We all use surveys, and they’re a powerful tool for building a better understanding of users,but often, I think we probably use them in the wrong way,so in this lesson, I want to show you some techniques to extract valuable and applicable information about your audience.You should know what you should be looking to discover when you use a survey,how to avoid the common mistakes of running a survey,and how to avoid surveys undermining the user experience and your conversion rate.How can we get real insights from a survey?I think the key is, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to know going in.I often come across people that run surveys and they just, they want to know more about their user and so they just ask this plethora of different questions,and then somebody else in the company goes,ooh, you’re running a survey,can I drop this question in as well?Before you know it, you end up with these big,bloated surveys, and really, that is not the way to go,partly because aren’t going to complete a survey that long,but also partly, you just end up with a lot of data you don’t know what to do with.So, go in with a very clear idea of what question you want answered.Right?And that may, and probably should be, just one question.What will answering that question enable you to do?So, don’t just have a question that you want answering out of curiosity,have a question that you’re going to ask because you want to achieve something specific with the answer to that question.
Now, if you can’t clearly answer in your own mind why you’re asking questions,then you probably shouldn’t be writing a survey and it’s not the right time to do it.What should we focus on when running a survey?Beyond getting people to identify some very basic segmentation about themselves,don’t focus, really, on who your audience is.Instead, focus on what they want to do.Okay, so in particular, what tasks do they want to complete?What questions do they want to answer?What’s their goals?What’s their pain points?Are there any objections that stop them from acting?How can we encourage more people to complete a survey?Of course, yeah, that’s the big problem,isn’t it, with surveys, is actually getting people to complete the survey?And I’ve actually written a little cheat sheet for you about UX surveys that you might want to check out.
One of the most important things, however,is to pick your moments to ask.I see people making this mistake so often, right.You arrive on a new website for the first time and immediately pops up a survey going, you know,would you answer a few questions?No, I wouldn’t, I’m busy, right?People come to a survey with a task that they want to complete, so let people complete the task that they came to the website to do and then ask them to complete a survey,or at least give them a few moments to get settled on the site, maybe visit one or two pages first.In actual fact, oftentimes, the best point to put a survey in front of people is on exit intent.It’s at that moment when they’re about to leave the website,or alternatively, after they’ve completed some other action,like make a purchase.It all depends on the content of the survey,but you certainly shouldn’t jump on them the minute they arrive.The second thing you could do to encourage people to complete a survey is, keep it short.Seriously, one question is often enough.
For example, I was selling a master class,not dissimilar to this one, on my own website,and I was struggling with howto increase the conversion rate.Right?What was it that was stopping people buying it?It could’ve been any number of things.It could’ve been price, it could’ve been that they didn’t know who I was so they weren’t sure about the content.I had this whole list of different reasons why the conversion rate isn’t as high as,perhaps, I’d want it to be.So, what did I do?I ran a one-question survey that was triggered on exit intent, saying, if you decide not to enroll today,which of the following reasons stopped you?And I gave a list of reasons,and at the bottom, I put Other.And that one simple question transformed my whole marketing approach to that master class.And that’s another thing, really.Okay, you might not just have a single question,but if you keep it short, make sure also it’s focused on a single subject.The more different, random questions you throw in,the more people are likely just to give up and go off.
Also, I’d encourage you to use closed questions,as they tend to have a higher response rate than,kind of, open questions where people have to think too much.So, take, for example, that survey I mentioned a moment ago.It was a closed question.Here are a set of predefined options for you to select with.There was another option in case my predefined options didn’t fit with them, but generally,it was a closed question.Also, explain why you’re asking.Why do you want to know this information?What are you going to do with it?And also, don’t ask for personal information.People sometimes use surveys as an opportunity to start collecting email addresses,but if you want people to actually complete the survey,you shouldn’t be asking for information like that.It’s just going to put them off.I’d also encourage you to start with a simple question.If you’ve got multiple questions in your survey,start with the easiest one to answer.We know this from telesales.
One of the first things people will ask you on a telesales survey is what your name is.The reason they ask that is because it’s so easy to answer it; we don’t have to think.People don’t like thinking when they’re asked to complete a survey.If you can get them to answer one question because it’s blatantly obvious and really simple,the chance of them answering the rest of the questions go up significantly.And then the final thing is, obviously,you can offer them an incentive to complete the survey as well.How to make the most use of incentives.That’s actually a really good question.Incentives are one of those things that we often struggle to add to surveys because we haven’t got any money to pay for an incentive.But not all incentives need to cost the organization money.Sure, you can do things like offer Amazon gift cards and that kind of things.
You can also run competitions so that you’re not giving everybody a prize at the end of it but you’re giving them a chance to win a prize.But also, you can do some incentives that are free.Maybe they can download something digital that isn’t going to cost you any money once you’ve prepared it.Maybe you can offer them a free month of your product or service, or some other incentive along those line.So, there are lots of different things that you can do around incentives that don’t necessarily need to cost you a lot of money.There’s also another little clever trick that you can use with incentives,and this is going to sound a little bit back-to-front,but bear with me just for a moment.Instead of saying upfront that you’re going to give them a gift for completing the survey, you only tell them about the gift once they’ve completed the survey.Right?Now, this seems like insanity because we’re giving people an incentive to motivate them to complete the survey,and if you don’t tell them about it,then how are they going to know,and therefore, how is that going to motivate them to complete the survey?But bear with me.By offering them a gift at the end to thank them for completing the survey,you trigger a psychological thing in us called reciprocation, okay,because that’s an unconditional gift that we’ve just been given, right?We weren’t expecting it.
We didn’t factor it in to our decision to complete the survey.It was a surprise, it was a delightful surprise,and in those kinds of situations,we feel the need to give back, right?And so, what we’ll often do in that situation is,we tell other people.Oh, I’ve just completed this survey and they gave me a wonderful gift at the end.Isn’t that nice?Because that’s their way of thanking us.Also, people like to do that because it’s a little insider trick that they can give to other people.Oh, did you know if you complete this survey,you get this at the end of it?So, actually, sometimes not talking about the incentive is a very effective way of getting people to spread the news about a survey and encourage other people to complete it, too.So, you might want to give that a go.Surveys are an invaluable tool for understanding users,but they’re often a wasted opportunity.So, to avoid that, be very clear about what you want to learn from your survey and focus on that exclusively.Secondly, pick the right moment to ask people to complete a survey.Third, explain why you’re asking,and if possible, offer some kind of incentive to encourage people to act.But most importantly, keep that survey short and focused and easy to complete.In my opinion, when it comes to user research,often, one question is more than enough to point you in the right direction.
