makers with at-a-glance insights from your survey results.
Pro Tip: Follow principles of excellent visual design and data storytelling. Limit clutter, draw attention to key data points, clarify relationships.
Key Takeaways
Here are 12 essential tips to get high-quality data and optimal insights from online survey research:
- Secure an unbiased, representative sample of your target respondents
- Use screening questions to pre-qualify eligible participants
- Guarantee anonymity and data privacy to improve participation
- Identify optimal survey channels and modes for your audience
- Limit survey length and make questions quick and easy to answer
- Craft unbiased, focused questions that yield reliable data
- Add incentives, gamification and personalization to boost engagement
- Include attention check questions to validate data quality
- Analyze results using both quantitative statistics and qualitative text analysis
- Visually communicate findings through intuitive charts, graphs and data viz
By following these survey methodology best practices, you can distill truly actionable customer, employee or market insights to inform your critical business decisions.
To discuss further how custom surveys can provide decision-guiding insights for your organization, feel free to reach out. With over 10 years of experience in extracting and analyzing data, I‘m always eager to chat surveys, analytics, and maximizing business insights.