Creating online questionnaires has become essential to many companies, associations or organizations. Unlike the printed form, it allows to control costs; in time and money. With Drag’n Survey, you no longer need to ask you about the format, it is automatic. Your surveys are easily customizable with your organization’s colors and logo. Paper and ink costs disappear. Distribution is carried out via email, on social networks and forums, or by integration on your website.
There is no longer the need to invest in mailing. Analyze is automated; you get rid of the manual part and thus, minimize the risk of error. You make substantial savings on internal resources for your organization. Sometimes, costs related to data processing on a large volume of responses can be significant.
>> Get to know Drag’n Survey to create an online poll
Preliminary work of writing
Whether it is for a satisfaction survey, market research or a dissertation, it is recommended to ask the question: what is the purpose of this questionnaire ?
This question allows specifying needs and objectives, which are often poorly defined.
Example:
A company’s directors decide to conduct a study to determine their customers’ satisfaction regarding a product. After circulation and analysis of results, clients actually reveal overall satisfaction. It will have only served to please the direction and no action plan will have been implemented.
However, if they had consulted their sales and marketing department or their employees, as well as existing data within the company (which is sometimes little used, if at all), they would have obtained a qualified and quality source of information. They would have then realized that everyone already knows that customers are globally satisfied, but there are some focus areas on which the company has no data. It is on this sense that the questionnaire should have been focused.
This company has not collected the right information and has no data to enter a quality and development process.
The answer to this question will allow you to structure your study and validate the flow of questions asked. The ultimate goal is to obtain the necessary responses for the implementation of an action plan.
The questionnaire structure
To motivate and keep the respondents’ attention, it is recommended to introduce your online questionnaire by using an explanatory text. You can then specify the duration, the objective and thank them for their participation. To enhance your introduction it is also recommended to use pictures or videos.
Your questionnaire structure can be created in several ways. Here we show the funnel structure and the hourglass structure:
– Funnel structure – it consists of starting with general questions and moving towards more and more accurate questions. Respondents pay more attention because they fully fall within the subject.
– Hourglass structure – it starts with general questions and reaches more specific questions, then it finishes with general questions again. This gives a sense of lightness to the questionnaire.
It is recommended to make the questionnaire as dynamic as possible so that it can keep the respondents’ attention and motivation. There is a risk that they will drop out along the way and that the number of responses will not be satisfactory for data exploitation.
One of the advantages of using online questionnaires is the use of the “Skip Logic” function (also called “Conditional branching”). It allows directing participants to different parts of the survey based on the given answers, and in complete transparency.
With Skip Logic, questions like the following are avoided:
If you answer no to question 12, go directly to question 22.
The choice of questions
There are many question types available in our application :
– Free field – it allows people to express themselves freely on a subject. To make data processing easier, you can limit the number of characters,
– Multiple free-form fields – you propose several answers choices on which respondents can express themselves freely,
– Yes/No question – you propose two possible answers. You can add the “No opinion” option,
– Multiple choice question – you propose several possible answers and give the opportunity for respondents to choose more than one. You can choose the number of possible responses.
– Percentage – respondents must enter percentages. If the total is not 100, the question cannot be validated. This question is used when banks, insurances or independent financial advisors create a questionnaire to determine their clients’ investor profile,
– Order of priority – it allows sorting answers to a question into an order of priority. For example, this question can be found in a software house when it wishes to determine with customers the developments to prioritize,
– Scoring slider – it allows assessing feeling or opinion. It can be found on questions such as: “Globally, are you satisfied with our product?” The proposed options could be “extremely satisfied, very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied, very dissatisfied, and extremely dissatisfied.” Drag’n Survey provides various sliders which allow you to customize and enhance your questionnaire.
– Scoring matrix- There are several scoring bars available on the same question. It allows developing a Likert scale,
– Comparison / Image scoring – it provides the opportunity for respondents to score one or more images together. You can also offer respondents to leave a comment. Its use is found for example when a company wishes to change its logo or compare two products.
Tips:
– Avoid asking many questions into one. Be as concise as possible
– Do not hesitate to show humor
– Enhance your survey through the different questions types
– Try to ensure that your survey is as short as possible
Optimizing participation
Not everyone has a huge customer email base at their disposal. Using an online software brings many benefits, including the circulation of your study to the greatest number of people.
Several options are available to you and can be combined with each other :
– Emailing – Drag’n Survey has an integrated email solution in its application. Data processing after circulation will let you know the valid email addresses and the non-valid ones. You can also know the email address of people who have not responded to the study. This way, you can organize your follow up. You can also choose to make participation anonymous and therefore, not to know the individuals’ identity,
– Social network and forum integration – you can enhance your activity even more on social networks. Drag’n Survey generates a web link for your study which can be posted to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Viadeo or even LinkedIn. You make your community live and you reach your target directly. This also allows you to reach a wider audience if you share your study or if you use the social networks’ advertising department. Posting your survey to a specialized forum will allow you to reach a specific target which will not necessarily be related to your organization,
– Website Integration – integrate your questionnaire directly on your website and collect immediately your visitors’ responses. If your traffic is high, you will quickly get a large participation.
Tips:
– Maximize the diversification of distribution channels to increase the participation rate
– Do not hesitate to send your survey again to people who did not respond
– Bring the questionnaire out on your website
Sharing data
There are many organizations which have collected quality data, but have not set up an action plan. This is often due to the fact that data processing is long and reports are shared only after the emulation is complete.
To overcome this problem, our application processes data automatically and in real time. You can follow the progression of participation second by second. You see results directly from the application. You can incorporate filters to optimize the analysis. Data is exportable in Excel and CSV format.
In order not to lose efficiency, reports are automatically generated. You can export them in PDF format or circulate them around the world through the web link.
With forethought and use of intuitive software, the use of an online questionnaire proves to be an invaluable and essential aid for operations to run smoothly.
Drag’n Survey provides all the tools necessary for obtaining quality data and it facilitates its processing.
Read the french version
Créer un questionnaire en ligne – astuces et méthodologie, click here